Happiest anniversary: Aussie journalist Cheng Lei reflects on a year free of the horror of a Chinese jail
On October 11, 2023 I was reborn; I even changed my birthdate on social media to October 11, 2023 – then was locked out for being an infant.
Time is a magician, the mirage of constancy, then a vanishing act.
This day last year felt like eternity, this one whole year feels like an instant. A very fabulous instant. Of sunshine and the sky. Of smiles and hugs.
On October 11, 2023 I was reborn and since then I have been flat-out running at triple speed, trying to go three times as far.
Sometimes eating three people’s fill.
A highlights reel of the past 12 months would feature ticking off the freedom list – stand-up, skydive, soccer, Latin dance, boxing.
I tried to fill up the crater of loss with my loved ones, school runs and doctors’ appointments and parent-teacher interviews, sipping tea from flasks on frosty mornings, cheering with the other soccer mums and dads.
Amazingly, I got back into news – a world I had loved and felt confident in for many years but then hated because it led to punishment. Sky had faith in me even in the early wobbly days, giving me back my mojo, show by show.
For all that I’ve lost, what I’ve gained is far more: the kindness of strangers, the clarity of suffering, the profound appreciation of life. Hanging out the washing on a spring day amid rose bushes and buzzing bees. Beating and kneading and flipping and sizzling – a meal with family and friends. Donning colourful outfits.
It’s difficult to imagine I’d ever be really upset again, given the frame of reference I now have.
After such deprivation, the abundance in ordinary living seems almost obscene.
After toughing it out for so long, I fear “going soft”, as if it were a crime to get too used to comfort and pleasure.
Life after trauma
People ask me how I am and how the family is doing. I can’t describe it in the space of polite conversation. It’s like using a crayon to replicate the Sistine Chapel. Writing this to word limit took much restraint.
The answer to all questions is: Yes and no, good and bad.
On a good day I am Tom Cruise in Cocktail flipping bottles.
On other days I am Mr Bean cooking the Christmas turkey or Basil Fawlty trying to hide the rat from the inspector.
After the freedom upper, crashing into reality can be an overwhelming downer.
After the first months of marvelling at the miracle of living, my lens can now be blurred by First World problems: sneeze-a-thons from allergy. Kids on devices. Endless driving. Possum poo on the deck.
Can I really be wishing the kids would be back in school sooner, I realised with comic horror during the holidays.
The life administration of running a household for four as the only functioning adult just about crushes me. Detention or taxes, it’s a tough call, I joke.
How I wish I could pause the world while I recover, rebuild, rewire!
Sometimes I go to sleep aghast that I am barely holding on in the quicksand.
There is always push and pull – I deserve to relax versus not a moment to lose. I need to make it up to my family versus what about me?
How can I say no to my family when so much of our time together had been robbed already?
Meanwhile, the inbox explodes, the to-do list grows. I nod furiously at the parenting joke: “I have a full-time job just reading emails from my kids’ schools”.
Then I’ll laugh at myself: “I’m stressing over paperwork? What I wouldn’t have given for a bit of paper!”
Finally I have problems everyone can relate to, normal problems that come with the territory of freedom and agency.
Things have changed
The world is a tenser place. Everyone has some pandemic PTSD. Political weariness and wariness. Warfare fear.
Conflict in the Middle East has translated into violent protests in our cities, with open support of terrorist organisations, targeted vandalism and misplaced hate. I shake my head at freedom abused. Freedom distorted. Don’t they see how this becomes fodder for authoritarian regimes’ propaganda? Where would they rather be? What government would they rather have? If only they could see what I saw, feel what I felt, when I came face to face with the cruelties of my birth country versus the goodness of my adopted country.
I hadn’t known the left-right split was so obvious – people make faces when they find out where I work, even without having watched Sky News. Politicians seem to have to spend more time performing than policymaking. Do people still report what they know, or just what they think?
Since when did tomatoes become a rich person’s food? Or a tenner not enough for Macca’s? That there are more pronouns than ice cream flavours?
Australia is much more multicultural than when I last lived here full-time 20 years ago. Racial stereotypes are passe and there is wonderful diversity wherever I go.
In politics and economics, China is the dragon-panda in any room.
Some want “a tough stance” in rhetoric and behaviour towards China – when we need agility to navigate fast-changing circumstances, to balance our interests with our values.
Others are blinded by the opportunities for good, for progress – when the threats of infiltration and influence are too real, too close. When I did stand-up with activist Vicky Xu, there were people in the audience obviously not there for laughs. I have friends who have encountered violence for speaking out. Worse still, a pall of fear hangs over many where criticism of China is concerned.
