Deportation Day (May 25, 2018)
I Departed China for the Last Time When I was Deported 6 Years Ago Today
The testimony below was taken nearly verbatim from Chapter Seven of my book:
Unbeaten: Confronting the Lies (and Laughter) of the Chinese Communist Police
This is the story of my arrest, interrogation, and deportation from China on May 25, 2018. First available in print on April 30, 2024, which was the 6th anniversary of my initial arrest, you can get it on Amazon: Unbeaten.vip
Deportation Day
On May 25, 2018, the police had told me to be ready by 4pm (to catch a 6pm train), so I had most of the day to prepare. My memories of the first half of that day are pretty spotty, so I had to pull out an old planner just to remind myself of anything I did that day prior to the police coming for me.
It turns out that after having lunch at home together as a family, I took the kids to their weekly soccer practice across town, where I said goodbye to them for what would be a few weeks. Quickly returning home, I showered and made my final preparations for departure, double-checking my packing list for anything I didn’t dare leave behind. When the police called to say they had arrived, my wife and I said goodbye at the door of our 14th floor apartment, and I headed downstairs on the elevator, alone.
Waving Goodbye
When loading my bags into the police car, the officers noticed me looking up and waving goodbye to my wife, who was looking out the window far above. One of them remarked in a slightly sarcastic (yet friendly) way, “What’s wrong? Why won’t she come and say goodbye to you here?“
I shrugged and responded in like manner, “She’s a little bit embarrassed to see me get taken away in a police car.” This was true as far as it goes. But I didn’t say everything I was thinking: “And she really doesn’t have any desire to have to talk to any of you!”
Questioning the Police
Since the police seemed to be in a good mood, and I was being treated more as a travel partner than a criminal (for instance, they were wearing street clothes and I was not handcuffed). So I decided to embrace the opportunity to converse with them and hopefully learn something useful.
As we drove through the Muslim Quarter of our city on the way to the Railway Station, the first question that popped into my head was actually a fairly sensitive one. I remarked how the government was having all kinds of trouble with the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang Province to the northwest, who wanted their independence and would sometimes commit terrorist acts. They knew all about this, of course, but I was just leading to my actual question:
“What about the Hui (Chinese) Muslims who live in this region? Why are they treated differently from the Uyghurs? Do you not consider them a threat?”
Their response was about what I expected: “We don’t see the Hui as a threat to commit terrorism because they are actually much like the Chinese.”
Competing mosques from the Muslim Quarter, one Chinese style and one Arab.
This is true. It’s hard to distinguish a Hui from a Han Chinese (unless they are wearing white skull caps or veils). The Hui also happen to reside right in the heart of China. However, my question turned out to be prescient.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Communist government had already put in motion a plan to restrict the Hui Muslims in much the same way as the Uyghurs.
NPR reported that in April of 2018 (just a month before I was deported) the old Hui “exemption from the harshest of religious restrictions changed . . . when the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department formally took control of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs.”
It is interesting that this same “change” in religious restrictions is also true of Christians, and may have partly led to my own arrest.
As I was to find out later, it was officers from the very same “State Bureau of Religious Affairs” (mentioned above) who actually tracked me down, had me arrested, and then took the lead in much of my interrogation.
So if I was back in that police car today, I might ask a different question:
“Why does the government treat angry Uyghurs, Chinese Hui, and loving Christians all the same, when their lives bear such different fruit?”
An honest answer would reveal that each of these are a threat (in their own distinct ways) to the fragile psych of the Communist leaders, who crave control and fear losing control of their subjects to the point of committing (among other things) cultural genocide and systematic torture.
Going Away Gift
It was not a long drive from our apartment to the train station, and we arrived before I could think of any other questions. The driver (who was, coincidentally, Barney Fife from Chapter 3) helped pull my bags out of the trunk of his police car. (I had a large suitcase, a carry-on, and a backpack.)
But before I could move towards the entrance, “Barney” hesitated and then called for me to stop. He then reached back into the trunk and, after digging around for a minute, pulled out a sharp red tie:
“Here is a going away gift for you! It’s really nice.”
“Only in China,” I chuckled to myself.
Believe it or not, he seemed sincere. It was like he was trying to show that he didn’t have anything against me personally, but was just doing his job.
I thanked him, shook his hand, and said goodbye.
The More the Merrier
I continued on into the station with the other two officers and was briefly given my passport (which I hadn’t seen in almost four weeks), but just to get me through train station security. Then I had to give it back. We wandered into the large station hall and took some seats near the middle, with plenty of time to spare before the train was scheduled to depart.
After a few minutes, the head officer greeted two other men who strolled up, toting small overnight bags. At first I thought they were just friends that he happened to have bumped into. But then they were introduced to me as two more escorts, from the aforementioned State Bureau of Religious Affairs.
“Yippee”, I thought. “The more the merrier.”
