The Sexually Abused, Aided, and Tied-Up Childhood

At the age of 11, Sisi was sexually abused and gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She was then taken to Beijing by an aid agency. However, in those six years before she became an adult, she experienced sexual abuse again, became pregnant, and gave birth to a second child. How did a sexually abused childhood affect this girl's life?

In September 2017, I started to contact Hope for Children NGO to follow the case of Si Si, a teenage mother, and interviewed more than 30 social workers, volunteers, teachers, child sex education experts, doctors and journalists. Interviews were conducted with Si Si, her parents, and the second and third sexual assault suspects. Of these, the number of interviews with Si Si, who has been meeting weekly for a long time, cannot be counted.
The first edition was written in January 2018. However, due to censorship, the first edition of the manuscript could not be published.
In May 2018, I went to Dongguan, Guangdong to interview Si Si and her boyfriend. wrote the second edition of the manuscript in July, which could not be published due to censorship. In May 2020, I visited Si Si in Hunan in a personal capacity. In May 2022, I wrote the third edition of the article. Published with the permission of Si Si and Hope for Children NGO.

1

Sisi was born in 2001 in a small town in Yongzhou, Hunan Province. Sisi had her first period at the age of 11, but within a couple of months, it stopped. Nobody in the family took notice of this. One day, as she was halfway through her homework, she vomited with a sudden retch and threw up white foam. Sisi thought she had perhaps overeaten. During the Chinese New Year celebrations in 2011, her father, a migrant worker, returned to their home in the countryside in Hunan Province. Their neighbors wondered whether Sisi had a tumor. Sisi’s father took her to the hospital for a checkup, and the doctor said Sisi had been pregnant for five months. Her father slapped her. 

When Sisi went to induce labor, the doctor at the clinic called the police. Sisi mentioned a few people, including three of her schoolteachers and a neighbor named Tang Dongyun. The police identified the DNA through amniotic fluids, and the result showed that Tang Dongyun was the biological father. 

Tang Dongyun and Sisi’s family lived far from the more lively neighborhoods on the edge of town, where there were only a couple rows of dilapidated mud houses. It was said that only the poorest lived in mud houses, which had low ceilings and were slanted, with straws poking out of the mud. Every year, during the summer storms, the walls of these houses would collapse. Behind the houses, there were large stretches of rice paddies extending all the way to the foot of the mountains in the distance. Occasionally, one could hear cars. All the men in good health were migrant workers. Only during summer and winter holidays, this place became more alive with children. 

Tang Dongyun was 74 years old and enjoyed the five guarantees (food, clothing, medical care, housing, and burial expenses). He lived alone and was nicknamed “Monk Bai.” He did not have many friends. Often, he went fishing by himself at the pond. When he walked, he winced with his back bent. He never took off his ushanka hat. Tang Dongyun confessed that he had had sex with Sisi more than a dozen times since the summer of the previous year. Each time, he gave Sisi 5 yuan and asked her not to tell anyone about it. 

However, Sisi’s father did not believe the results. He said Tang Dongyun was a distant relative and that the DNA test result was wrong. He believed that the three elementary schoolteachers were the true criminals. 

Both the public security bureau and the local government advised that Sisi should go for an abortion. The government promised to help Sisi to transfer to another school and put the family on the low-income aid scheme. The father was not happy with the arrangement and demanded 1,000,000 yuan in compensation from the three teachers. After being refused, the father was so angry that he wanted Sisi to give birth. Sisi’s mother did not object to this. Both parents thought, “After the abortion, there will be no evidence left. The schoolteachers might countercharge you, and you might have to go to jail.” 

The father could not figure out why the three teachers wouldn’t want to compensate them. He said, “When the three pay their fair share of the 1,000,000 yuan, it wouldn’t be that much for each one of them. Otherwise, they would lose their reputation or even their jobs.” 

The father took his wife and daughter to a neighboring town and stayed there until Sisi gave birth. Since Sisi did not have a birth permit, her father borrowed 7,000 yuan and sent her to a private hospital. 

Once they were back home, a netizen came for a visit and posted complaints for them on websites like Tianya and Rednet as well as those of local offices to cry foul. This soon turned out big. The news broke out: “A 12-year-old girl in Yongzhou is said to be raped by her three teachers and has given birth to a child as evidence.” Soon, journalists across the country flocked to the town where Sisi lived. 

The 12-year-old Sisi ran around in a house full of journalists. After the caesarean section, she did not have any breast milk, her belly bloated. In front of the journalists, Sisi lifted her T-shirt and waved a fan, revealing her snow-white belly with a long brownish-red caesarean scar. 

Some locals thought this was a family of liars. Some told the journalists that the sexual relationship between the little girl and the old man was consensual, and that they had no sympathy toward them. Some called in the middle of the night to threaten Sisi’s family, and others claimed to want to drive them out of town. When the father returned to farming a few years later, the first batch of chickens and ducks were poisoned, after being raised for just one month. 

But in 2012, Sisi’s family could not even afford powered milk, and the journalists paid for their basic daily necessities like rice, flour, and oil. The CCTV crew engaged the psychologist Liu Fengqin to provide emergency assistance. After staying for a week, Liu Fengqin got in touch with the Hope for Children Relief Foundation, a charity organization specializing in children’s relief, and asked them to help Sisi and her family with further assistance after she’s gone. 

In April 2013, Tang Dongyun was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a local court. The charges against the three teachers were dropped because there was no evidence. Later, a journalist visited Tang Dongyun in prison. When they talked about Sisi's child, Tang was very happy, saying he had never expected to have an offspring at his advanced age. 

By the end of the summer holiday, Sisi’s family chose to receive help from the Hope for Children Relief Foundation. The family took the baby, named Little Qiqi, to Beijing, where Sisi was placed in a new school. 

 

2

The new school in Beijing was called Ark. The principal took Sisi in for free and arranged for Sisi’s father to be the school janitor with a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan, so that he could take care of his daughter. 

At school, Sisi and her father became strangers to each other. At home, her parents quarreled every day. Her mother complained that were it not for Sisi, she would have divorced Sisi’s father long ago. Sisi’s mother took care of Little Qiqi at home. Sisi never went to school nor came back together with her father. After school, she always went to her classmates’ families for dinner. Sometimes Sisi wandered alone in the small village on the outskirts of Beijing and came home late at night, resulting in her parents’ admonishment. The parents never asked why Sisi acted that way and did not know what she thought. Sisi said, “I want them to pack up and leave soon.”

