A Failed Rescue Operation for a Transgender Woman
In August 2022, a MtF (transgender woman) from our school went missing. After the school year began in September, our MtF community discovered that the person they were trying to help (hereafter referred to as Mei Li) had not returned to school, confirming her missing status. The community launched an investigation into the matter but found nothing. My boyfriend (hereafter referred to as "Stardust") also learned about this. At that time, I was basically isolated from the transgender community and was unaware of the situation.
On May 22, 2023, the well-known transgender activist Ke Cheng faced backlash for claiming to have sent others to conversion therapy institutions. At this time, Mei Li gained access to a computer and made a series of statements about the situation on Twitter. Stardust received a notification about this tweet and informed me about the previous missing incident involving the poster. After learning this, I contacted the poster via Twitter and confirmed it was Mei Li, learning about her extremely dire situation:
- In August 2022, she was deceived by her parents into returning home under the pretense of cancer and was subsequently placed under house arrest.
- Her parents forced her to take a leave of absence from school citing depression and completed the leave procedures against her will.
- They confiscated all her hormone replacement therapy medications, and her long hair, which she had kept for a year, was shaved into a buzz cut.
- Her parents forced her to take traditional Chinese medicine that was claimed to have "masculinizing" effects.
- Her parents had connections with local police, and during this time, Mei Li attempted to escape twice but was caught each time.
- They confiscated all her electronic devices, canceled or forcibly took over all her social media accounts (Weibo, WeChat, QQ, etc.), cutting off all her information channels. She was only allowed to use a computer again in early May 2023.
- On top of depriving her of information sources, her parents spread a large amount of false information to her, including but not limited to:
- Your so-called girlfriend (hereafter referred to as Yuzami) is a human trafficker who has long abandoned you (the truth is, Yuzami applied for a leave of absence as soon as she learned of Mei Li's disappearance and made every effort to search for and attempt to rescue her).
- There are students at school who dislike you, and your parents reported you to the school. The school was going to expel you, but after we pleaded, they agreed to keep your student status, on the condition that you promise not to cross-dress or grow your hair long at school (the truth is, our school has a well-developed community of transgender women, with no fewer than 10 transgender women studying and living on campus, and there are cross-dressers who have long worn women's clothing. The school's attitude is generally "as long as you don't cause trouble, we let it be").
- Her mother quit her full-time job and took a part-time job, spending half of each month monitoring her at the house arrest location, with at least one person monitoring her at all times.
- The door lock at the house arrest location was modified to ensure that it required a key to open from the inside.
- There were instances of violent harm, knife threats, and tools used to break down doors; the room door could not be fully closed.
Such actions are not considered illegal detention or abuse in China, and certainly do not fall under intentional harm.
After learning about these circumstances, I experienced some psychosomatic symptoms, could not sleep for two consecutive days, and decided to lend a helping hand. I quickly contacted Yuzami and set up a group on Discord (Mei Li's Telegram account had been automatically deleted due to long inactivity) called "Save xyn Mei Li" to discuss escape plans.
Mei Li's major was in its last year, and due to its specificity, she could not change majors. Her parents were forced to let her return to school but required a companion to attend classes with her. Mei Li lost hope for transitioning on campus and decided to give up her degree if necessary. We then confirmed the plan to "take Mei Li away from school after the semester starts and go to a safe place with Yuzami," which was at the end of May.
At the same time, I fell seriously ill, likely finally contracting the COVID-19 virus. For the next three months, we attempted to plan an emergency escape plan, that is: Mei Li's mental state was so poor that she could not wait until the semester started to escape, so we needed to rescue her from the house arrest location. However, we could not come up with a sufficiently good plan. Thus, we waited until the end of August—the start of the new semester. During this time, I found an internship in the city where my school is located and rented an apartment.
After struggling, my boyfriend Stardust decided to refuse to participate in the operation and told me, "I am no longer friendly to transgender people."
"Then, can you accept cisgender women?"
"My lack of friendliness towards transgender people is just a change of stance, but I still love you."
It was August 26, and I told him, "Wait until I finish dealing with the current matters before I deal with you."
On August 28, Monday, I saw Mei Li at school. I felt I looked bad when I met her this time because I kept holding her arm and meowing, and I even nibbled on her a few times. Although I had anticipated her current appearance and she had given me a warning, seeing her still felt unbearable. Her parents, along with testosterone, had completely destroyed the results of her hard work for over a year. I immediately took out some medroxyprogesterone acetate and estradiol tablets for her to take, and according to her, her dissociative state improved rapidly within a few hours.
