Sky News presenter Cheng Lei looks back on the ‘shock, disbelief and absolute isolation’ of being detained in China
Detained in China in 2020 before her arrest in February 2021, this Australian reporter’s life was forever altered.
Now back in the arms of her family in Melbourne since her release 15 months ago, her story is one of mental and physical resilience and, as she writes, the human connections that allowed her to find glimpses of colour in the darkness.
Prior to August 2020, Cheng Lei’s world was vibrant. The then 45-year-old was living out her dream career as a business presenter for a Chinese television station. She had two beautiful children, aged 8 and 10, who were residing in Australia at the time due to covid border restrictions. Her last social media post before her incarceration showed her at an event in a lime green dress, smiling alongside her colleagues.
Born in central southern China, Cheng moved to Melbourne at just 10 years old, but still had a strong affection for her birthplace and its culture. After working as an accountant for five years, she accepted a job offer in the eastern coastal Chinese province of Shandong, and just two years later, pursued a career as a television journalist for the English-speaking channel of a state broadcaster. The new career path aligned with her deep love of storytelling, and drew on her bilingual skills and bi-cultural experience. Then came a role at US network CNBC, where Cheng worked as China correspondent covering the country’s red-hot economic growth. When that role ended after nine years, she returned to the previous network.
In August 2020, as the pandemic was sweeping the globe and millions were thrust into lockdowns, Cheng was detained in China on suspicions of supplying state secret information to foreign organisations. Suddenly, her world shrunk to one tiny three-by-seven-metre cell.
“Those six months were hellish times of shock, disbelief, anguish, extreme boredom, utter loneliness and absolute isolation,” explains Cheng of the period before she was formally arrested. At a closed trial, she was found guilty of breaking the embargo of a government report by seven minutes. She would remain in prison for the next two years and eight months.
While incarcerated, she sought increasingly resourceful ways to bring light and hope back into her one-dimensional space. As Cheng writes here, it was through three female cellmates that she found not only connection, but also a portal to her former life.
“Embroidery,” I enunciated carefully, looking at my ‘pupils’, three women aged 42, 50 and 60. “Em…broiii…de…ryy,” they repeated. “Four syllables! You’re doing so well!” I was pleased.
“In English, name five fabrics used in eveningwear,” I asked in Chinese, as I breathed deeply through the eagle yoga pose. “Uh … what’s that shiny material in bright colours?” ‘C’, the name I will use for one of my cellmates, asked, swinging her arms in her corner of the room.
“Satin,” answered ‘A’, another inmate.
It was afternoon exercise time in detention and I was teaching my cellmates English. Lessons were based on what we missed most about the outside world, like food, family and fashion.
In the oppressive light of the small concrete enclosure, we were as far from fashion as you could get. The last pair of shoes I wore before being incarcerated were nude Ferragamo pumps. For three years and two months, I wore men’s slippers.
In my pre-detention life as a business presenter for the China Global Television Network in Beijing, I sat in front of light bulb-ringed mirrors while the make-up artist made me feel glamorous. There were promo shoots and photoshopped results. My favourite cameramen knew how to light and get the right angles to make me look better than I felt.
For three years and two months, there were no combs or mirrors. A haircut involved sticking my head out (literally) of the hatch – a 40-centimetre-wide hole in the thick steel door through which we received food, water and documents. I would half squat with my back to the door and lean back so my hair fell outside the hatch. An officer would chop my hair with scissors onto the floor.
My life prior to prison had been spent in front of a camera.
A week before my arrest, for my show BizTalk, I had interviewed François-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kering, about the outlook for its luxury brands like Gucci and Balenciaga. There were no photos in prison, but there were plenty of surveillance cameras, even in the toilet and shower. Toiletries, when we could buy them, consisted of 10-cent sachets of shampoo and 40-cent sachets of moisturiser.
The luxuries in my life for the following years changed, from handbags to books, from silk suits to sunlight. As my life darkened, shrank and shattered, my hair fell out and my skin became dull.
I hit rock bottom in more ways than one. My buttocks became calloused from constantly sitting on hard surfaces. My hands coarsened from washing everything – clothes, the toilet, the plastic food bowl.
The scarcity of beauty starved our spirit and we had to hunt for it. Wherever, however. Like using English lessons to be verbally closer to the clothing we longed for and the free life it symbolised. At one interrogation, I was a bawling mess and, while blowing my nose, saw a statuesque officer come into the room. She wore taupe ballet flats with polka dots and a khaki maxi shirtdress. A choppy pixie cut set off her cheekbones.
“Your shoes are so pretty.” I couldn’t help it.
“Oh, thanks.” She couldn’t help it.
For a moment we were two cavewomen checking out each other’s loincloths. Not cop and crim. Then it was back to the questioning.
In that ugly existence, our measure of beauty was recalibrated to register tsunamis at the slightest tremor. One officer had red-rimmed glasses and wore earrings. We made up reasons to speak to her.
Monthly visits by Australian embassy officials, which were only 30 minutes and mostly via video link, were my only opportunity to see people who were not dressed in uniform.
I’d hungrily take in how they looked: a new haircut, a quirky patterned dress, a pair of colourful socks.
With nobody to make us feel beautiful, we did it for each other. If ‘C’ looked flushed and glowing after a shower, I’d tell her. ‘OG’, who was also imprisoned with us, had hair vanity, deservedly so. The only time her face softened into a smile was when we complimented her on her lustrous dark locks.