One afternoon, Sisi disappeared. A classmate noticed that her phone had been used. When she looked through the chat log, she found out that Sisi was supposed to meet up with a male netizen at the subway entrance. When the principal arrived, the internet friend, who had talked with him on the phone beforehand, was already too scared to show up. Sisi was stupefied and did not explain anything. 

Two or three months after coming to Beijing, Sisi couldn’t keep up with her classes. She couldn’t concentrate in class and always secretly took her classmates’ cell phones to go online, log into WeChat and use the Shake function to add nearby male friends. One time, her message was accidentally sent to the principle, asking, “Bro, are you there?” Another time, a male netizen drove to the school. As soon as he got out of the car, he was immediately caught by the principal and Sisi’s father, who were ambushing him. 

“Why am I so unlucky to run into such a person?” The male netizen complained after the principal explained what was happening. Like the first netizen, he’s a migrant worker in his 30s. He was excited about the date with a young girl, but the situation at hand was too different from what he had expected. 

In Beijing, Liu Fengqin gave Sisi three months of free psychological assistance. Liu Fengqin had 22 years of experience in the field but had never worked with underage victims of sexual abuse. She chose Sandplay Therapy and asked Sisi to place toy figurines on the sand plate. At the beginning, Sisi chose rats, bats, lizards, spiders, tigers, and various mollusks. After two months, Sisi arranged boats, lotus flowers, candles into a beautiful little garden. The sand plate was interpreted as “a desire for beauty,” thus, the counseling was over. 

An American social worker had warned the Hope for Children Relief Foundation that victims of sexual abuse like Sisi were likely to become pregnant again and recommended birth control. But the other social workers did not agree. An IUD for a teenage girl? What would the public think?!

In May 2014, Sisi said she had been sexually abused again. The police station pulled out the footages from the hotel surveillance cameras: Sisi got a room with a middle-aged man and looked relaxed and there were no signs of coercion.

After learning the "truth" of his daughter’s “sexual abuse,” the father was enraged. Once home, he became absent-minded. A few days later, the father forgot to turn off the gas, which triggered an explosion. He had serious burns on 68% of his body and was in the ICU for six days. He was fortunately saved. 

Sisi’s family life fell into complete chaos. After the father was admitted to the hospital, the mother made a first call to Xia Changhe. 

 

3

Xia Changhe. When this name first appeared, Sisi’s family was still in the countryside of Hunan Province.

He claimed to be from Shenzhen at the time and was 50 years old and the director of a kindergarten. He offered to take Sisi and her child Little Qiqi to Shenzhen. He said he was also the deputy director of the Shenzhen station of a central media channel for high school students. He wanted to teach Sisi and turn her into a college student. 

But the father asked for 800,000 yuan. He wanted to use this money to feed the whole family, including Sisi’s grandparents and then build a house. The father figured, if Xia was keen on this and had the guts to support Sisi, he would be able to satisfy his demand. As soon as Xia learned about the amount, he left on the same day. He gave Sisi’s mother a business card with long titles on the front and back. His name was squeezed in the middle: Xia Changhe. 

After their arrival in Beijing, Sisi’s mother occasionally kept in touch with Xia Changhe. At first, the mother just got in touch whenever she changed her number. Later, she confided in him after each quarrel with her husband. Mr. Xia was good-tempered and educated and advised her to maintain a harmonious household.

When Sisi’s father was hospitalized with his burns and urgently needed money for medical expenses, Xia promised Sisi’s mother to raise money for the operation and that he would fly to Beijing the following day. 

The next day, Xia Changhe didn’t come, saying that his own relative had died in a car accident and it just so happened that the court was in session that day, so he cancelled his flight. In the end, the parents of the Ark School donated hundreds of thousands of yuan for the operation. After Xia learned about it, he never raised the money issue again. 

Meanwhile, the social workers at the Hope for Children Relief Foundation discovered something strange: Sisi had been chatting with a netizen “Xiao Changhe” on QQ messenger and they had been calling each other “honey,” for instance, “Honey, when are you going to marry me? Don’t you want me anymore?” or “Honey, why are you still worried that I won’t marry you?”

When the social workers scrolled down their chat log, they discovered a photo sent from “Xiao Changhe”: a selfie of a grown man wearing yellow underwear, his penis erect. 

On the QQ messenger, “Xiao Changhe” claimed to be rich, with an asset of millions. He had many cars and a villa. He had sent a few black-and-white photos to Sisi, asking her to call him “Hubby.” In retrospect, Sisi was not sure whether “Xiao Changhe” was in fact Xia Changhe. These were photos of a young man, whom Sis found attractive. 

But the mother knew that the so-called “Xiao Changhe” was indeed her frequent contact Xia Changhe. 

In the eyes of the mother and daughter, Xia Changhe had an omniscient presence. He was kind, had many contacts and had adopted more than two dozen of primary and secondary school children from poor backgrounds. He helped to get them jobs at the National Tax Bureau, and one of them became the VP of the Postal Savings Bank of China. Xia Chang promised to turn Sisi into a “superwoman”: fluent in English and achieving a college degree. 

In July 2014, after another argument with her husband, Sisi’s mother took Sisi to Shenzhen to join Xia Changhe. 

After the father lost touch with his wife and daughter, he dragged his sick body from the hospital home, and it took him all morning. A volunteer downstairs told me that the wife and daughter hadn’t even cleaned up after their meal, and their clothes were still soaking in the washbowl. It was a whole mess, but the two had already disappeared. 

Sisi’s father stood in the middle of the road and had a breakdown and burst out crying. 

 

4

Three years later, in the summer of 2017, I met Xia Changhe for the first time in Shenzhen. He wore a black suit, a pink shirt, a maroon striped tie, with clean manicured nails. He was about 

5'7", slightly hunched over, with the suit's shoulder pads holding up his figure, and his eyes were already a little cloudy.

Xia Changhe's kindergarten was in an urban village in Shenzhen, whose streets were narrow and their house numbers confusing. The only sign of the kindergarten was an old handwritten advertisement on the wall of a grocery store: Genius Kindergarten, enroll now. The 54-year-old director Xia Changhe sat in his room all day long, surfing the Internet. At first, he thought I was a parent visiting the kindergarten, so he quickly poured hot water and asked me to take a seat. After learning that I was there for Sisi, his smile immediately cooled down. 