Precious Cargo
In order for this next section to make sense, I need to explain two things:
First, I was carrying some very sensitive documents and data in my luggage that day. I had some personal paperwork, a couple of hard drives and thumb drives, not to mention my laptop, that I needed to carry with me out of China. A thorough search of this data would have revealed mountains of info about past teams and ministry plans, not to mention the names of many friends and co-workers. So I had all of these things buried and hidden deep inside my bags, hoping that they wouldn’t pick that day to search through my personal stuff for the first time.
Second, McDonalds was fairly new to our city at the time. We only got our first one just a year or two before, so anytime I got near one I had the urge to go and get a Big Mac. Just one. And maybe some fries.
So what’s the point, you ask? Well, as I was sitting there chillin’ with these four officers, I couldn’t help but notice a McDonald’s over in one corner of the station. And I thought to myself: “I wonder if they will let me go grab a burger?” It didn’t hurt to ask. Sure enough, I was indeed given permission to “buy a burger, and then come right back”.
But then I thought about my bags. If I dragged them with me, it would probably look suspicious, like I was hiding something. But if I just left them there with the police, while I was hundreds of yards away out of sight…?
The McDonalds Dare
At that moment, I made the calculated decision that a search would be less likely if I was willing to trust my unprotected bags into their care.
“Keep an eye on my stuff, please.” I casually asked the officer sitting next to me. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I remember the awkward feeling walking to McDonalds, leaving all of my personal belongings literally within their reach. Yet I felt confident that my plan would work. I gave them “face” by daring to trust them. I hoped they would return the favor.
While ordering my burger, I noticed that the youngest officer had been sent over to “keep an eye” on me. I got my food, and together we strolled back to the waiting area. A quick glance reassured me that my luggage indeed remained untouched. My plan seemed to have worked.
Before I had a chance to take a bite, however, everyone suddenly stood up and began to gather their things.
“Where are we going?” I queried, throwing on my backpack.
“To the train station security office,” replied the head Foreign Affairs officer.
“Oh, good grief,” I thought. “They really are planning to search my bags!”
I dutifully followed along, luggage in tow, praying under my breath.
Official Sentencing
When we got near the front of the large Departure Hall, we were met by some station security staff who led us through a side door and into an office with a long wooden boardroom-style table. I was directed to a spot on the left side of the far end of the table, across from “Richard”, the head foreign affairs officer. My luggage remained near the door.
As we stood there facing one another, with more than a half dozen police and security staff watching, Richard pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder and told me to pay attention. He then began to read aloud from a document which I quickly recognized to be the official verdict or “sentence” that had been determined for me by the Communist powers that be.
It was surreal as I listened to him read the one page document. It wasn’t written in an overly formal style, but did begin with an introduction that included my full name, birth date, nationality, and passport number. Once that was all out of the way, however, there was really only one section of the letter that stood out to me. Everything else faded into the background.
Five Years
FIVE YEARS! Up until that moment, I had not been told if I was being forced out of China for a year, ten years, or even FOREVER. I had no idea. I had been hoping for the best, but preparing my heart for the worst.
Time seemed to slow down as Richard handed me a copy of the letter and asked me to sign at the bottom, right beside the five Chinese characters that make up the one English word: offender.
I was given a copy to keep and then we all began exiting the “boardroom” for our old seats in the Departure Hall. Before leaving the room, however, I took another look at the letter and something jumped out at me:
With a grin on my face, I looked over at Richard and asked jokingly:
“How would I be able to appeal this decision within 60 days if I am being kicked out today?”
“Uh. Maybe your wife could do it for you?” he replied, unsure of himself.
He obviously wasn’t expecting the question. And it honestly wasn’t a very “serious” question on my part. Even if China’s appeals system wasn’t a total joke, I still wouldn’t want to take a chance on them investigating and finding out more about my former activities and giving me a harsher verdict!
Tears Shed
As I started walking back towards our old seats, my (unsearched!) bags in tow, I began to get teary eyed. Those closest to me know that I rarely cry, but I suddenly became overwhelmed with a sense of relief and thankfulness to God for my “punishment”.
I didn’t realize until that moment how much I had bottled up the emotions of possibly being banned forever. So my tears were tears of joy, not sadness.
“Wow, only five years,” I thought to myself. “Five years will fly by!”
Bullet Trains Fly Too
Finally the time came to board the train. Just a few years earlier the journey would have been entirely different. The old train used to take all day (or all night), but the new bullet train more than cuts the time in half (from 8 hours down to 3), mostly by knifing straight through the rugged mountains. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that most of this particular journey is spent inside of the mountains.
I don’t remember how our seats were chosen, but somehow I ended up next to Richard, the head of Foreign Affairs and our city’s Visa Office, and the guy who seemed to be in charge of my deportation.