We tried to ‘de-ugly’ the uniform. Designed for men in an indestructible material made to withstand self-harm and prison breakouts, they were shapeless shirts and shorts in swamp green with fluorescent stripes, fastened with Velcro instead of strings or zippers or buttons. It was utilitarianism at its worst. On top went the dreaded day-glo orange vest.
To make our legs look longer, we rolled up the cuffs of the shorts. Ditto the shirt sleeves. We tied the vest under our bust because bras were not allowed. We could, however, buy underwear – a surprisingly feminine range, thanks to a nice purchasing officer.
At the weekly shower, where only female officers were monitoring us on the shower-cam, we walked around in our undies for a slightly longer time than necessary, before having to put on the awful shorts. To erase the ugliness of what we had to wear, we also shared memories of what we loved to wear.
‘OG’ said her favourite ensemble was a grey cashmere suit with a pink turtleneck – we agreed it would suit her ultra-fair colouring. She was also a knitter and would describe to me her creations: cream cable-knit sweaters, endless scarves, colourful cardigan coats.
‘C’ missed her orange Onitsuka Tiger sneakers.
I reminisced how, for a shoot at China’s import expo, Jimmy Choo fitted me with a pair of red satin stilettos decorated with pearls. The TV was played for two and a half hours at night in our cells; only ever one channel and much of it propaganda. When I saw my former colleagues emceeing gala events in elegant gowns, I would try to console myself: been there, worn that.
The uniform material chafed constantly at our nakedness, so in our minds we escaped to a world of softness, smoothness and sensuality. We assured ourselves repeatedly: we will not wear this forever.
All my adult life I tried to eat less nice things because I wanted to wear more nice things. In detention I didn’t have to worry about eating nice things – and there were no nice things to wear either. Thanks to the wonder diet that is detention, I became leaner. Nothing oozed when I sat. In the shower I felt my ribs and hip bones. But this loss, like that of everything else, was not intended. I joked that the only time in my life I had visible abs, there was no mirror. Given the choice between enforced kilo-shedding in a place of pain and punishment, and voluntary weight gain from a full and happy life, what would you choose?
My parents brought me to Australia when I was 10 so we could live freely and be surrounded by beauty. Beauty had been outlawed when I was born in the 1970s in communist China under Mao. The Cultural Revolution was a decade of carnage on beauty – adornment, art, literature and music, traditional customs and individuality.
Everything beautiful was trashed, burned, attacked, or if lucky, well hidden, smuggled out. China became a nation of blue Mao suits, green Army uniforms, and red books of Mao’s sayings. The silver lining was equality. Because everything was state-owned and utilitarian and uniform, dads and mums both worked, cooked and washed. Very little separated the genders.
It was also a time of spartan living. Ration coupons were needed to buy everything from fabric to eggs. There were only state-run stores that sold a limited amount of goods and it was necessary to queue for even basic items.
From the late 70s, after China started reforms and began slowly opening up, formerly illegal ideas like beauty and gender difference could be celebrated again. To make up for the decades of repression, consumerism and brand obsession took off and, some might say, went to the other extreme.
In detention, we had ridden the time machine back 50 years.
It was frightening, to be so stripped, sometimes literally. No armour of suits and heels, cosmetics and hairdos. No occupation or connections to define you. How do you remain yourself when everything that spells your identity is gone? You learn to draw everything from within.
Books empowered and informed me. Yoga tamed my breathing and taught me to embrace pain. Creating fun, sharing laughs and lifting up others kept me from sinking. The deprivation clarified who I am and what I stand for. I became secure at the core. I learned the flotsam of a full busy life can cloud our self-knowledge. Too many roles, goals and too much noise, we can become lost and weighed down. At times we all need pruning to be true and strong.
After I was released and returned to Melbourne in October 2023, thanks to the Australian government’s diplomatic efforts, it was like I was reborn and fell in love with life all over again.
When you first come out of starvation, the worst thing you can do is pig out. You will explode. I had to ease back into our beauty-saturated world.
Styles had changed. People looked like walking tiramisu: mocha tones were in. Gym wear was now outerwear.
My 14-year-old daughter loved her huge clunking Crocs. (“They’re trendy, Mum!”) Oversized silhouettes were everywhere. Goodbye, bodycon.
Freedom has returned me to a life of unimagined luxury. The beauty of nature enthrals me, the choice and variety in what I do, see, eat, hear and wear are almost beyond comprehension. The transition back into life and the world is almost as bewildering as the one out of it three years ago.
For the first few months I wore one bright colour a day. Mellow yellow, hazard orange, cobalt blue, hot pink. As time went on and I adjusted to a life on the outside, I slowly became desensitised. Colourblind. In a kaleidoscopic world, we don’t see colour anymore.
To reawaken our beauty senses from their numbness, we need space. Darkness to set off the light. When I had my nails done post-release, I remembered how it felt the first month in detention when the polish grew out and was cut off, like lights dimming.
I remembered how I used toilet paper to curl my hair. We have so much at our fingertips that we sometimes lose the ability to invent.
Each day I think of my cellmates, who I didn’t get to farewell because that’s the way things are done in that system. How I wish I was able to leave them my prized support tops, T-shirts, and ‘good’ pants – rubbish on the outside, but in there, privileged possessions. The only comfort is knowing they’ll have the imagined evening dresses, the poetry of fabrics and, forever,
the glorious language of beauty.
Cheng Lei is a presenter and columnist for Sky News. Her first book will be released in May this year by HarperCollins.
This story is from the January issue of Vogue Australia, featuring cover star Margaret Qualley.
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