2023-06-22 13:09:00
The picture shows the protest once morest the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles in commemoration of the 34th anniversary of June 4th in 2023. The one holding the sign is Yu Yang. (provided by respondents)
[The Epoch Times, June 22, 2023](Interview and report by Epoch Times reporter Li Yuanming) Three years following the epidemic, China’s politics and economy have deteriorated. The police were shocked, they wondered what happened in China?
Dissident Yu Yang was one of those who entered the United States by cable in April this year. Yu Yang is from Huanggang City, Hubei Province. He set off on February 19. He and his wife took their 70-year-old father and 7-year-old daughter along for the first time in their lives. They passed through 8 countries and arrived in the United States in nearly 40 days.
Yu Yang introduced that following the outbreak of the epidemic in China in December 2019, Wuhan was the first city in the country to be closed. Huanggang City, next to Wuhan City, is the second city in the country to be closed. The city has been closed for two months. People are panicked and supplies are also very tight. Many people died in Wuhan and Huanggang, and ambulances ran around to carry the dead away. Yu Yang’s grandparents also passed away during the epidemic.
“They don’t care for the elderly at all. The medical system collapsed, and the crematoriums are queuing up and cremating overnight.” Yu Yang said that many communities were blocked and might not go downstairs. The city was closed off and on for three years.
Due to his dissatisfaction with the CCP’s epidemic containment policy, Yu Yang often sent the information he saw over the firewall to the country. Soon, the community police warned him, but he didn’t pay much attention. Yu Yang originally ran a flagship store of Huawei, but at the same time that Huawei was sanctioned by the United States, there were no chips, the production capacity of mobile phones might not keep up, and the flagship store had no goods to sell. Coupled with the closure of the city due to the epidemic, business is very poor.
During the lockdown period, it was difficult to buy any food and supplies, so Yu Yang purchased some cigarettes and supplies online. On occasional open days, he drives to buy food, and at the same time helps relatives and friends refuel and shop.
In June 2021, he was arrested in the name of illegal business, sentenced to half a year in prison and fined 20,000 yuan. At the same time, the authorities warned him not to post information regarding the epidemic and foreign countries.
After he was released from prison, the accounts he posted on were often canceled. On August 31, 2022, while having dinner with friends at night, Yu Yang was inexplicably arrested once more. The police station said that he was reported by the theft gang and asked him to cooperate with the investigation. The next day, they said that the evidence was insufficient, and they detained him for 26 hours and released him. The mother mightn’t find him for a day, and she was so anxious that she had a high blood pressure attack.
Yu Yang told his father that he would not be able to live in China like this. For his safety, his father agreed to follow him. But his mother has been in poor health, so Yu Yang entrusted her to his elder sister to take care of her.
At the beginning of 2023, the white paper movement broke out in China, and the epidemic situation was lifted. After the new year, the whole family set off. Depart from Hong Kong, buy a ticket to Ecuador, and transit in Türkiye. Passed through 8 countries including Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Vega, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.
“It’s just like this. I also encountered danger in the rainforest, and I also encountered danger on the boat. I was separated from my dad twice. He also made a plan not to go to the United States.” Yu Yang recalled. Recalling the situation at the time, it is still difficult to hide anxiety.
From Colombia to Panama, we need to take a boat across the Caribbean Sea. There are more than 20 people on a fast boat like a canoe. “It was very dark, and I mightn’t see it. The sea water kept hitting my face, and I felt it was difficult to breathe. Because it was facing the waves, the waves kept hitting my face, my mouth, and my eyes. I can’t even open it.” Yu Yang held her daughter tightly in his arms, fearing that the sea water would choke her.
The daughter kept crying, and then she might have no strength and was tired from crying, so there was no movement. Every once in a while, Yu Yang would shake his daughter, touch her face, touch the back of her neck, to see if there was any temperature, for fear that he would smother the child to death.
