Like many petitioners who dare to journey to Beijing to seek redress for injustices, Chen Qingxia soon found herself sent to toil in a dingy labour camp.
Chen's case took a turn for the unusual when she was released 18 months later. Rather than be allowed to return to her home in Heilongjiang province, Chen was immediately locked up again. This time they sent her to an abandoned morgue.
Read the lot. Aside from being a horrific story, it's a sort of picaresque tour around almost everything wrong with contemporary China. If the poor woman ends up with some pollution related disease then it'll have the lot.
Global Times has more: all of it bad.
The woman is now confined to a wheelchair and her health has severely deteriorated. Her husband is now at a local mental hospital and the whereabouts of their son, Song Jide, is unknown. The then 12-year-old son was lost in Beijing in 2007 when his mother was brought back by local police.
O/T
Jamie, I'm sorry, I don't have your email so I've got to ask this question here.
About four or five years ago you reviewed a book about how the CCP keeps its tabs on all large businesses, even foreign-owned ones, by always having at least one CCP member on the board. They usually kept a low profile, but essentially no major decisions were reached without their OKs. I read it but I've now lost my notes on it. Do you remember its title.
I don't think it was the "Rupert's Advnetures in China" book.
Posted by: johnf | January 25, 2013 at 10:23 PM
I think it might have been Richard McGregor's the Party:
http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2010/06/its-here-its-queer.html
Posted by: jamie | January 26, 2013 at 12:20 AM
Morgues were frequent "cowsheds" during the Cultural Revolution for improvised long-term imprisonment, too.
Posted by: JamesP | January 26, 2013 at 03:36 AM
That's sounds like it, Jamie. It was a chapter on a Chinese Aluminium Company that I was after. I'll look it up. Thank you.
Posted by: johnf | January 26, 2013 at 07:53 AM