One Man’s Daring Escape from Mao’s Darkest Prison – Narratively. In 1. 95. 8, thousands of Chinese citizens were sent to brutal labor camps where life was hell and leaving was impossible—but that didn't stop one man from trying. Half a century later, his long lost story is finally told.
· Read the Latest Entertainment and Celebrity News, TV News and Breaking News from TVGuide.com. Cities: Skylines’ PlayStation version has a release date of August 15th. You can ruin tiny simulated peoples’ commutes on so many platforms! Lim Chuan Shin is a freelance artist from Malaysia who has worked on games like Street Fighter V and Agents of Mayhem. In 1958, thousands of Chinese citizens were sent to brutal labor camps where life was hell and leaving was impossible—but that didn't stop one man from trying.
In 1. 95. 8, as part of China’s Anti- Rightist Campaign, 5. Chinese citizens were convicted of crimes against the state. One of them was Xu Hongci, a medical student arrested for speaking out against the Soviet Union, who was sentenced to a camp called White Grass Ridge. For eight months, Xu worked up to nineteen hours a day on a starvation ration, each day growing closer to death. Finally, he and his young friend Chen Xiangzai attempted the impossible: escape.
More than one thousand miles from the nearest land border, in a country as tightly controlled as any prison, it was an impossible journey, and one they had no choice but to make. Xu, who died in 2. Erling Hoh. This month, “No Wall Too High” was published in English by Sarah Crichton books. The following is an excerpt.* * *On December 1.
Xiangzai and I packed our knapsacks and dropped them through the small window behind his bunk, then washed ourselves and ate breakfast as usual. When the team leader blew his whistle for the morning assembly, we exited the barrack first, turned to the rear of it, picked up our knapsacks, and ran as fast as our legs would carry us. It took us two minutes to reach the farm’s tobacco- curing house. We continued sprinting toward the Ouyang Ford at Sand River. How To Watch Animal Armageddon Cartoon. We crossed a bridge and came to a village where bent, famished peasants were queuing up for the day’s work. Keeping our heads down, we walked toward the main road from Hangzhou to Wuhu.
Xu Hongci as a young man. Photo courtesy Xu Hongci’s family)This was a dangerous move, because we hadn’t gotten far, and it would have been easy for the patrols dispatched by [camp commandant] Mao Kourong to catch us. But they didn’t, perhaps unable to imagine that we would take the easiest, straightest route. According to our plan, we turned east on the main road and arrived at the county seat of Guangde, twenty miles southeast of the camp, by nightfall. There, we bought some food and rested for a while, before continuing our escape through the night by the light of the moon and stars, heading east over the border into Zhejiang Province. Walking another twenty miles, we reached the town of Si’an at 5: 0.
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Jiaxing, and then boarded a train to Shanghai, arriving at the North Station in the evening. The escape had given us our strength back, and we felt no fatigue despite not having slept.
From a general store on Baoshan Road, I made an operator- assisted telephone call to Mother and asked her to meet us at the North Station. She arrived there with my sister Hongming and took us to the Old Zhengxing restaurant on Zhejiang Middle Road.“What are your plans?” she asked us. I told her we had no future in China.
Our only hope was to escape abroad. Mother and Hongming were worried. They wanted to tell us to give ourselves up but knew we wouldn’t listen. On the other hand, if they helped us with money and we were captured, we would be severely punished, and they would be implicated. It was already late, and the restaurant was otherwise empty. We had to speak quietly and make our decisions quickly.“What route will you take?” Mother asked.“We plan to go to India via Tibet and then make our way to Hong Kong and find Uncle Lu,” I replied.
Mother said it was a long journey, that our chances of success were slim, and hesitated whether or not to help us. Finally, she relented before our entreaties and gave me five hundred yuan, which in those days was a lot of money. As we parted, she asked to see us one last time the next evening. Having said goodbye, we were suddenly overcome with fatigue. Because we didn’t have any papers, we couldn’t stay in a hostel and had no choice but to return to the train station, where we each found a bench to lie down on. Before I had fallen asleep, a public security officer walked over and asked to see our documents. Unable to produce any, we were taken to the police office at the train station.
There were many other people there, waiting to be questioned. Xiangzai and I were separated, but I could see him. The police had taken our knapsacks from us but not the money, which I had hidden in my pants. As soon as we were interrogated, the game would be over.
The road to Duomei is a stretch of Xu Hongci’s final escape route in 1. Photo by Erling Hoh)At this moment, I was filled with a powerful determination and, taking advantage of a short lapse in the attention of the police, stood up and fled the station out to the road, disappearing among the pedestrians. I crossed Sichuan Road and came to the Bund. By this time, it was around midnight, and there were no police in sight.
I walked back and forth, feeling bad about leaving Xiangzai behind. There was no way I could return and rescue him. Suddenly I ran into Xiangzai at the corner of the Bund and Nanjing Road. We hugged each other with joy.“How did you escape?”“The police didn’t see you sneak out. I just followed you,” he said.“But how did you know I was on the Bund?”“I don’t know. I just had a feeling you would come here.”It was a miracle, one of the strangest things in my life.
The winter night was damp and cold, and we had nowhere to go. All we could do was saunter about on the Bund. In 1. 95. 8, with Shanghai engulfed in the Great Leap Forward, this famous, elegant boulevard looked like a construction site. In front of the municipal building, there was a row of small blast furnaces, and the sidewalk was cluttered with piles of ore, pig iron, coke, and slag. Of course, we should have left Shanghai right away.
But I was young and ignorant in the ways of the Public Security Bureau and wanted to see Mother one last time. That morning, I telephoned Father’s cousin Auntie Bai and asked her to go to my house and tell Mother to meet me at 6: 0. Grand Theatre. At around 5: 3. Xiangzai and I sat down in the coffeehouse just west of the cinema and ordered some food.
I told Xiangzai to stay put and went alone to meet Mother. Because it was dark, I couldn’t see that she was shooting warning glances to me and rushed to greet her.
A big sturdy man popped out of a corner and grabbed me. Several other men stepped forward. I realized they were plainclothes policemen and that I had walked straight into a trap. I will never forget the torment on Mother’s face. The policemen asked me where Xiangzai was.“He won’t make it by himself. Return to the camp together!” Mother shouted. I was about to accuse Mother of betraying us there and then but, tempering myself, realized that the problem probably lay with our arrest the previous evening.
Without money, Xiangzai wouldn’t survive. Having decided to return to the camp and plan another escape, I brought the policemen with me to the coffeehouse.“The game’s over; we have to go back,” I said to Xiangzai. When he saw Mother surrounded by the plainclothes policemen, his face turned ashen white. The officers wanted to take us away immediately, but I protested, “We are hungry. Let us eat before we go.”Mother also insisted on eating first, and the policemen relented. I told the waiter to bring another bowl and pair of chopsticks and asked Mother to sit down with us. The policemen sat down at another table, keeping an eye on us.
I quickly slipped the five hundred yuan back to Mother. With her head lowered to the rice bowl, she whispered, “There was a letter from me in your knapsack. The police at the train station knew that you had escaped and returned home.
This morning, officers from the Public Security Bureau came to ask for you. In the afternoon, Auntie Bai came over, and they forced her to tell them where you were.”A crowd had gathered at the entrance to the coffeehouse, and the waiters and guests thronged around our table, staring at us. It was chaotic. A few of the policemen stood up and dispersed the crowd and told us to finish our meal.
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