Editor’s note: The story below captures the author’s experience arriving at a Chinese detention center after being arrested for selling marijuana in 2014. The author, who is now 34 and currently lives in Pakistan, has chosen to use a pseudonym to protect his family’s reputation. His identity is known to PJP editors, who corresponded with the author over email and Zoom to verify the details of his account. The following story marked the beginning of the author’s nearly decade-long sentence, in which he was unable to communicate with his family.
After all the interrogations, medical tests and sleepless nights strapped to a steel chair cuffed by my wrists to metal rings, I was finally sent to a detention center in Shenyang, in China’s Liaoning Province, to await trial.
Lost in thought during the van ride, I didn’t notice anything around me — not the road, not the time. I was consumed by fear. Would this be the end of my freedom forever?
Eventually, the van stopped. I was led into a building. Through gates and alleys, we reached a long corridor with rooms lining the left side. The air was thick with the smell of sweaty human bodies. I wasn’t allowed to look left or right. If I did, a guard would push me. All I could do was glance sideways from the edge of my eyes.
I barely knew Chinese. I was a 20-something from a Muslim nation in Central Asia, and had come to China in 2012 to study medicine. Not always a good Muslim, I liked to party and drink beer with my friends, many of whom were also foreigners from countries around the world. Eventually I started smoking and selling marijuana — a severe crime in China for which I was arrested two years into my studies.
Inside the rooms, I saw people with shaved heads, sitting with their backs to the wall, wearing different colored vests: red, orange, blue, yellow, green, gray — each indicating a different status. Red indicated a person was part of an organized criminal group; orange also signaled this, but that the person’s sentence was still uncertain. Those in blue were people officials thought would not be sentenced to life or death, while those in yellow had received a death sentence. A green vest meant the person was sick with a terminal illness, and gray meant sick but not terminal.
My vest was blue.
Everyone sat facing the wall, silent and still.
We stopped at Room 15 in front of a thick iron gate with a keypad. The officer with me typed a code and the lock beeped. The door clanged open, and I was pushed inside.
The officer said something to a prisoner, then slammed the door shut. My heart sank. I was locked in.
The officer removed my handcuffs through a rectangular hole in the door. The inmate assigned to me — evidently the room leader — showed me where to sit. A voice on the speaker said something. The men in the cell stood up and began walking in a circle. I followed them. Later, I learned this was a twice-a-day routine meant to provide circulation after sitting long hours in the Buddha posture.
The room was split into two sides, with wooden platforms numbered 1 to 12 on one side, 13 to 24 on the other. Each platform was about 2 feet off the ground. A narrow walkway divided the two. I was assigned the No. 7 spot. The toilet — a squat-style commode — was right near my side of the room. There was a 3-foot wall surrounding it and a sheet of hard plastic on top that was transparent enough for the CCTV camera to see through. At maximum capacity, as many as 28 people were forced to share it.
I had so many questions. I wished I could just sit down and think, maybe even cry. But everything was happening so fast.
Half an hour passed, and a voice on the speaker barked out again. Everyone sat back down with their backs straight against the wall, legs stretched out like soldiers. I sat between two inmates. Everyone stared at me — some with curiosity, some smiling, others with cold expressions.
Eventually, in Chinese and broken English, the room leader asked my name. I told him. He nodded. “You have to follow what others are doing.” Then he told me the rules, which mostly concerned silence, discipline and routine.
When we were walking in a circle, I noticed two fellow inmates in red caps who stood still, watching us with serious expressions. One stood at the end of the room, the other near the door. After a while, the two red-capped men were replaced by two others who took their caps and stood in the same spots.
I stared at the others amid the silence and tension. I drifted into my mind, thought of freedom, of friends, of family, of beer. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I pinched myself, hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare.
Another voice on the speaker brought me back. Now everyone sat in the Buddha posture with legs crossed and back straight. I had never sat cross-legged for more than a few minutes in my life. After two minutes, my legs started to burn, then to numb.
I didn’t know how long this would last. I got lost again — in memories, in regrets. I never told my family how much I loved them. I never shared with them that my life was off track. That I wasn’t studying well, that I was making mistakes. I kept drifting in and out of pain and memory, until finally, a voice announced another change.
We sat again with legs stretched out. A relief, but soon even that became painful.
After some time, the room leader pointed at me. “Stand up. Wear the cap,” he barked, handing it to me. I realized that we all had to take turns being a “red cap.” When it was the next man’s shift, the leaders would announce, “戴小红帽,” or “wear the little red cap.”
A partner was assigned to share the duty. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just stood near the door, eyes on the wall.
It sounded innocent. It wasn’t.
It didn’t take long to learn that the red hats’ job, a shared responsibility, was to police the prisoners. We pressed the emergency button on the intercom and sounded the alarm when needed — if prisoners broke out fighting or made excessive noise, or did anything not permitted.
During the day, we mostly stood and watched. If an inmate needed the toilet, he raised a hand, waiting for permission from the red cap. At night, the lights never went off, and the red caps walked around, surveying the inmates. If someone tried to cover their face with a blanket, we would remove it to make sure everyone was visible to the cameras and no one was secretly reading, which was forbidden except at certain times of day.
I stood still, silently aching. I was tired, thirsty, sleep-deprived. But standing was better than sitting.
An hour passed. Someone came to replace me. I sat down again, exhausted.
Then food came: bok choy soup with bean curd and mantou, or steamed buns. Rice was served to those who had trouble digesting mantou. Halal meals were offered to Hui and Uyghur prisoners, and to foreign Muslims, showing respect for religious beliefs.
Finally, the room leader said: “Freshen up — bedtime in 30 minutes.”
The basin near the toilet had three taps. Three people at a time brushed and washed. I followed. Then, from under the wooden platform, I pulled out a thin bed cushion and a blanket. It was so dusty and stinking that I coughed as I spread it out, but I was too tired to protest.
Just as I lay down, I felt a finger poke my shoulder. The room leader again.
“Your duty.”
He handed me the red cap.
Since I had already finished a shift a little over two hours earlier, I was stunned. “But now?”
“At night, you patrol. You walk. Both red caps do. If anything happens during your watch, it’s your responsibility.”
That hit me hard. I hardly even knew the rules, and I’d be held accountable? But that’s how it was. No rest for me.
I kept walking. My mind drifted. I thought about the mistakes I’d made, like breaking up with my girlfriend due to ego and cultural misunderstandings. I reflected on what I could have done differently, the better choices I could have made. But I also thought about my opportunity to study abroad and to make my family proud. I found comfort in those thoughts. Even in sorrow, I found peace.
An hour later, my partner whispered, “Time’s up.”
I handed the cap to the next number. I lay down again on the hard wood floor, on a thin sheet, and finally drifted into a dream. The nightmare would begin again soon enough.