28

I walked around the corner of a hotel in Bangkok and stopped when I came face-to-face with two men. They had closely cropped black hair and, I detected, bad breath. Though they had on street clothes, I could tell instantly I was inches away from colliding with two members of China’s secret police.

“Excuse me,” I said, looking down at my feet and walking through the hallway of the hotel, directly passing my destination, room 610. Without a sideways glance, I walked back to the elevator and out the lobby.

Had we been compromised? Chinese secret police scour the streets of Bangkok looking for dissidents. They’ve been known to kidnap people—even those granted US asylum—transport them back to China, accuse them of breaking the law, and make them disappear forever into the prison system. I was taking a huge risk helping Guo Feixiong’s family, and I wanted to make sure I could get back to my own.

Guo’s wife was a lady named Zhang Qing. She, along with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Sara, and her six-year-old son, Peter, were hidden in room 610, assisted by some believers from Thailand and a missionary from Britain named Catherine. It was ironic to me that their room number was 610, because the “610 Office” is a Chinese security agency that persecutes the Falun Gong. It was named because it was created on June 10, 1999, but I tried not to take the hotel number coincidence as a bad omen for our mission.

After all, they wouldn’t be there long. Every three days, the family walked out of their hotel room without any bags and checked into another hotel across town. At night, Catherine would go to their old room, get their luggage, and carry it to their new location. Though the mother already had a visa, the two children didn’t. This meant they needed to hide from the Thai police as well as the Chinese.

After walking around the hotel, I determined my run-in with the secret police agents was coincidental. Had they known who I was, I’d certainly be in the back of their van on my way back to prison. Slowly, I ambled back to the hotel and knocked on the door of the family’s room.

“It’s me!” Guo’s family was sitting in the small room, wondering why it had taken me so long to arrive. “We have to get you all out of here.”

I told them about the security agents who might be on their tail. Qing told me about a suspicious incident they’d had recently when they went out in public.

“After we were rejected by the UN, Catherine and I were in a cab when another car slammed right into us,” she said. “I knew we had to get out before the police showed up. I don’t think it was really an accident.”

I’d already consulted with one of Britain’s Christian refugee lawyers, who’d flown to Bangkok from London to meet with me. We interviewed Qing multiple times and went without much sleep for several days and nights. Then, we met with a high-ranking official from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at the UN compound to talk about appealing their rejection.

“We never know if an appeal will be successful, or how long it will take,” the official told us in a monotonous voice.

“But we have a family in terrible danger,” I said. “We need to get them to safety as soon as possible.”

“It might take months, it might take years,” she said, and then she looked up at us as if to say, Is there anything else?

“Two of them are children!” I said. “Please!”

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

Because we knew it would take a long time to process, we didn’t even file the appeal. The family didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the appeals process, because every day presented new chances of arrest. Plus, I’d already been gone a week and needed to travel back to America to keep ChinaAid running, to tend to my family, and to make my scheduled appointments. If Guo’s family was going to be stuck there for years, there’s no way I could live in Thailand until their release. I extended my trip for a few more days, but eventually my time ran out.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the family, standing in their hotel room with my suitcase. “I want to get you guys out of here, but we’ve exhausted every option and I have to leave.” Immediately, Sara’s eyes seemed full of fear. Even Catherine didn’t make eye contact with me. I didn’t blame them. We’d lost.

“They’ll capture us!” Qing said.

Peter, though he was only six, had stopped banging on the floor with a stick long enough to look up sadly. I felt like I was abandoning my own family. After all, I had a wife, a daughter, and a son. If I were in Guo’s shoes, to what extent would I want someone to fight for my family? How long would I want them to stay? How far would I want them to go?

Then, it hit me. Right before Heidi dropped me off at the airport, she’d reminded me I needed to get the kids visas for an upcoming trip. I hadn’t run that errand yet, so I had all my family’s passports in my suitcase. Right there, as I stood in a hotel room with this family and the British missionary staring at me, I had a moment of conscience. My limited knowledge of US refugee law told me that if a person could set foot on American soil, they could be considered eligible for political asylum. The asylum officer should not care about how that person arrived. What if I gave my kids’ passports to Guo’s kids and tried to pass them off as my own? If the security agents at the airport bought the ruse, we’d be in America the next day.

When I presented my idea privately to Qing and Catherine, they were hesitant.

“How old is your daughter?” Qing said, examining my daughter Tracy’s passport.

“She’s ten.”

“Sara’s thirteen. Do you think she’ll pass for such a young child?”

I reached into my suitcase and pulled out Daniel’s passport. He was twelve already, which was a much larger age gap to overcome since Peter was only six.