My experience makes me a strange figure. China-born and Australia-raised, I benefited and suffered from my niche in being bicultural and bilingual, until China cast me out and Australia welcomed me back.
To stay sane, I compartmentalise. Separating the country from the regime, the people from the politicians, scenery from the ideology.
How I treasure being able to express all of this without fear of persecution.
Some countries rule by fear; in the main, we rule by respect. For each other. For life and liberty.
Locked up
I tried to piece together what happened while I was away. I learned how my mum banged pots and dishes in frustration when she couldn’t bring two unruly kids into line, how Alex burrowed into games and Ava into social media, and both took refuge in satire.
You can’t have survived all this without some skewed takes on the world.
“Mum, if a kid goes to the same school, from prep to primary to high school, that’s a 13-year sentence!” I howled with laughter – it’s kind of true, the uniforms, the rules, the “warders”, the routine, the detentions.
Mum – who I thought was entering dementia, has been diagnosed with depression. That’s why the memory went, the blank looks and lack of wherewithal.
Why wouldn’t she, when she had internalised the blow and carried on holding everything up. Now she could let go.
Ava is still embarrassed that her mum is infamous, but she has gradually permitted some things, like being seen with me at parent-teacher interviews, allowing me to come to watch her play soccer.
The kids bicker constantly, but on teasing me about my dubious Instagram feed (folding hacks and parenting reels) and my cringe-worthy attempts to dance, they share a united front.
In other words, they are relatively normal teenagers despite a very abnormal few years.
Prisoner’s past
When I did a live cross with our political reporter, who said “we got a sneak peek at Dutton’s speech”, I winced. That could be grounds for imprisonment in China.
When a local radio show featured a call-in segment from prisoners, I couldn’t get over the fact that they got to make almost unlimited phone calls. I had one call in three years and two months.
Alex and I make Lego scenes to replicate my incarceration – it is our way to deal with ugly pain.
Each day I carry the grief of other detainees with me. Dr Yang Hengjun has suffered another 365 days while I’ve been free.
I imagine sharing the freedom thrills with my cellmates, just like we had borne the detention blues together.
What would C do looking at the Aussie Firefighters’ Calendar?
How happy A would be with this sushi joint! She is such a Japan-phile.
Imagine S’s face in Woolies’ biscuit aisle! It’d be her Cookie Monster dream come true!
The ordeal has given me a cringing self-awareness.
Given that I still have many friends and family living in China or working in the China space, I am concerned that my contact with them puts them on the surveillance radar, angry that my innocence will always have a question mark on it, frustrated that it’s so hard now to use my career forte – China skills.
If an old friend doesn’t respond to texts, I imagine their family saying to them “stay away from her, you never know if she really is dodgy, China may be keeping tabs on her and it’ll drag you into it”.
When I ask people about China, I’m worried they think I’m “pumping them for intel”. When a Chinese person looks at me funny or a second too long, in the shops or on the street, I think: “Have they recognised me? Do they believe the stupid slander about me in the Chinese internet?”
Regroup, repair
While old friends have dropped me, new friends have come into my life.
I’ve swapped war stories with other Australian ex-detainees such as Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Sean Turnell and Peter Greste; met other prisoners of China such as Michael Kovrig and Peter Humphrey. We share news about those still incarcerated and feel especially delighted to hear of releases. What a privilege it is to be among survivors who ended up with extra pieces after putting themselves back together – extra courage, extra pathos, extra incisiveness.
There are parental figures I’ve cheekily adopted as my own. I tell Jane what I can’t tell Mum because Mum’s already been through so much without more worrying, I get hugs and mugs of tea from Jane because my mum doesn’t do them.
Some of the most magical moments have been birthdays. Dad flew to Melbourne for his 80th. Instead of crying over another special day missed in detention, I was able to put up banners at the restaurant, to invite his old Monash mates, as well as his relatives.
For Ava’s birthday, I was able to take her on a holiday, to hear her rave about it afterwards. Alex celebrated his 13th with arcade games, fun days out and enough lollies to enrich a dental clinic.
For my partner Nick’s birthday I dedicated Steve Winwood’s Higher Love to him on the radio and got him to tune in. Although we are separated by the distance between Melbourne and Papua New Guinea, I don’t have to wait for months before I get a letter back that’s been through various hands, we can talk whenever we want.
In the throes of freedom euphoria this time last year, I had changed my birthdate on social media to October 11, 2023 – then was locked out for being an infant! Annoyance aside, marking a one-year birthday reminds me that I must make freedom count.
I owe it to everyone who helped free me, those who waited and the people I hope will be freed soon.
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