On the evening of August 29, a friend participating in the operation (hereafter referred to as Inaba) arrived. On the 30th, I obtained a new SIM card, prepared for Mei Li to use.
On September 1, Friday, the scheduled operation date, Inaba and I woke up at 6:00, left at 6:30, and arrived at school at 7:20. Inaba watched over the luggage outside the school gate while I entered the school and rushed to the agreed meeting point. The night before, I had made a small cut on my wrist to remind myself to stay calm and decisive through the pain.
At the agreed location, I saw Mei Li and said, "Let's go."
"Let's go."
"Should we ride an electric bike?"
"Let's ride."
We each scanned a shared electric bike. Until we left the school gate, our conversation consisted of only these four sentences, and I did not hold her arm and meow anymore.
It was now 7:30, and the freshmen were undergoing military training. They had just gathered and were marching towards the assembly point. Besides them, students attending early classes and those preparing for graduate school exams had also left their dorms, walking in small groups along the way. Some students might still be lost in dreams or sleeping without dreams. Before I took a leave of absence, I was one of them, and Mei Li was too before her parents placed her under house arrest. Now, our electric bikes were racing against the crowd towards the school gate.
At 7:40, we exited the school gate and met Inaba to start hailing a taxi. At 7:50, we got into the car, leaving everything about the school behind. Mei Li sighed several times in the car, and Inaba took out a shark plushie from her backpack for Mei Li to hold.
There were a few traffic jams on the way, but fortunately, they did not last long. We arrived at the airport on schedule and boarded a flight to Chongqing. Mei Li logged into WeChat to apply for a temporary boarding pass. During security checks, there was a face + ID verification. Upon learning that Mei Li was using a temporary boarding pass, the staff asked her to go to another window, and Inaba accompanied her. We met again at the boarding gate.
On the plane, Mei Li removed the SIM card and turned off her phone. After the plane landed, I handed her a backup phone I had prepared in advance and said, "Happy birthday."
"Uh... today is actually not my birthday."
"It will be."
Based on Mei Li's previous two failed escape attempts, we suspected that her parents had some sort of malicious tracking ability based on her phone card/number/takeout records, and if her parents successfully reported her missing/kidnapped to the police, they would have the ability to identify and track her based on the public security camera network through facial and gait recognition. Thus, we established two directions that both intersected in some aspects and conflicted in others:
- Anti-tracking measures, specifically changing clothes, changing masks, wearing hoods, wearing loose coats, and not using her own phone and number.
- Preventing the police from filing a case, specifically maintaining constant contact with her parents/school and ensuring that the police could contact Mei Li directly at any time. Additionally, we prepared to report illegal detention in Chongqing to prevent her parents from preemptively reporting us.
Ultimately, we decided to lean towards the latter while considering the former. Yuzami provided a hood, Mei Li brought a new mask, and Inaba gave her a loose coat.
We did not fly directly to Chengdu but landed in Chongqing because the ticket records could be tracked by Mei Li's parents. Our original plan was to take a train to Suining, Neijiang, or Ziyang, and then take a taxi from there to the safe house. However, at the high-speed train station, we received both bad news and good news: the bad news was that all train tickets to nearby Suining, Neijiang, and Ziyang were sold out; the good news was that there were plenty of unlicensed taxi drivers at the high-speed train station heading to Chongqing. Yuzami and Mei Li, and Inaba and I split into two groups to leave the high-speed train station. (Originally, one group was supposed to take a direct unlicensed taxi, and the other group was to follow the old plan, but later we found there were simply no tickets available.)
However, during this process, due to Mei Li's extremely poor mental state, we postponed the plan to report illegal detention in Chongqing to avoid triggering her PTSD, which became a hidden danger.
Yuzami's group arrived two hours before us. After Inaba and I arrived at the safe house, we first found a store and bought a bottle of medical alcohol. I remarked that Inaba holding that bottle of alcohol looked like she was holding a Molotov cocktail, and Inaba tilted her head, stuck out her tongue, and made a funny face at me. Yuzami had arranged a meeting point with us before taking us to the safe house. Upon arrival, I was very surprised by the owner of the safe house.
The medical alcohol we purchased, the toilet paper in the safe house, and the estradiol injection and syringe I brought were all put to use in the safe house: the first thing we did upon arrival was to inject Mei Li with estradiol. Inaba's injection technique was very skilled.