I remembered seeing him off and on over the years whenever we would apply for our visa renewals (he had been on the job for 20 years).
He had also played a part in my arrest the month before, as well as my processing (fingerprinting, mug shot taking) a few weeks later.
Picking the Policeman’s Brain
As the train sped off, quickly passing within a stone's throw of my (former) home and then entering the first of hundreds of tunnels, Richard seemed a bit more relaxed than usual. He began to ask me questions about certain English words, and I did my best to help him out. Turns out he likes trying to read foreign news on his iPhone, although the news outlets he mentioned are supposed to be blocked by China’s firewall. Police privilege, I guess.
I’ve never really enjoyed teaching English, but I smiled to myself as I pondered the fact that the man next to me was in charge of giving (or revoking) all of the visas for all the foreigners in our region. In light of this, one of the first questions it dawned on me to ask him was:
“What should we foreigners do when Chinese people offer to pay us to teach English to their children, or to themselves?”
In China, someone on a student visa or a tourist visa is not permitted to work, and even someone with a work visa is technically only supposed to work for their employer, not anyone else. His response?
“It’s ok for foreigners to teach friends and neighbors unofficially, so long as it’s not their ‘main thing’ or ‘primary purpose’ for being there.”
Makes sense. Feel free to teach English on the side, for fun or for some extra cash, but don’t pretend to be a student or a tourist and then teach full-time.
He even joked (although I kinda hope he wasn’t joking!) that…
“If you visit again someday, come teach us English at the police station.”
That was actually a comforting thing (to me) for him to say. He wasn’t mocking me, but seemed to consider my return a real possibility. Now, I’ll take all the encouragement I can get, but when I do return, I highly doubt that I’ll be volunteering to hang out with the police!
As our train continued to speed through the mountains, I figured this was as good a time as any to try and get a bit of “inside info” into the foreign affairs of the strategic city that we had called home for so long, and where many of our friends and colleagues still remained.
Naming Names
I don’t remember who started it, but at one point we began exchanging names of people we both knew (or didn’t know). I was obviously glad that he didn’t seem to know about any of my connections with my closest friends, or the people on our team (that would have made me very nervous!), but we knew enough of the same friendly faces who had been around for years that it helped to keep the conversation going.
I must’ve dared to ask him something along the lines of:
“Has anyone else gotten in trouble for doing something like what I did?”
Richard remembered a young man and an older gentleman who were both arrested about eight years before, after having covered one of the small cities in his region with tracts. He seemed amused when recalling the incident, and I was too! But I couldn’t let on that I was long-time friends of that particular teenage boy and his older teammate, and had been the one behind the scenes making all of the plans for their trip!
“Oh, really?” was about all I could muster. “Interesting. What city was that?”
I knew full well what city it was, as I had been back myself many times.
More Than I Thought
As the journey continued, I changed the subject, asking him a question I myself have been asked numerous times over the years:
“How many foreigners live in the city?”
I had always answered that it must be in the “high” hundreds, so I was surprised when he said that there were about 2,000 registered foreigners in the region. I assume that these are mostly foreign exchange students from all over Asia, Africa, and even the Middle East, the majority of whom we only occasionally run into or pass by on the street. In contrast, the number of Christian missionaries is almost definitely in the low to mid hundreds.
I was also interested to find out that 40,000 tourists pass through the city in an average year. The true number is probably a bit higher, because the police only count those who are officially “registered” at local hotels, and some foreigners (cough, cough) avoid those kinds of hotels as much as possible by staying only in smaller hotels or looking for “other” options.
Finally, Some Useful Intel
Remember, I had four escorts for my deportation journey: two from Foreign Affairs and two from Religious Affairs (which had just been brought directly under Communist Party control). At some point in the evening, between napping, eating my cold Big Mac, and nabbing glimpses of the glorious green mountains streaming by my window, Richard explained to me why the “other guys” from Religious Affairs had insisted on coming along.
It turns out that they were the ones who had actually done the footwork (surveillance videos, actually) which enabled the police to track me down, and they considered themselves an integral part of the whole process. That sounded reasonable enough. Or, maybe they just wanted an excuse for a weekend getaway, paid for by headquarters.
But what made this seemingly innocuous info so helpful to me was that it let me know who we are really up against as we continue to send teams to spread the Gospel in this unreached corner of China. By knowing the jurisdiction limits of the bureau that caught me, I could make safer plans for future teams by purposefully avoiding places that fall inside their purview.
And this is exactly what we began doing. Having a pretty good idea who was persistent enough to track us down using the available technology, we could avoid their areas entirely and focus on even more remote towns. Or we could take extra precautions when we needed to be in those “risky” areas.
Although those strategies had been working in 2018-2019, the arrival of the Wuhan Flu (I’m sticking to the original name) and China’s multi-year lockdown has made surveillance (even in rural areas) tighter than ever, and more difficult to overcome. Pray for us, and for our teams, that God would close the eyes of the enemies of the cross, and open the eyes of blind sinners who desperately need Jesus to save them!