In the community where the Genius Kindergarten was located, Xia Changhe claimed to be a senior English teacher. Down the street, parents greeted him with warmth, “Mr. Xia!” Xia Changhe’s self-introduction was full of contradictions. He claimed to have taught himself English, but after a sip of water, he told me he had a master’s degree in English from Beijing Normal University. As for his adoption of children, he had a pile of crumpled old newspapers as evidence: Shenzhen Evening News in 2006 and Shenzhen Special Zone Daily in 2007 with reports on “The Righteous Teacher from Bao’an District Runs Free Training Courses.” In the reports, Xia Changhe said that he received an MPA from Beijing Normal University in 1999. However, the official website of the university stated that it was not until 2001 that the school established this degree. 

In July 2014, Sisi and her mother went to Shenzhen with a secret purpose: to give Sisi an abortion. Sisi was pregnant again at the time, but it was difficult to figure out who had gotten her pregnant. After their arrival in Shenzhen, Xia Changhe paid more than 2,000 yuan for Sisi to have an abortion at the Shenzhen People’s Hospital. 

The social workers at the Hope for Children Relief Foundation threatened Xia Changhe that they would call the police if he did not end all contacts with Sisi and her family. Sisi and her mother stayed in Shenzhen for just over a week and were sent back to Beijing. 

During their week in Shenzhen, Xia Changhe had sex with Sisi for the first time. At the time, the Genius Kindergarten still occupied two floors. There was an indoor playground downstairs. Every night after the others left, Xia Changhe asked Sisi to come down and have sex. Sisi later said that just two or three days after the abortion, Xia Changhe wanted to “do that thing with me again.” Sisi did not want to, but Xia Changhe forced her. Sisi’s mother could not do much to help, “I just cannot stop him. Women are not as strong as men. We just cannot stop him when he becomes ruthless.” 

After returning to Beijing, everything seemed normal again. But during the National Day holiday in 2014, Sisi went out with Xia Changhe for a week. Four months later in January 2015, Sisi’s parents found out that she was pregnant again. They figured that the baby must be Xia Changhe’s.

Sisi and her mother went to Shenzhen again. This was Sisi’s third pregnancy. The doctor found that Sisi had a thin uterine wall, and the uterus was already scarred. If she had another abortion, she might not be able to have children again in the future. 

Sisi said that after Xia learned about her pregnancy, “Every day, he smiles for no reason like an idiot.” Xia begged Sisi to keep the child and promised her to raise the child. Sisi believed in Xia Changhe’s promise: Once the baby was born, he’d get her a Hukou in Guangdong and change her birth year from 2001 to 1995, and the two would officially get married. 

But Sisi didn’t like Xia Changhe and found him too old for her. She didn’t have feelings for him. In Shenzhen, Sisi liked the new netizen friend Xiao Zhao. 

Xiao Zhao was 35 years old and came from Yantai in Shangdong Province. He worked at a supermarket. They found each other on QQ messenger. Sisi later told me, “Every time I go to his place, he buys shrimps for me. When I say that he needs to put more salt in his dishes, he tells me that too much salt is bad for the fetus.” Xiao Zhao behaved like a real boyfriend. He made silkie chicken stews for her and advised her to eat less junk food, “When we eat hamburgers together, he lets me eat the patties and he eats the buns. When we go out to eat barbecue wings, he lets me eat the wings with more meat on them and he eats those with less meat.” 

Soon, Sisi moved into Xiao Zhao’s place. There was no elevator in the peasant house. Sisi climbed up to the tenth floor with her big belly. 

Xia Changhe soon came looking for Sisi. Xiao Zhao confronted Xia Changhe and asked what he had done to Sisi. Xia Changhe fell silent. Xiao Zhao threatened, “If you continue to keep your mouth shut, I’ll stab you to death.” In the end, they went to the police station.

At the police station, Sisi reported that Xia Changhe had abused her sexually, saying she was not even 14 years old, when they first had sex. Afterwards, they continued to have sex a dozen times. Xia Changhe did not admit it and said Sisi and her mother cheated him 30,000 yuan. 

At a meeting in 2017, Xia Changhe told me that the police asked him how many times he had sex with Sisi, and he said not even once and that he had never touched her. The police then asked how many times he had sex with Sisi’s mother. Xia Changhe relayed his answer to me: “I am shameless? Not even a man? Am I that shameless?”

In Shenzhen, I found the police station where Sisi went two years ago. The policed said that they did not draw amniotic fluids because Sisi was already very pregnant at the time. The police released Xia Changhe after detaining him for 24 hours and took his blood sample but did not do a DNA test. Sisi’s lawyer came four times to inquire about the case and finally learned that the police officer, who oversaw the case, had been transferred. 

I inquired how to restart the paternity test.

The police officer at the reception was puzzled: “That was consensual. How are you supposed to help her?” I mentioned that Sisi was not even 14 when she got pregnant. Consensual or not, as long as Xia had sex with Sisi, knowing she was under 14, it should be considered rape, according to the criminal law. The police officer checked the records and found that no case was filed at the time. He pointed to his computer screen and said again, “It says ‘consensual.’”

I reminded him that Xia Changhe still ran the kindergarten. The officer said, “He has been running it for years and there’s never been such an incident. It is not until the girl came that this happened, no?” I told him that the experience in Shenzhen had caused a lot of damage to Sisi. The officer was surprised, “A lot of damage to her? She would think that way?”

In the summer of 2015, Xiao Zhao’s lease expired, and the landlord refused to renew it. Xiao Zhao couldn’t take care of Sisi. With her big belly, Sisi had to sleep on the street with her mother and daughter Little Qiqi. They slept under the bridge for three days. 

Where was Sisi’s father?

When Sisi and her mother first went to Shenzhen in 2014, her father went after them and questioned Xia Changhe: “You were born in 1963 and I was born in 1970. You are older than me and now you want to touch my daughter?” When Sisi was pregnant again and went to Shenzhen in 2015, her father held back for nine days and then went after her again. The father always threatened Xia Changhe, saying he would seek media exposure. 

