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Liu San Ching - a decade in the prison
December 1981 Mid 1982: Guangzhou Hwang Hua Detention Centre
In December 1981 I went to Guangzhou, alone, to visit the wives of Wang Xi-zhe and He Qui (both of whom had been arrested). I mainly wanted to see how they were getting on and discussed the future of the democracy movement and gave them some clothes. At midnight that night I was arrested, by the Public Security peo- ple, at Liu Hua Guest House and was sent to detention centre. I noticed that the guards of the detention centre had been removed in order to keep my arrest in secret. They said I committed "counter-revolutionary propaganda crime" which included sending money and books to the relatives of pro-democracy elements. However, the books they mentioned were only some titles on political economic and The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, its author had been introduced by a local newspaper before. I thought I had been arrested simply because the authorities wanted to suppress the pro-democracy movement. In fact the suppression had begun nine months before my return, and I assumed it would be save enough for me to visit but it was not.
From the day of my arrest on December 27th 1981 to the day I was sentenced, I spent almost 18 months under solitary confinement in the Guangzhou Hwang Hua Detention Centre.
I was detained in a cell (on the second floor of the centre) which was slightly wider than a bed and less than three metres long. The only furniture was a piece of wooden board laid at one end of the room which was my bed. At the other end, to the right and behind the cell door, was a water-flushed toilet bowl next to which was a water basin where I could wash. The ceiling was about five metres high. I had to put the board against the wall so that I could climb up to reach the window. Outside I could see only a corridor, and I think the room across the way was where interro- gations and trials were held. Anyway, I was told that the centre had been rebuilt, the environment ten years ago could have total- ly changed.
Days in the detention centre were quite difficult. There were mosquitoes around during the summer and in the winter it was as cold as a freezer. The only bedding I had was a piece of cotton cloth. I was given three meals a day which consisted of nothing more than rice porridge and pickled vegetables. I was given one or two pieces of meat in a week. Though I did not suffer from physical torture or ill treatment, the guards there were horri- ble.
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