A call about the Yongsheng hotel in Gao’an, Jiangxi

Tiger Temple, online personality, citizen journalist and rights defender, wrote down a disturbing tale involving Yongsheng Hotel in Gao’an, Guangxi province:

Tiger Temple comment: I will reveal here something that will make your hair stand on end, where a girl was forced to give up her body in order to dance provocatively for others. The incident happened when Mr. Zhang Hui (张辉) called from Jiangxi province, where he has been banished. Afterward I communicated by phone to two online rights defenders from Jiangxi, and recorded the conversations. Below is a transcript from the recording, and fortunately the people, the place that were involved in the incident, which shouldn’t have been revealed, is at the moment no longer a secret.

Recording: On the afternoon of April 5, I had nothing else to do so I went to see a exotic dance show (艳舞表演), a exotic dance show means a bunch of girls who take off their clothes and then dance…. I’m telling you this so don’t look down on me, I am completely numb when I watch them. One girl appeared, I didn’t notice her at first but she walked towards me. She asked me: “May I ask what you do?” I said to her: “Of course I’m not going to tell you. But I do something relatively decent….” She asked me again if I was from the Public Security Bureau. I smiled and said perhaps. She asked me again if I was a traffic cop? I said perhaps. She said: “May I ask you something?” I said yes. I said I will tell you what I can. She said: “If someone reported this place to the police, then what would happen?” I gave her a very realistic answer. I said, this performance that your boss is putting on － the Public Security Bureau (PSB) will call your boss to tell him to take you away straight away － then the PSB will come and find nothing, then they will say that there was no such thing here.

After the girl heard this, she walked away, when she walked away I didn’t think much, after a while she came back again. The girl said to me: “A while ago I went into a private room with someone…”

Let me explain what “entering a private room” means: it’s just two people, they don’t have sex, but the girl gets naked and you can play. The girl said: “One of them insulted me, saying that someone as young as me is doing such a thing.” This was when I started paying attention to her, and I asked how old she was. She said fifteen. She said: “I really want to go home, when I heard him insult me my heart went cold.” I said since you want to go home then go home. She was really upset and said: “I can’t go home… ” I said is it because you don’t have any money, why don’t I give you some money, and you can go. I tried to ask more, I said that she must be earning a lot if she’s doing this kind of thing, is it really possible that she didn’t have much money? She told me, “Don’t talk about me like that. Really we’re all very depressed, I think about killing myself everyday.” I thought this was strange, so young and she wants to commit suicide! She said: “We are cut off from the outside world, we can’t make calls… Sometimes we can call home, but the boss stands next to us… So we don’t usually make phone calls, because the boss will follow us, and if we didn’t say the right thing he’d beat us. We are used to it and so that’s what it’s like.”

The girl said again: “I think you’re a good person…” I asked her what she wanted me to do. She said: “Call the police for me.” I understood that she was being forced, she said that she was tricked by a friend, and she didn’t want to do it. I said to her that if I called the police, and the local police said that you didn’t exist, then I would cause you trouble. She said that was fine, “Why don’t you call them tonight, and help me get out.” I emphasized that if this got back to her boss, and caused her trouble, what would she do then? She said that wasn’t an issue, if she didn’t get out today, she’d die. She said she has tried to die many times, using a gas canister: “I tried many times, but each time they found me.” She said, “If I don’t get out today then I’ll die here… ”

I thought that this was problematic, really problematic. After seeing the show I went home and thought about it, about how she really might have been forced to go there. I called a friend, ZH, and asked what I should do. ZH said don’t rescue her first, you need to know what she is thinking, and need to record what she is saying, and get a picture of her.

In the evening I went there again, I told her that I couldn’t get her out today, but if we were to do it it had to be successful. “Otherwise you might suddenly disappear.” I asked her to believe me. Then I took out 60 yuan, because it wasn’t convenient trying to talk outside, and we couldn’t record it, so we were to a private room. I realized then that the private room had heavy surveillance. Each of the rooms’ doors were closed, but there’s someone just outside the door. She was too afraid to talk to me, so I told her to write down a statement. I’ll read it to you, “My name is Li Xiaohong (pseudonym), here there called me Lili (pseudonym), I am 15 years old, and last November I was tricked into coming to Jiangxi, and I do exotic dancing at XX hotel. They won’t let me go home or have contact with the outside. I really miss home, my mom and dad, and I hope that someone can help me.”

Because I am a local, it would be unwise to report, for me… I really didn’t know whether it was operated by the mafia, so I didn’t get her out. I might die first. If the news media came, they might not get anything either. So I got another friend to come, to help me with this. He’s from another place, so he left pretty quickly. The exotic dancing had only been here for 20 or so days, they might leave straight away. Today I went there with this friend from elsewhere, and started to get to know the girl. You can speak to this friend…

(This friend’s main point was: Tomorrow we’ll go to the PSB and file a report. We already have Lili’s home phone number… then the phone was passed to the last person.)

I was thinking earlier that if my report caused her harm then I will go turn myself in. I’m not a noble person, when I saw those girls jumping around I wasn’t really numb, but after communicating with this girl I was taken aback, she was so young, but her what she thought was striking… She’s from Henan, and her parents are migrant workers… We didn’t call her parents because it would only cause panic and might spoil the plan.

I’ll tell you about how the girls are managed. The girls perform from about 9 in the morning to 11:30 or 12:30. Then again from 1:30 to 4 in the afternoon, then again from 8 to 10. After the performances the girls are all taken away and locked up, they don’t have cell phones to contact the outside world, and someone is watching them the whole time. So we have to go when they are performing… You might want to curse me when I tell you that I really want to save this one girl, but not the others; she really moved me! Yesterday the girl was really desperate, because I had other things to attend to I told her not to worry, I said maybe tomorrow, or today, but in three days I’ll think of a way to save her.

You asked my name… It’s best if you don’t know it (I said at least I don’t know now), then it’s good you don’t.

Lastly, I hope you will tell the police, if the girl was rescued, can they call this cell and tell me, I want to know.

Postscript: After I put down the phone, we started moving according to my promises to the man. In the afternoon, a friend in Jiangxi walked into the PSB to report the case. The police’s response was very surprising: it wasn’t necessary to file the case, and they only wrote down some notes. Afterward the friend in Jiangxi called 110 to file a case, and the police arrived, but they all stood outside the door: only one policeman went in… Afterward we weren’t sure what happened. The friend told me that he was extremely worried about the girl, whose identity had already been revealed, and after discussing this with my friend in Beijing, Zhang Hui, a call was made to Jiangxi provincial Public Security office.

… In the afternoon, because I was visiting an artist, Yan Zhengxue (严正学), who was beaten and had suffered injuries, I could only find out the latest developments via phone from Zhang Hui. The plan was to report to the Beijing police so that they can pressurize the police in Jiangxi, but because it was unclear what was happening in Jiangxi we didn’t take action in Beijing. Because the friend in Jiangxi was seriously worried that the local police and the performance group were connected…

According to the latest news, the Jiangxi province public security department has answered to say that the girl has been rescued, but there were no other specific details. But the mobile number that I had left for the girl, telling her to call me at once when she was free, remained quiet. I hope that the child really is out of danger; calling me is unimportant.

At present we can reveal that the hotel which had accepted young girls in exotic dancing for over 20 days was: Jiangxi province, Gao’an city, Yongsheng Hotel (江西省高安市永生宾馆).