The Hope for Children Relief Foundation engaged a lawyer who specialized in the protection of minors. When the lawyer visited the kindergarten, Sisi’ father’s attitude was vague. He said he didn’t want to call the police and that if Xia Changhe could buy an apartment, Sisi might as well just stay with him. 

Sisi called the social workers in Beijing and said she missed Beijing. The social workers asked her: “Are you sure? No regrets this time?” Sisi hung up the phone. 

Sisi, her mother, and Little Qiqi went to a shelter in Shenzhen. When she came out again and turned on her phone, there were a ton of missed calls from the lawyer, the Hope for Children Relief Foundation, and the journalists. 

In August 2015, Sisi returned home to Hunan Province and gave birth to her second daughter, named Little Guozi.

For years, the Hope for Children Relief Foundation believed that family was the best support for sexually abused children, but in Sisi’s case, her parents were unable to protect her at all. The social workers decided to bring Sisi back to Beijing again, but this time, they only took Sisi and Little Guozi. Sisi’s parents and Little Qiqi were not allowed to return. Sisi turned 15 that year and got back in the aid system. 

 

5

In Beijing, the social worker in charge of Sisi’s case was named Li Mu’en. She was born in 1990 and majored in psychology. Since 2013, she had often been the only social worker for the True Love program at the Hope for Children Relief Foundation. 

In China, child sexual abuse was still a relatively new topic. There were neither foster families nor established psychological institutions in Mainland China. After Li Mu’en gave a lecture at a rural elementary school in Yunnan in 2016, a dozen little girls came up to her and said, “Ms. Li, somebody has done what you demonstrated (i.e. touching private parts) to me. Later, Li Mu’en was able to confirm that at least two girls were sexually abused, in the serious form of vaginal penetration. She was furious that there were so many cases that went undetected in just one class. 

But there was nothing that she could do. None of these children had left evidence. This was all too familiar: The police came in. There was no evidence. And the case left unresolved. The interrogation process could also cause a second injury to the children. “After I finish my lecture, I can just leave, but they stay for life.” Li Mu’en said, “The resources in these villages are a far cry from those in Beijing. There is simply nobody around to help with the follow-up.” 

Many children who had been sexually abused exhibited sexual behaviors afterwards, such as hugging and kissing, and words like wet dream, pregnancy, and big belly often popped up. Victims during puberty, who had experienced sexual pleasure during abuse, unconsciously displayed actions that could be embarrassing to others. The Hope for Children Relief Foundation once helped a 12-year-old victim to change schools, but she became involved with the boys in their early puberty and drew them pornographic drawings. In class, the girl always unconsciously put her hand inside her pants and masturbated. The new teachers found it hard to believe at first and were too embarrassed to tell the social workers but later couldn’t stand it anymore and asked the parents to withdraw her from the school.

The 51-year-old Wang Yifang had also been sexually abused. She was a parent at the Ark School and a donor, who had been helping Sisi’s family. She said she was abused by two men during her childhood. The first time happened when she was 10. It was a movie night in the village, and she went home halfway through it. The village barefoot doctor quietly followed her. The man, who was in his 40s, picked her up from behind and “arched over me like a dog.” The second person was her cousin’s husband. Whenever she was staying with her cousin, the cousin-in-law, who was 20 years older, took her pants off and touched her at night. Wang Yifang was horrified to feel a hand all over her body. She was embarrassed and scared and did not dare to make a sound. 

When Wang grew up, she had adverse feelings toward men. Even the relationship with her husband was not all too natural. In 2006, when she turned 40, she was suddenly overwhelmed by her long-standing psychological problems. Whenever a man spoke to her, she would be reminded of those big, calloused hands in the dark, thinking he wanted to have sex with her. She began to experience hallucinations and was eventually diagnosed with major depression. 

Wang Yifang had never told her husband the root cause of her depression. She took Prozac, read the Bible, prayed every day, and finally got over it. 

Wang Yifang’s first contact with Sisi’s family was when Sisi’s father had his burns. Wang Yifang brought a doctor from her hometown and was by his side 24/7 for a month, until Sisi’s father was out of the ICU. Wang Yifang heard that when the explosion happened, Sisi’s father had already run out of the kitchen but feared that the explosion could affect the children and their neighbors, so he went back in to turn off the switch, thus his right hand was badly burned. When he was brought out of the ICU, he had bandages all over his body, which was swollen like a balloon, and one could only see his eyes. As soon as he saw Sisi and her mother, tears trickled down the only good part of his skin, and his first sentence was, “How’s Little Qiqi?” He thought he was going to die and begged everyone to take care of Sisi. These stories made Wang Yifang feel that at these life-or-death moments, this family had a sense of justice and they deserved to be helped. Over the past few years, she had donated more than 100,000 yuan in total. 

In 2014, just as she was helping Sisi’s father with his burns, news came from her hometown that the cousin-in-law had pancreatic cancer. Upon her visit, Wang Yifang looked her cousin-in-law straight in the eye and told of her childhood experience, while nobody was around, saying, “This is your sin, and you have to repent.” The cousin-in-law, who was in his 70s, denied at first. He had lived a life of total chaos. After his wife gave birth to three daughters in a row, he was furious and asked his wife to sink herself in the river. Meanwhile, he was hooking up with many young women in the village. On the hospital bed, the cousin-in-law was still stubborn: “You are talking nonsense. I am a righteous man. I will go to heaven.”

But Wang Yifang was no longer afraid of him. She told him: “You lie! I won’t expose you, and nobody can save you.” The week before his death, the cousin-in-law could no longer take in food. He sought out Wang Yifang and said, “I am sorry.” Wang Yifang responded, “I forgive you.” She was 48 that year. 

How much did “I am sorry” help in the end? Especially for those minor victims. Sisi had never received an apology from anybody. People treated her like a child, who did not know anything. Nobody could really understand how these minors looked at the world. 

 

6

In 2015, the 15-year-old Sisi and Little Guozi returned to Beijing. Sisi switched to a vocational high school. They stayed at a foster care station. Except to the regular staff, Sisi and Little Guozi never revealed themselves as mother and daughter. 

When school was in session, Sisi got up at 5 o’clock every day, changed Little Guozi’s diaper, washed her face, gave Little Guozi to the foster care workers before leaving for school. Once outside the foster care station, Sisi had to undergo self-control for every minute of this short 1km journey. 