The reaction from her parents shocked me greatly: after a year of illegal detention and abuse, they suddenly seemed to kneel down and plead, repeatedly saying, "We haven't properly discussed transgender issues before; can you come back and talk to us?" They had previously subjected Mei Li to long-term detention and abuse, and after her escape, they immediately began to deceive without hesitation, which broke my understanding of the limits of parental behavior. A slightly less foolish parent would have reacted with anger first. The two parents were both bad and clever. When her parents deceived Mei Li into returning home under the pretense of cancer, everyone, including Mei Li, believed their lies.
That night, Mei Li slept soundly for the first time in months. The next day, Inaba and I returned to Nanjing and Hangzhou, respectively. Before leaving, I asked Mei Li to give me her original phone so I could maintain contact with her parents. But Mei Li said Inaba had already asked for it. I asked Inaba for it, and Inaba made a funny face at me: "We'll talk about it after your surgery."
In the following month, Mei Li continued to contact her parents and counselor through remote control of her phone via RustDesk until September 25.
After arriving in Nanjing, I learned that because I asked Stardust not to bother me, he had been pestering Inaba for the past few days. I felt extremely angry at Stardust for saying "no longer friendly to transgender people" while indiscriminately occupying the community's precious attention resources, and I drafted a 2,000-word breakup letter. On September 8, we broke up peacefully.
On September 25, police from Nanjing, Hangzhou (and possibly Jiaxing), totaling more than 15 people, surrounded Inaba's residence in two police cars and one radio direction-finding vehicle, and subsequently arrested her.
- The arrest team included 2 vans marked with special police insignia and 1 suspected vehicle with radio direction-finding equipment. The police presence was significant (more than 15 people), divided into 2-3 groups to search the rooms, equipped with police communication devices and small direction-finding machines (more sensitive than expected), tear gas, and 2 shields and 1 baton. Some officers' accents did not sound like local police. The arrest process was decisive and swift; after handcuffing, they did not allow any personal belongings to be touched, and the operation was well-prepared. The two officers leading the door were of very poor quality.
- Inaba is a transgender woman who has completed gender reassignment surgery and changed her identity. However, the two officers humiliated her by using her old name and old identification. This was manifested by repeatedly asking, "What is your name?" Regardless of whether Inaba answered with her current name or old name, they would laugh and shout, "No!"
- There were 7 or 8 rounds of interrogation. The main participants included:
- 2 criminal police officers from Zhejiang (aged 30+/40+, suspected to be from Jiaxing)
- 2 from Nanjing (aged 60+/50+)
- Local police from Hangzhou (a total of 3-4 people, including two involved in the arrest and body search)
- The police sent from Nanjing had a weak awareness of the law and were accustomed to intimidation, exhibiting very poor quality. They completely sided with the parents and even stated absurdities like "public order and morals should hold equal status with the law" and "the police station is a place to discuss both law and humanity."
- The collected biological information included: voiceprints / high-precision fingerprints of all ten fingers / palm prints / iris scans.
- The background information investigated included: previous names / registered residence / name change records.
Inaba destroyed all data before being arrested and remained tight-lipped during the 12-hour interrogation process, with the police obtaining no information from her.
This left me (and Inaba's companions) extremely panicked because we suspected that the parents had initiated some sort of criminal case (suspected kidnapping). Subsequently, without sufficient consideration, I requested Yuzami and Mei Li in Chengdu to report illegal detention in Chongqing before September 26. I drafted the following statement and asked Mei Li to print, sign, and fingerprint it:
I am a citizen of the People's Republic of China xxx (fingerprint over the name), ID number xxx (fingerprint), father xxx, mother xxx (better if I remember their ID numbers). I hereby declare: I am dissatisfied with my parents' illegal detention and abuse and do not wish to live with them. I escaped from **** University on September 1. This escape was of my own free will and was not coerced by anyone. Any contact with others was for the purpose of seeking help. My parents may resort to any means to re-detain me, exaggerate, or even fabricate false information to repeatedly report false alarms. Meeting with my parents would directly threaten my personal freedom and right to life and health. I hope my parents will immediately stop their harassment and distortion of facts.