My daughter celebrated her 7th birthday on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. (provided by respondents)
“At that time, there was no concept of time at sea. I didn’t know when I would arrive or where I was. I just kept drifting on the sea. When I arrived at the destination, I checked the time and found that it was a three-hour boat.” Yu Yang Introduction, some time ago, two ships collided when they landed, and a woman from Hubei died, she was from their place. There was also an accident on a boat before, and a Chinese and a black person died.
When we arrived in Panama, we started to walk through the rainforest. “Walking in the rainforest does not have a great sense of fear for children. She thinks it is like an adventure. She has no burden. But we feel a lot of pressure, afraid of falling behind, and unable to keep up with our physical fitness.” Because we have to keep going. Taking care of the elderly and children, Yu Yang and the others have been falling behind.
Walk in the Panama rainforest. (provided by respondents)
“If you fall behind in that kind of primitive rainforest, you will get lost. There are poisonous snakes and insects in it. You have nothing to eat or drink, and the temperature difference is also large. Where can you find such a large primitive rainforest? ?So we had no choice but to bite the bullet, gritted our teeth and followed, and dragged it out like this.”
According to reports, there are several routes to walk in the rainforest according to different prices. “Equivalent to these routes, the local gangsters and snakeheads have monopolized.” Yu Yang took the elderly and children, chose a relatively expensive luxury package, and followed the guide out of the rainforest in one day. And skipped the first refugee, was sent directly to the second refugee camp.
Inside a UNICEF tent in a refugee camp in Panama. (provided by respondents)
In the second refugee camp in Panama, they saw the tents set up by the United States and the United Nations for the refugees, and then they knew that the United States had been caring for and helping the refugees out of humanitarianism. There are also many refugee camps along the road, providing food, drinking water, accommodation and medical care. From the refugee camp, they were escorted to David by the Panamanian military.
Yu Yang believes that the last hurdle, Mexico, is the most difficult. “We walked for more than 30 days on the road, half of which was in Mexico. The countries in front of us were all very fast, almost one country in a day or two, and we traveled in Mexico for more than half a month.”
“Because there are too many black policemen in Mexico and the Immigration Bureau, a card is set up for each section.” On the bus from Tapa, Mexico, following sitting for less than an hour, Yu Yang and the others met the Immigration Bureau joint inspection. Because there was no entry record, he was driven out of the car and brought to the immigration office to register his passport information.
Yu Yang’s father was detained separately because the family is usually detained as a unit. “My dad is 70 years old. He doesn’t know how to use a smartphone or a translator, and he doesn’t have any money. At that time, the money was on me, so I was very anxious.”
Yu Yang was particularly worried that his father would be released before him, and wondered where he was going? There is also food and accommodation in it. Fortunately, Yu Yang was released first. He used a mobile phone translator to communicate with the Mexican immigration bureau, and found out that his father was detained in a place regarding 100 kilometers away.
He took an Uber overnight and went to the immigration office to wait for his father outside the door. After waiting for two days, Dad was released and they reunited once more.
Later, Yu Yang’s family stayed out at night, found a hotel to rest during the day, and took the bus at two or three o’clock in the morning at night, and walked slowly to Mexico City. “If you leave during the day, it is impossible for you to bribe them (the police) in private, and you will be sent back directly; if it is night, he may see that we are Chinese, and he will take the initiative to ask you for money.” They said Nearly 30,000 pesos (regarding 540 U.S. dollars) were blackmailed by black police in Mexico.
In Mexico City, local smugglers sent them to Monterrey, almost at the border. The Mexican gangs took them under control once more and took away their mobile phones. The family only left them a mobile phone and only let them go following paying money. This blackmailed them another $2,000.
On April 1, they entered the United States from Texas and crossed the river in a canoe. The U.S. border police sent them to the immigration office in Texas. Because they had children with them, out of humanitarian considerations, they were locked up for three or four hours before they were released. Yu Yang’s father was imprisoned for three days, and this was the second time he was separated from him.
After Yu Yang was released, he was sent to a Catholic charity organization, where they adjusted for two days, and following their father passed away, they flew from Texas to Los Angeles together.
US Border Immigration: What’s Happening in China?
Since the beginning of 2023, more and more news regarding the Chinese “walking the line” has come to light. Some of them are looking for economic opportunity, some are looking for political freedom.