“Sometimes, I hear a voice in me, saying gee you can go do that thing.”

“Sometimes, I hear that voice saying no, school is more important.”

“There is a battle in my mind. For a minute, yes, I can go do that. For another, no, I shouldn’t.”

By the end of 2016, the 15-year-old Sisi met an illegal cab driver, who wandered around the subway entrance. For just one hour in the morning, Sisi turned off her watch with GPS positioning and went home with the cab driver. After sex, she took the bus, just in time for school. After each sexual encounter, the driver gave Sis a bit of money. 

Li Mu’en discovered that Sisi often returned at least two hours late. One day, she saw her left arm with multiple knife cuts. Sisi said she had met a rascal at the bus station and cut herself on the arm in a fight. Li Mu’en did not believe it, but a social worker could only go step by step to find out about these abnormal behaviors. Li Mu’en was only 26 at the time, and there was nobody she could turn to. In fact, she was already the most experience social worker in Mainland China, who specialized in the rescue of sexually abused children. 

The next day, Li Mu’en went to pick Sisi up from school. On the bus, Li Mu’en sternly lectured Sisi on the consequences of coming home late. Nobody else was on the bus except the driver, but Sisi was upset and interrupted Li Mu’en: “Could we talk about it elsewhere?”

After getting off the bus, Sisi suggested that they talk one-on-one. In a small restaurant, Sisi ordered a plate of shredded pork in hot garlic sauce. As she ate, she complained: “Have you ever thought about my feelings when you talk to me like that in front of others? What if the bus driver knows about Little Qiqi and Little Guozi?”

Li Mu’en wanted to look at the injury on her arm, but Sisi refused. She said, “The social workers at the foster care station all said that I did it myself. None of you believed me!” 

A month later, during a counseling session, Sisi finally told the truth: She met the illegal cab driver at the subway entrance. He was from Henan Province. His wife and children were still back home. He was a migrant worker, alone by himself in Beijing. Sisi said, “I just want to treat him like a boyfriend. He’s honest and treats me well.” 

“Do you think he is honest with his wife and children when he casually sleeps with another girl? Were he your husband, would you think he’s a good person?” The counselor asked. 

“There are a lot of things you cannot understand about me,” Sisi retorted, “You know, I am already a woman and have two kids.” 

The Hope for Children Relief Foundation assigned Sisi to the 24-hour supervision. She was taken to and from school every day by different volunteers. Even during weekends, the volunteers accompanied her. But she was already 16. A familiar bus driver couldn’t help but ask the volunteers: “The kid is old enough; do you still need to send her to school and pick her up?”

But this seemed to be the only way to go. Sisi was already the case with the most intervention from the social workers and the longest aid time in Mainland China. There were no precedents that the social workers could learn from. As of January 2018, Sisi had had 43 counseling sessions since returning from Shenzhen. The Hope for Children Relief Foundation connected her with a long-term counselor. She went to the counselor for one and a half hours per week for a fee of 150 yuan, which was ¼ of the lowest rate in Beijing. 

It took at least two years for Li Mu’en to build trust with Sisi. When Sisi’s father had serious burns in 2014, the last social worker had just resigned because she couldn’t see a way out of the situation and was experiencing anxiety herself. After Li Mu’en took over, Sisi thought Li Mu’en took away the job of her familiar social worker sister and hated her so much that for a year and a half, Sisi was unwilling to talk to her.

At first, Li Mu’en didn’t realize this problem. Sisi was warm to others. She always took the initiative to greet strangers and then started to talk about herself after a few pleasantries. When she first met with Li Mu’en, Sisi would hold her arm and go to the cafeteria with her to eat together and tell her about school gossip. As time went on, Li Mu’en realized that Sisi would not say a word about what she held deeply inside herself. She never bothered to ask people’s provenance, hobbies, families, or even their names. She just called them “hey.”

Now, Sisi called her “Sister Mu’en.” After what had happened in Shenzhen, Sisi no longer called Li Mu’en “hey,” and started to trust her. Sisi told the counselor and Li Mu’en that after having sex with the illegal cab driver, she felt so guilty that she bought a paring knife to cut her own arm. Every time this happened, Sisi said, “I hate myself more.” 

 

7

I first met Sisi in the fall of 2017. Starting from October that year, I often visited her on weekends during a three-month period. Sisi's dormitory was small, with two iron-framed high and low beds taking up half of the space. Sisi and her daughter slept on one of the beds, and the rest of the space was used to pile up clothes, diapers, school bags, textbooks, and the bed was spilled with cookie crumbs dropped by Little Guozi. The room was such a mess that there was nowhere to stand or sit. 

Over the past four years, Sisi had gotten used to volunteers coming in and out, and had come into contact with countless “hey”s and I was one of them. When she received gifts from people, she just put them aside and had no interest in opening them. Everything in her room was donated by others, hats, scarves, children’s picture books, wet wipes, and a bottle of Chanel COCO perfume on the table, which a male French journalist gave her and was already dusty. Sisi was used to all kinds of material help and did not care much about it. 

One afternoon in December, the staff members at the foster care station were having tea and chatting in the kitchen. Sisi sat down and started to complain about her back pain. She had been in pain for half a year. The volunteers had taken her to a hospital for a check-up. It was confirmed that she had a herniated disc in her lower back. After going through two births, the belly fat on Sisi’s body remained permanently visible, just as the scars from the C-section. Sisi had to put a few plasters on her back every day, whose strong medicinal smell irritated her classmate who shared a desk with her. 

“Your back pain comes from your love handles.” A young female staff member joked with her. After a few back and forth, Sisi pulled a long face. After the staff members were gone, Sisi whispered to me that the doctor had told her that it was her last pregnancy that had pressed on her lumbar spine. 

In mid-January 2018, Sisi borrowed a new volunteer’s cell phone and quickly added Xiao Zhao on her QQ messenger: She wanted to ask Xiao Zhao for a birthday present. 

“Did you miss me?” Sisi asked.

“I haven’t heard from you for a long time, and I’ve been waiting to hear your news.” Xiao Zhao asked her whether everything was alright in Beijing. “I really miss you. It’s cold now, wear more clothes. I was afraid that you wouldn’t be able to log onto your QQ or find my QQ number. 

