he reported directly to the head of the prison's political department.
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My cell was on the upper floor. I was allowed neither to go downstairs nor to work. This kind of treatment came as a shock to the other prisoners and was previously unheard of My cadres were very angry about the treatment too because it cost them the labour of a whole cell and the productivity of two people. To them, we two were a burden.
My guardian was also a communist. He was originally a fireman and had raped a seven year old girl (for which he was sentenced to four years imprisonment). When he became my reform labour leader his sentence was reduced to three years. I felt very insecure having to share my cell with a mentally unstable person. I looked down on him and refused to talk to him. Sometimes he would cry out suddenly, frightening me. Despite all this I continued with my self-education.
Mid 1988
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December 1991: Huaiji Prison
Early one morning I was told by the ke zhang to pack my belong- ings up and go with them. I had no idea where we were going. We traveled to Guangzhou Prison where I was kept overnight in the dark-room. The following morning we set out for Huaiji.
When we got there I was put in a 'special middle team for coun- ter-ideological management. This was a prison within a prison which was totally isolated from other buildings and was specially designed to hold political criminals of pro-democracy movement in Guangdong Province. The prisoners I met there included Wang Xi- zhe, He Qui, Lo Hai-xing, Li Pei-cheng, Li Long-qing and Zheng Yin-wu.
Wang Xi-zhe, who had arrived earlier, witnessed the construction process of this special building which was under direct control of the Labour Reform Office (Ju). Its ordinary cells were even smaller than the dark-room in Meizhou. When the construction work was about to finish it was demolished and rebuilt. It is believed that the authority afraid of being challenged by prisoners once they were released.
As a prisoner directly managed by the Labour Reform Office, my stay in Meizhou Prison was only transitional. We were supposed to have been sent to this prison which was not ready until 1988.
There were ten cells for solitary confinement in that one storey prison, two rows of five cells facing each other. The prison was surrounded by a wall about the height of two men. The only exit
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