Where’s the Police Privilege?
As we approached our destination, I had to convince the police that it was best if we got off one station early, because it was quicker and cheaper to get to the international airport from that location. They took my word for it, and we exited the railway station into a mass of taxis.
I had assumed that finding an honest taxi driver would be easier for four policemen than for the average Joe Foreigner, but I was mistaken. They argued with drivers and debated the prices, all while I stood back thinking that I probably should’ve been in charge. Anyone who had been there before knew that the price was about 20 RMB per person to the airport. They finally figured out the price (well, sort of) but realized that one taxi was not going to be big enough for all six of us (four police, myself, plus the driver, not to mention my bags), so they picked out two different taxis and we loaded up.
However, as we made our way to the airport the Religious Affairs officer in my taxi was not happy when the driver informed him that they would have to pay 20 RMB for each seat (four), even though there were only three of us in the taxi (and two in the other taxi). The 20 RMB per person price was based on having four passengers in each car. I understood this perfectly, having done this exact same trip multiple times. It was kind of funny to see the police accuse the taxi driver of “taking him for a ride” and bicker with him all the way to the terminal. Eventually, they grudgingly paid each driver the full 80 RMB, and off they went. I was sort of impressed that they never pulled the “police card” and went ahead and paid the price they wanted.
Hurry Up and Wait
I led my escort squad to the correct check-in area at the far right end of the large departure hall, but it was still a little too early for check-in. So as they stood around chatting about where they would stay and what they would eat after my departure, I waited at the front of the line, ready to finally get through security and be free from my baby-sitters. It had been nearly seven hours since they picked me up at my house late in the afternoon!
Awkward Goodbye
When the counter opened, I was handed my passport once again. As soon as check-in was completed, I had to give the passport back once again for the short walk over to the security line, where I hoped to finally say goodbye.
It was a bit of an awkward moment, to be honest, saying farewell to the police who were deporting me. Usually, these moments are bittersweet as you say goodbye to close friends and family who you might not see for quite some time. With the police, it was almost the opposite feeling: goodbye and good riddance.
However, Richard and I had chatted enough to become at least superficially friendly, so I could genuinely shake his hand and say ‘adios, amigo’.
The last thing they did, before finally giving me back my passport for keeps, was to take turns snapping selfies with me. I’m assuming it was something they had to do as proof that they had gotten me “to the end of the line”, but they still grinned for the camera and gave the peace sign as if they were sending off an old pal.
Awkward, like I said.
Once I walked into the secure area, I never looked back. I felt a wave of relief come over me as I looked forward to an hour or two alone in the airport terminal, followed by an overnight flight to Kuala Lumpur.
But no sooner had I sat down in the terminal when my phone began to ring. It was my wife, telling me that the police were calling her asking for me, wondering if I had made it through security ok.
“Good grief,” I thought. “They still think I’m gonna try to make a run for it?”
I told my wife just to tell them I was fine and that I had left my phone and Chinese SIM card with her, since I didn’t have any use for it outside of China.
I did still have my personal iPhone with me, but it had been turned off and hidden away in my bags all day long, since it would have been weird (and risky) for the police to see me using it after all the effort they had made to extract my passcode from me during the interrogation.
So the police had no way to contact me directly after we’d said goodbye in the Departure Hall. Perfect. Fine by me. I had already gotten my passport stamped. I wasn’t going anywhere now except Malaysia.
By the way, the look on the face of the young lady officer at Passport Control when she saw the “Canceled” stamp on my Chinese visa was priceless.
She looked up at me as if to inquire:
“What in the world did you do?”
I just smiled and said “Mei shi”. (It’s not important)
My Indefinite Exile Begins
Over the years, Malaysia has become somewhat of a second home in Asia. We are blessed to have many friends and co-laborers in the Gospel there. But this was different. Instead of a short trip, and a prompt return to China, Malaysia would be my primary hub for the next five months as I traveled around Asia as an exile, sharing the Gospel, telling my story, and praying about what the Lord would have our family do next.
After settling into my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur early the next morning (red-eye flight), I remember organizing almost everything I had (including lots of books and maps) into neat little stacks and piles all over the room. It had all made it safely out of China, but most of these things would not be necessary for me to lug around during my upcoming Asia travels.
I was of course sad, but also relieved to be free from the communist regime. I would soon visit Myanmar (following Adoniram Judson’s footsteps), Macau (secret team meeting above a casino), Thailand (reunite with my family!), not to mention ministry trips to India, Nepal, Australia, and even England.
So it was time to figure out what things to leave behind with friends in Kuala Lumpur. Three days later I would begin my next adventure in Myanmar, with a lot less baggage...and a lot more freedom.