The volunteer sensed that something was wrong. He excused himself and took his phone back, pretending to make a call, but quickly took a screenshot of Sisi’s chat log. Later, Sisi borrowed his phone again to continue to chat with Xiao Zhao, but the chat log had already been deleted. 

In the screenshot, Sisi kept asking Xiao Zhao: “Do you still love me? You won’t be as bad as Xia?” Once she got an affirmative answer from Xiao Zhao, Sisi asked again, “You won’t cheat on me, right?”

Sisi thought Xiao Zhao was her true love. One night, Sisi took the initiative to talk about Xiao Zhao with me, saying that although he didn’t sweet-talk, he told her everything about himself and had even shown her his mother’s Hukou and photos.

Sisi was lying on the bed, having just washed her hair, a yellow light shining over the bed. After knowing each other for four months, Sisi called me “Sister” for the first time. She’s less guarded with me now, and said in a sisterly way, “He loves me, and I love him. Anyway, we love each other.”

She looked just like a teenage girl and was not as quiet as she was during the day. She even had a gentle sparkle in her eyes. Little Guozi was running around in the room, jumping around for a piece of tissue or a black garbage bag, climbing into bed, and rolling herself over Sisi’s body onto the bedding. Sisi grabbed the child and tickled her, and the two of them rolled into a ball. 

Whether Little Guozi was Xia Changhe’s child remained a mystery. During the first year after her return to Shenzhen, Sisi lived in fear of Xia Changhe. She had to sleep with the lights on and dreamt of Xia Changhe going to the foster care station, banging on her door, yelling at her, and forcing her to give up Little Guozi. She often woke up from fear in her silent room. Next to her was a toddler snuggled up to her on her pillow. Sisi told the social workers more than once that Little Guozi looked more and more like Xia Changhe. 

The Hope for Children Relief Foundation planned to re-open the case after Sisi graduated from high school. “Little Guozi is the evidence, so there should be no problem in re-opening the case.” But Li Mu’en was still worried. Now that Sisi’s life was finally back on track, she had to give up so much to go to Shenzhen to re-open the case and spend several months going through the process. 

When the new volunteer found out that Sisi got in touch with Xiao Zhao, he reported it to the Hope for Children Relief Foundation on the same day. Li Mu’en added Xiao Zhao on her WeChat messenger via Sisi’s chat log, asking him about his relationship with Sisi. Xiao Zhao said that he and Sisi didn’t meet at the right time. He felt sorry for her and cried when he sent Sisi off for the last time at the airport in Shenzhen. 

Li Mu’en asked Xiao Zhao repeatedly if he had had sex with Sisi. Xiao Zhao tried to change the topic several times, saying that he loved Sisi and that he didn’t know that Sisi was a minor until he met the journalists. Li Mu’en did not give up, and in the end, Xiao Zhao admitted that he had sex with Sisi only once. As soon as he sent that message, he withdrew it immediately. Later, I asked Xiao Zhao on the phone, whether he could help testify, if the Hope for Children Relief Foundation would like to sue Xia Changhe. Xiao Zhao stammered and said, “Let’s talk about it when the time comes.”

Because Sisi got in touch with Xiao Zhao, the social workers wouldn’t want to accompany her back home to Hunan during the Spring Festival in 2018. Upon hearing the news, Sisi froze and protested loudly: “You cannot keep me from going home!” She burst into tears, and Little Guozi followed suit. On that day, she put down a diary entry: “They lied to me. I’d never trust Sister Mu’en and others anymore.” In her diary, she described her fear and hatred for her father: “If you must ask my father to come, I’d run away like I did before.” She said she could not forgive her father, who had forced her to give birth to Little Qiqi. Whenever she rang up her parents, she only talked to her mother, calling her father “old man” and “old fool.” 

Sisi had a photo of her father on the wall of her room. She missed her parents’ cooking of Hunan food. “My mom’s specialty is the fish braised in soy sauce. My dad’s cooking’s not bad either.” Learning that her father had started drinking again, she screamed into the phone: “We don’t let him drink, but he still drinks! How many times have we talked about this! No wonder he’s been hospitalized!”

During a counseling session a few days later, Sisi gave her diary to the counselor. The counselor asked Sisi: “You miss home, is it because you want more freedom? You got in touch with Xiao Zhao, was it because you wanted a home?” Sisi nodded. 

She was 17 years old, only a year away from adulthood. Since the Hope for Children Relief Foundation was an organization only for children, once Sisi became an adult, they would no longer be able to raise funds to continue to help her. Whether she would be able to enter society properly was anyone’s guess. 

 

8

In the countryside of Yongzhou in Hunan Province, Sisi’s parents lived with Little Qiqi for two years and took care of her. When I met Little Qiqi, who was used as evidence, she was already 5. On Friday afternoon, she had just got home from the kindergarten. She wore a pigtail and had a “good child” sticker on her forehead. She looked at me shyly. Soon she tried to approach me and took out her treasure chest, showing me one thing after another. The stickers for her stuffed bear, the red handle of the milk crate, the red cap of the oral liquid, and her most precious possessions: a stuffed white rabbit and a stuffed sheep.

I gifted Little Qiqi photos of Sisi. When a neighbor happened to visit, Sisi’s mother immediately put the photos away, saying, “We won’t let others see these. Gossip, you know.”

Sisi’s mother showed these photos to Little Qiqi alone: “This is mommy. This is Little Guozi.” Little Qiqi looked at these photos with glee, but when she looked at them a second time, she could not make out who’s who—since their separation in the summer of 2015, Little Qiqi has never seen her mother and sister again. There was no trace of Sisi at this home either. During their monthly calls, Sisi rarely asked about Little Qiqi on her own initiative. They were slowly becoming strangers. 

In 2016, Xia Changhe came again. Sisi’s father drove him up the hill with a tricycle, and the two of them did not talk on the way. During dinner, Xia Changhe once again proposed to bring Sisi’s family to Shenzhen. Sisi’s father did not say a word and went out after dinner. It was very cold that day, and Xia Changhe took a sweater from Sisi’s father to wear. Two months later, Sisi’s father called him specifically for the sweater. 