“I’m not saying this is a good option,” I admitted. “I’m saying this is our only option.”

We sat in sober silence. “Using another person’s passport is a serious crime,” Catherine said.

“God,” I prayed. “What is the moral thing to do in this circumstance?”

If the Guo family were caught, they’d certainly be taken back to China and put in prison. If I were caught, there’s no telling what China would do to me. After all, I’d so publicly revealed their state secrets. I’d never see my family again. However, there was no way I was going to abandon this family.

I sat down with the children and taught them my family background: my father’s name, my mother’s name, my hometown province, where I went to school, where I’d been employed. Since Catherine and Qing both had legal passports, they’d travel together as vacationers to the United States. I’d be a father traveling with my two children back to our American home.

“Quick,” I said to Sara. “What was your grandfather’s name?”

“Fu Yubo?”

“Perfect!” Then, I got down on the floor where Peter was still holding his stick. “Listen,” I said to him very gently. “You must not speak. Just pretend that you don’t know English and don’t say anything no matter what they ask you. Pretend to be shy.”

“How on earth will they believe Peter is twelve?” Catherine asked. “He barely comes up to my waist!” She bit her lip in thought, then said, “I have an idea! Let’s put him in a wheelchair. We can pretend he’s disabled, and they won’t be able to tell how short he is.”

The next morning, we wrapped his legs with bandages and I prepared to take the biggest gamble of my life.

“I can push him wherever you need to go,” a dark-haired Thai college student named Kasem smiled as he rolled a wheelchair around for us. He had volunteered to work at the Bangkok airport that day and had been assigned wheelchair duty. “Did you have a fall?”

Peter looked at me, opened his mouth slightly, remembered our stern instructions, and frowned.

Good boy, I thought.

“So where are you from?” I asked, engaging Kasem in small talk. “This is Tracy,” I pointed to Sara. “And this is Daniel,” I said, pointing to Peter. We chatted through customs and in the immigration line.

There, time died.

Catherine and Qing, who were about fifteen people in front of us, easily got past the immigration agents and casually walked off to the side. Sara and Peter didn’t say a word as Kasem chatted about his new job at the airport.

As I stood in the airport, I remembered the fear I felt when Heidi and I were escaping Beijing during her pregnancy. In a weird way, this was more horrifying. Now, I had so much more to lose—Heidi, three children, a nonprofit organization fighting injustice, and a home in America. Plus, I was responsible for another family’s well-being. The line in front of me grew shorter.

We were up.

Kasem pushed Peter up to the immigration officers as they took the three passports from me. Mine was on top of the stack. They looked at me, then at the passport, and nodded. Then they opened Tracy’s passport, looked at the little picture of my daughter, back at Sara, and back at the passport. After about two seconds, the immigration agent nodded. I tried not to look relieved or excited.

When she opened the last passport and looked at Daniel’s photo, I felt my heartbeat in my ears and neck. Daniel was six years older than Peter, and they looked nothing alike. I’d banked on having a careless agent, but I could tell this lady meant business. Her uniform was perfectly pressed, her shoes were shiny. Her bun was pulled so tightly it made her face taut.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, very casually. “There are no problems?”

She shook her head, and said something to her co-worker in Thai. Though I couldn’t understand her language, her tone of incredulity told me she was probably saying, “Does this boy look like his picture?” She held the passport in front of her co-worker’s face. He squinted, then nodded slightly.

“What is your name?” she asked him, but Peter—true to form—didn’t answer. We’d told him to act shy, but he was taking it even further by acting dumb. “Grhumph,” he said.

“Name?”

“Grhumph!”

“My son’s not well,” I explained.

The agent took out a flashlight and shined a light on Peter’s ears, like she was inspecting him after he took a bath.

“See, these ears just don’t match.” The minute hand on a giant clock in the terminal had gone around about ten times since we’d first approached this agent. They were onto us, but the agent hadn’t yet ordered the officers to arrest us. I smiled and said, “Just let us through,” I said. “My children are tired.”

“Why are you in a wheelchair?” She knelt down before Peter. He mumbled unintelligibly, and—had I not been so terrified—I would’ve been impressed by his acting skills. Even at his young age, he seemed to understand what was going on.

“What happened?” she asked me.

“Oh, we had a terrible vacation,” I said. “He fell.” Instead of telling a detailed story, which I thought might make me look guilty, I didn’t elaborate. She lifted up his blanket, looked at his short, six-year-old legs, and examined his bandages.

It’s over, I thought. No one could think this kid is a twelve-year-old. I wondered how my demise would happen. Would these officers arrest us immediately? Would we be separated? Would Catherine and Qing explain to Heidi what happened to me?

