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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published September 20, 2005
ZIGUI, CHINA - It was only after stopping our cab, escorting us to police headquarters and confiscating our passports that the local security chief said the only phrase he knew in English: "Welcome to China."
There was not a hint of sarcasm in his voice as he proceeded to question us through our interpreter. What were we doing in Zigui? Why had we taken a particular local peasant to lunch? What had we discussed?
Times photographer Bob Croslin and I said we simply were visiting the Three Gorges Dam and enjoying the spectacular scenery. As for the peasant, Fu Xiancai, whom we had dropped off at his home just minutes before encountering the police, he had been referred to us by a mutual friend in New York City.
"That is impossible," the police chief replied. "He is an uneducated peasant who could never have friends in New York."
We spent about six hours at the Zigui police station before being allowed to leave. Occasionally we were questioned, and police dug through my purse. But mostly we were left to sit in a small office, flipping through Chinese newspapers to pass the time as officers interrogated our interpreter in another room.
More than a dozen plainclothes policemen took turns watching us, offering us hot water, cigarettes and ramen noodles. The officers were dressed in casual clothes, as if they were headed for a round of golf. They had cell phones, not guns, holstered on their belts.
I remembered, then quickly dismissed, a comment from earlier in the day. Fu's friend said that because Chinese police are not allowed to beat prisoners, they get around the regulation by not wearing uniforms.
But while they threatened to expel us from the country, the Zigui police were polite. They were just maddeningly vague as they shrugged off our questions about how soon we might leave their company. "We just have to clear up this misunderstanding," they said.
By midnight, the "misunderstanding" was cleared up and all sides apologized for the inconvenience. They confiscated the film in Bob's camera, gave us back our passports and sent us on our way.
The police chief urged us to take a cruise up the Yangtze and feel free to talk to anyone we wanted - except Fu.
We had been warned by Human Rights in China, the group in New York that had referred us to Fu, that foreign journalists who interviewed him in the past had been detained and harassed by police.
Fu said friends warned him that police once tried to hire some thugs to run over him with a car. To protect himself, Fu said he no longer leaves his house at night.
We thought Fu and Human Rights were being paranoid. In a country of 1.3-billion people, why would one displaced peasant in a relatively isolated central China town evoke such a strong reaction?
The Zigui police never answered that question. But after threatening Fu with jail, the local authorities tried another tactic with him shortly after our visit.
The local Communist Party chief warned Fu not to talk to foreign journalists and offered him a job in a hydropower station in an outlying area of Zigui. Fu has taken the job, which pays about $120 a month, but promises to continue his campaign on behalf of the peasants in the Three Gorges area.
[Last modified September 20, 2005, 04:31:06]
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