The whole town knew Sisi’s father. On the way down to the market on Sunday, we went to develop the photos that I had taken of Little Qiqi. The owner of the print shop took his time with the printing and packing. As I was leaving, he suddenly switched to Mandarin and asked me, “Are you here to interview them, too?” At a children’s clothing store, all the saleswomen were sizing me up. An older lady broke the ice and asked Sisi’s father while pointing to me: “Your daughter’s back? Isn’t she going to school in Beijing?”

Only Little Qiqi was unaware of her special identity. This child bounced around between Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hunan Province. Now she was back in town, where everything began, and this town became the center of rumors. In two years, she’d attend the only elementary school in town. Five years ago, it was at the same school that Sisi called the police to report that she had been sexually abused by three teachers. 

In the spring of 2018, Sisi said she didn’t want to continue her schooling in Beijing and wanted to go somewhere else to find a job. After the Hope for Children Relief Foundation repeatedly explained to her the realities that she would face alone, they gave her two options: stay or leave. In May of that year, Sisi’s father came to Beijing and picked up Sisi and her two daughters. At the age of 17, Sisi entered society. 

 

Postscript:

<Dongguan>

After Sisi left Beijing, I saw her twice more. The first time was in the summer of 2018 in the town of Dalang in Dongguan. 

She lived in a peasant house and paid a monthly rent of 350 yuan, living with a 35-year-old man named Xiao Chen. Xiao Chen, whom she met on a date two months ago, had been divorced once. He might have fertility problems. He worked in a towel factory as an ironing worker. 

The 17-year-old Sisi intended to marry this man. She posted on Moments on WeChat, “My hubby is doing housework. As soon as he gets off work, he mops the floor.” She posted photos of him lying in bed with her, their fingers interlocked “like pigs.” Another post was about going to KTV: “It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.” The founder of the Hope for Children Relief Foundation was quite worried after seeing these, “Ah, what could we do? We could only hope that she wouldn’t get into trouble. Other than that, we could do nothing.”

In May 2018, after Sisi left Beijing and just returned home, there were people who came to their house and proposed marriage. Xiao Chen was one of them. Sisi had a good time chatting with him on WeChat. She eloped with him to Dongguan. Her parents were furious and demanded gift money in the amount of 20,000 yuan but received nothing. 

In Dongguan, Sisi was not able to find a regular job. She did not have a degree, and each job lasted no more than half a month. When we met, she was “recruiting” for a company that sent out spam advertisements to help shell corporations to trick people into signing up with so-called acting agencies, from which she got a cut. She told her father that the job paid 5,000 a month, and the two of them had a big fight over how to divide the monthly salary. After working for two weeks, she found out that there was no base salary. Without any recruits, she did everything in vain. 

Sisi also tried to make herself more “social” by joining the micronet business group. In the group, an enthusiastic lady was recommending a burdock root tea and encouraged the group members to pay 690 yuan and start their own health sales business. Sisi also sold online English classes: “I cannot help but feel how come I did not have such a great English teacher when I was in school! She is so great!” But everybody in her circle of WeChat friends knew that she just dropped out of school. Her advertisement seemed so ridiculous. When a small loan company called, Sisi answered, “I am sorry, but I don’t need it.” She did not hang up the phone right away, and the person on the other end was speechlessly surprised. As they were supposed to end the conversation, Sisi was waiting for the next line. 

From the moment we met, Sisi was busy chatting with various people on WeChat. In Beijing, she was not allowed to use her cell phone, but now, it seemed to grow on her hands, and she could not leave it for a second. Upon hearing that I was coming, she sent me twenty voice messages in a row and wanted to video chat with me on WeChat. Once on video chat, it was just a matter of finding things to say: “Have you eaten? When do you go to bed? Is it warm at your house?”

As a volunteer for the Hope for Children Relief Foundation, I had the mission of taking Sisi to Shenzhen to see a lawyer. She wanted to sue Xia Changhe. 

Sisi’s boyfriend Xiao Chen drove us to the bus station. He was a bit chubby, twice Sisi’s age, and stuttered a bit. He knew all about Sisi’s past and what the trip to Shenzhen was about. He did not want to interfere. Once on the bus, Sisi kept sending the lawyer voice messages: “We got on the bus. The bus just left the station. We are heading toward Shenzhen North Station.” I couldn’t help but remind her that such voice messages were too casual and somewhat disrespectful. 

Sisi withdrew her messages and wrote instead: “We are on the bus. We’ll be in Shenzhen in two hours. Thank you, Mr. Lai.”

Lai Weinan was the co-founder of the Shenzhen Haihan Law Firm. He mostly represented civil and commercial litigations and only did some part-time pro bono assistance for minors every year. In the area of child sexual abuse, the Shenzhen Hengchuang Public Service Center for Minors that Lai Weinan established represented no more than five cases per year. Even though the whole process was free of charge, there had been only very few cases that had gone into litigation in a first-tier city like Shenzhen. People had only begun to be aware of child sexual abuse. 

Mr. Lai and his colleague Li Ding had been following Sisi’s case for years. It was not their first meeting, and the meeting went well. Lai spent two hours explaining to Sisi how to sign the power of attorney. He told Sisi that the legal assistance was free, and that this time, they really needed to resolve the question of whether Xia Changhe was the father of her child. Lai requested that Sisi should not come to an agreement with Xia Changhe in private. Sisi acted like an adult and replied firmly: “Xia Changhe is still running the kindergarten. We cannot let him abuse others.”

Mr. Lai suddenly said something to himself that he wouldn’t be cut out for the job as a journalist. When he previously encountered a case like Sisi’s, he was too emotionally involved. It was difficult for him to step back, but it had gotten better for him in the past couple of years. 

But Sisi was not yet 18. Her parents had to sue on her behalf. Thinking of their fickle attitude, everybody at the law office fell into a moment of silence. 

 

<Beijing>

I had a big fight with Sisi in Dongguan. I started writing this feature in the fall of 2017. Initially, I wanted to write about the aid situation of child sexual abuse victims in China. I looked around and found that most of the social work for child sexual abuse in China was still at the preventative stage of sex education. Only very few cases were reported and sought out legal assistance. There was almost no relief aid for victims afterwards. Sisi was the only long-term relief case at the time. 

Looking back now, in the fall of 2017, Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise was not yet published in Mainland China, and the MeToo Movement that first started off by exposing the American producer Harvey Weinstein gathered momentum in October. I looked up research materials for the interview and saw the small stack of psychology and sociology books on Li Mu’en’s desk. Later, I realized that the four or five books on her desk were almost all the relevant publications in simplified Chinese.