Just then, Peter did something so gross—so brilliant—I couldn’t believe my eyes. He began to foam at the mouth. Perhaps, when she began to inspect his legs, he suddenly felt the peril we were in. The entire time we’d been held there, he must’ve been saving up saliva in his mouth. When she got close to his bandages, he started drooling all over himself.

The officer immediately stood up, her eyes wide in disgust. They handed up tissues, while they brought other officers over for their opinion. While they examined the documents, I didn’t say anything. I just prayed.

Save us.

After about thirty minutes, I’d practically sweated through my shirt and was thankful I was wearing a jacket. “Come on,” I said, finally. “There’s no problem.”

The immigration officer turned to Kasem, who’d been standing there the whole time silently, his hands on Peter’s wheelchair. “What do you think?” she said, handing him the passport. “Do you think the little boy matches this photo?” She pointed to the picture.

“Absolutely!” Kasem said, with a big smile. I was thankful I’d built up a rapport with him.

“Okay,” the agent said, biting her lip. I didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence. As she was handing me the stack of passports, I walked past her as quickly as possible without looking guilty.

“Thank you,” I said to Kasem, as I took control of Peter’s wheelchair. “I’ll take it from here.”

I didn’t breathe until we were safely in the air. The fact that we made it this far was nothing short of miraculous. When we landed in the Dallas airport, I wanted to stand up and cheer. We’d made it! We were free! I couldn’t wait to be reunited with Heidi to tell her all we’d managed to pull off. I wanted to rustle Daniel’s hair, to hug Tracy, and to kiss Melissa’s little feet. However, the customs agent took one look at our passports and said, very sternly, “All of you. Come with me.”

I should’ve realized our arrival would raise red flags in their system. After all, how could “Daniel Fu” and “Tracy Fu” land in Dallas if there’s no record of their departure? We were led into a special room, where there was one long table. I’d managed to keep the kids out of Chinese prison only to deliver them to an American detention center.

“We need you to come with us,” they said to Sara. She stood silently, and walked out of the room like a gladiator going into the Coliseum. If she’s not out in twenty minutes, I thought, I’ll surrender. I’d prepared all of the documentation for their asylum papers and was carrying them in my suitcase.

Sara knew some English, but not much. The officers from the Customs and Border Protection used an AT&T operator on the phone to translate for her. She insisted repeatedly I was her father, but I didn’t feel right about letting her be questioned by American police all alone. After twenty minutes, I went to the little window where an officer was standing and said, “I have a story to tell.”

The officers gathered around and I told them everything. “Well, it all started in China, when . . .”

Immediately, the whole office began scrambling.

“Where’s the mother, sir?” an enormous officer barked at me. He wasn’t interested in my tale of religious persecution. About halfway through my explanation, I was accused of child trafficking.

“She’s already through customs,” I said. “She might be in the luggage area or the pick-up area.”

He wheeled away from me and spoke into his walkie-talkie. The entire airport police force scoured the airport in search of an Asian woman who matched the description I gave them. When the airport police surrounded Qing, they also apprehended Catherine.

For seven hours, I sat in that room as they asked me questions dripping with the kind of contempt reserved for a kidnapper.

“This is a high-profile case,” I warned them. “You should handle it very professionally.”

I heard one of the senior officers in an adjacent room say, “Okay, guys, let’s do everything by the book. This is big.”

To add credibility to my story, I pulled out their petitions for asylum, then showed them some of my state department contacts who were familiar with the case. Eventually I was released, Guo’s family was placed in immigration detention, and Catherine’s passport was stamped “Seven Years No Return” and her green card was confiscated. She was punished the most severely, and still can’t return to the United States even though her brother lives here. Guo’s family finally got their political asylum approved a few months later, after the Manhattan-based Human Rights First enlisted the pro bono help of a law firm in Dallas. My children’s passports were confiscated, and it took two years and nine trips to Houston to get new passports. The Dallas prosecutor’s office dropped their charge against me for child trafficking. Qing, Sara, and Peter settled into Midland very seamlessly. The kids attend a private Christian school where Sara, a couple of years later, was even elected Homecoming Queen.

Guo, who is not a believer in Christ, was amazed when he heard the story of how we protected his family. Ten days after he was released from prison, he wrote me a letter.

“I believe the sacred cause of Christianity will play a crucial part in the spiritual life of a free Chinese society to come. Inspired by your virtue and holiness, I will always preserve in my heart my best wishes to you and to Christ-followers all over the world.”

The letter blessed me so much.

Jesus once asked, “What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?” During this experience I learned the opposite is also true: if you’ve rescued one soul, it means more than the whole world.