Along the way, Yu Yang met many Chinese people who walked the line. “On the Ecuador-Colombia cross-border bus, 70% of the people on the bus were Chinese, and the rest were black.” He said, “We entered the country from Texas, and we arrested more than 70 people, including more than 60 people. It’s the Chinese, they counted.”
Yu Yang said, “At that time, the US border immigration police were all in a daze. They didn’t know what happened in China? Because the situation in China was good from an international point of view, did they say that there was a civil war in China? Why are there so many Chinese people? Come here? China’s image in the world was very good in the past. It didn’t just donate money to this country, it donated money to that country. How much is the GDP? Why are there so many Chinese refugees now? They are so beautiful that they don’t respond. When I came here, I felt that it was different from the China they had in mind.
“They were very curious and asked us regarding it. We said that we did not leave China because of the bad situation in China. It was indeed very bad, but we Chinese are good at enduring hardships. We would not say that we left China because of the poor domestic economy. There are so many people, it is true that the domestic political environment is too bad now, so we can’t see any hope. I saw Xi Jinping was re-elected at the 20th National Congress, so following the domestic epidemic was lifted, I came out immediately.”
According to the “Wall Street Journal” report, a total of 3,855 Chinese people crossed the pass connecting South America and Central America between January and March 2023, which means that the Chinese have become the fourth largest group of people crossing the pass from Colombia.
A friend who was walking the line told The Epoch Times reporter that he visually estimated that there are twenty or thirty Chinese people walking the line every day on average. There were more than ten people on the same flight as him, all of them were on the line, and most of them were from Fujian.
Between 2010 and 2021, the number of such Chinese immigrants was only 376, ballooning to 2,005 in 2022, according to Panama’s immigration data.
Yu Yang said that if compared with all the teams that walk the line, the Chinese are actually a drop in the bucket on the road, but if compared with the Chinese themselves, then there must be a lot of people walking the line. “Before the epidemic, you had never heard of Chinese people going offline. They usually come in with tourist visas, but now that Xi Jinping has implemented a three-year epidemic lockdown, the domestic feeling has collapsed. Many people know (walking the line) After this path, they all joined this team.”
Yu Yang learned on the road that many people who travel online, especially singles, come to the United States mainly because China’s current economic situation is not good, and they want to come to the United States to make money at the exchange rate.
After Yu Yang arrived in the United States, he participated in a demonstration in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to commemorate the 34th anniversary of June 4th. He also participated in activities organized by Hong Kong people and helped them raise the flag. The demonstrations started at noon that day and did not end until 10 pm.
Yu Yang participated in the protest once morest the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles commemorating the 34th anniversary of June 4th. (provided by respondents)
He said, “I was very excited at the time, shouting ‘Communist Party step down, Xi Jinping step down’… my voice was hoarse. I told Hong Kong people that I have been mute in China for 34 years, and today I finally shouted out, I feel very special It was so comfortable, the Hong Kong people just laughed there. I think only at that time the Hong Kong people agreed with me.
Yu Yang participated in the protest of Hong Kong people in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to commemorate the 34th anniversary of June 4th. (provided by respondents)
“Because we left Hong Kong and stayed in Hong Kong for three days. My dad came out for the first time and took him around. At that time, Hong Kong gave me the impression that he was very unfriendly to us mainlanders. I only need to use Mandarin. When they asked for directions, they looked bored, which made me feel baffled.
“On June 4th, I felt that Hong Kong people and we were like-minded people. Hong Kong people were also more depressed and pessimistic. They felt that Hong Kong was slowly losing democracy and freedom. In fact, many Hong Kong people left Hong Kong, and they mightn’t see it. Hope, like us.”
Yu Yang said that the CCP is a very evil political party, and it feels no different from the underworld.
Now Yu Yang works in a warehouse, plus the monthly income of part-time jobs is 4,000 US dollars, and the monthly rent is 1,400 US dollars. “Although I can’t save money, I think people are free and their thoughts are free. At least there is hope here,” he said.
Responsible editor: Li Muen#
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