Declarant: xxx (fingerprint should be over the word)
(Date of signing should just be the day of writing the note)
The oversight here was that I did not include Yuzami's name and ID number; otherwise, we could establish Mei Li's authorization of Yuzami. I had considered this but was afraid that writing it down would constitute some form of kidnapping evidence: Mei Li might be induced to give answers unfavorable to us at the police station. (Due to concerns about the parents' persecution of those involved in the rescue)
When the police at Chongqing North Station saw Mei Li's face, they directly asked, "Are you xxx?" Chongqing is over a thousand kilometers away from the Yangtze River Delta, yet the Chongqing police recognized her at a glance, indicating that her parents had made a big deal out of this.
At the Chongqing North Station police station, Mei Li and Yuzami completed their statements, during which our personnel, Aoyama, arrived. Yuzami and Mei Li misjudged the situation, thinking they could meet with the Nanjing police. I hesitated a bit until 21:06 when I decided to request Mei Li to evacuate quickly. Afterward, they delayed for about 20 minutes before deciding to let Yuzami stay and have Aoyama and Mei Li leave the police station. However, it was already too late; the Nanjing police arrived at the police station five minutes later, and Aoyama and Mei Li, who had not run far, were quickly brought back using physical means. The counselor, two teachers from the school's security department, and the deputy captain of the district's police station also arrived at the scene afterward. From this point on, Mei Li was effectively under the control of the Nanjing police.
Under the "negotiation" of the Nanjing police, Mei Li and Yuzami were surprisingly persuaded to go to Nanjing to handle the leave of absence procedures so that the police could close the case or withdraw it. However, I knew that the leave of absence procedures at our school (which is also Mei Li's school) could be completed online, and closing the case did not require the Nanjing police to bring her back (normally, the police would want to close the case as soon as possible), so there was likely some deception involved. I shouted loudly in the voice channel, but by then it was already after 2 AM on September 27, and the three exhausted and overloaded with information did not respond to me. It turned out that "going to Nanjing" was the worst decision, completely losing our initiative in this matter. Afterward, it was a foregone conclusion that Mei Li would be returned to her parents.
At 9 AM on September 27, Mei Li was brought back to the Nanjing Panchi Police Station by the Nanjing police, who allowed Aoyama and Yuzami to purchase tickets for other flights. Around 1 PM, Mei Li was taken into the police station, and Yuzami also completed some statements there. The last contact we had with Mei Li occurred at 2:52 PM, and there was nothing unusual at that time.
Our personnel waited in the police station lobby, but after 5:30 PM, the police began to continuously expel our personnel from the lobby. At 9 PM, an officer named Chang Xinyan forcefully expelled our personnel and instructed the doorman, "Do not let anyone in," so we waited at the entrance of the police station. We had already conducted reconnaissance, and the police station only had one entrance. Our personnel thus let their guard down.
At 1 AM on September 28, an officer came out of the police station and chatted with our personnel, leading them away from the entrance. At that moment, I cautiously rushed towards the police station entrance and looked outside, where I saw a vehicle blocking the entrance and noticed what appeared to be Mei Li being taken into the vehicle by two people. I urged everyone to hurry over, and that officer remarked, "You're quite alert." The car started moving, rushing out of the entrance to the extent that we had to dodge it.
At 1:30 AM, it had been 12 hours since Mei Li entered the police station. Our side insisted on entering the police station but was firmly blocked. Afterward, when we called the police station, the earliest response was, "She is no longer at our police station; she has been taken back by her parents." When we pressed for more information, the phone changed its response to, "I'm sorry, I don't have the authority to inform you about this." Meanwhile, Mei Li's counselor, who had been in close contact with us, immediately went missing. We then realized that we had completely failed.
At 9 AM, after a brief rest, I went to the school's security department. After stating my name, the school immediately sent my counselor from before my leave of absence to entangle with me. The security department and the counselor continuously claimed, "We have no idea what you're talking about" and "We only know that this student's parents reported her missing before" (then how was a criminal case established?). Despite my insistence, I never managed to see Mei Li's counselor, Yao Xiaoqin, while my counselor kept deflecting with "She might be on leave." (Later, it was discovered that Yao Xiaoqin had actually been active in the class group all along.) I kept pleading, "I'm not here to rescue anyone; if you hand her over to her parents, I will be powerless. I also know that there is a 95% chance you will do that; I'm just here to eliminate that 5%!"
My counselor chatted with me for a while, listened to my troubles, but did not provide any valuable information. I felt despair and left the school.
This place should have had some sort of conclusion, some emotions to express, but I cannot summarize or express anything. So be it.
Except for "Mei Li," "Yao Xiaoqin," and "Chang Xinyan," all names in the text are pseudonyms.