This feature took much longer than expected. At first, the Hope for Children Relief Foundation did not allow me to interview Sisi. Only after a month of contact did they let me work with her every weekend as a volunteer. I had never been close to Sisi. We spent four months together in Beijing. Every time we met, she seemed somewhat aloof. Sisi never seemed to be happy about the volunteers’ visits. For our scheduled appointments, she was lying on her bed nine times out of ten, with her hair draping over her head. She’d sit up lazily, and then we talked. She was not as welcoming as her 2-year-old daughter Little Guozi. 

Sisi was completely different than the expected image of a sexual abuse victim in the public eye. She was not fragile and never acted pitifully. The social workers tried to help her cultivate good habits. The next time we met, her room was still a mess. Sisi told Li Mu’en many times that she wanted to commit suicide. At first, Li Mu’en was terrified and ran over to her in the middle of the night upon receiving such a message. After a few times, it was clear that this was a common form of emotional blackmail. You know, it wasn’t her fault. 

Most donors of the Hope for Children Relief Foundation were middle-class families in Beijing. They bought high-end diapers and milk powder for Little Guozi. They took Sisi out for dinner. They gave her father money to run a fishpond and a chicken farm. Sisi was used to all kinds of outside help. Whenever Mandarin speakers showed up, they brought free food, free accommodation, and free school. Occasionally, Sisi would express her gratitude, but her tone was decidedly mechanical. You know, it was not her fault. 

When I finally told her I was here for an interview, Sisi froze for just a second and began to talk about her relationships with her dad and her time with Xia Changhe. She said that if her dad hadn't gotten her into trouble, she would be in college right now. She said that Xia Changhe was a liar and that she was dependent on Xiao Zhao. She was more straightforward than before. Li Mu’en said, Sisi was very smart, she should have guessed my identity a long time ago.

It took me a long time to understand that Sisi was very lonely. In Beijing, she was far from her parents and had no close friends. The social workers only played the role of supervisors. She could only exchange a sentence with her boyfriend on the phone every half a year. With only her 2-year-old Little Guozi by her side, her only emotional outlet was to beat her daughter and reprimand her. She had not yet learned about the sentimentality of a teenage girl. She had been uprooted and turned into a specimen in Beijing.

It's just that when confronted, her habits, which could no longer be corrected, still stirred up emotions that became a challenge for everyone who came in touch with her.

Li Mu’en once told me that every weekend, Sisi took a bus back home in the suburbs of Beijing, which took hours. I did not get it at first. How inconvenient! A year later, I came to understand that was a necessary kind of distance, pulling herself out of the high concentration of emotional labor. 

During our meeting in Dongguan in 2018, Sisi fished out a cigarette in an unnatural fashion. As she lit it, she looked at me slyly: “Sister, I started smoking again.” I knew she was testing my reaction. 

I initially acted as if I did not care but counting the times she smoked, I thought she’s becoming addicted. I could not help but ask her to stop. On the way out of the law firm, we agreed that it was her last cigarette of the day. 

However, at the Dongguan bus station, when I came out of the restroom, I found Sisi chewing gum, flustered. On a closer look, I saw half a cigarette on the ground, still lit.

I was furious, and my angry look did not go away. Sisi was speechless for a second and could not find any excuse. I did not say another word and flagged down a taxi to take me back to the hotel, my face sullen the whole time. I felt as if I was also holding her hostage. 

During the visit, I was trying to get hold of a scholar on child protection, whose doctoral dissertation investigated a group of elementary school students in Hebei Province who were sexually abused by their elementary school teachers. There had been no more in-depth social investigations than this so far. Her research was significant in that it eliminated illiteracy in this area. She also supervised Li Mu’en and provided criticism to the volunteers. 

That afternoon, the scholar called me out of the blue. She said she refused to appear in the media as an expert: “In terms of criticism, there are so few agencies of social work. In terms of praise, we are so far behind, there is little to praise.” 

I gave up the idea of an interview with this scholar and mentioned in passing about my argument with Sisi. I told her that I worried if this dragged for too long, all our efforts would be wasted. 

“Who are you to lecture her?” The scholar immediately said, “She didn’t invite you to help her. You came here to interview her. You got the information from her, and you wrote your feature. You’ve crossed the line by lecturing her.” 

“You’re angry, because you treat her like yourself, or like your own child.” She continued, “But she’s not your child. She smokes because she has no other outlet. She can only live on like this.”

 

<Hunan>

In the summer of 2020, Sisi and Xiao Chen went back home to Hunan Province. Because of the Covid pandemic, the export trade in Dongguan had been cut down. The towel factory owner had to work on the assembly line himself and laid off all his workers including Xiao Chen. In Sisi’s hometown in Hunan Province, a factory that manufactured masks was just opened. Sisi and Xiao Chen worked there. They cut the mask shells, put on the elastic and the nose clip. They made 3,000 masks per night, with a guaranteed monthly salary of 3,100 yuan. 

This job did not last long for Sisi. She always put the elastic at the wrong place, but the masks could not be reworked, otherwise they would have holes. Sisi sneaked out often to have a smoke at night. Her colleagues were surprised and asked whether she’s afraid of being fired. By the 8th day, Sisi resigned. At first, she complained that the team leader treated her badly. Then she admitted bragging about herself as a skilled worker but in reality, could not make so many masks as expected. 

In May 2020, I saw Sisi for the last time. She bore Xiao Chen a son, Sisi’s third child. The two did not have a stable income. Xiao Chen was taking out loans on WeChat. 

Xia Changhe’s lawsuit went unresolved. Sisi’s father did not end up pursuing it. He was angry toward Xiao Chen. The grandson was born, but Xiao Chen had no intention of giving a gift. Sisi’s father wanted her to find someone else. 

I stayed in town for a week, picking loquats with Sisi and Xiao Chen. I accompanied them as they went looking for new jobs. We ate together at the local food stalls. I took Sisi to the Maternity and Child Health Hospital to have a checkup. It was early summer when the threat of Covid had just ended. Nobody wore a mask in town. Sisi wandered around and was in no hurry to find a job. 

On our last night, we sat at the dock. Next to us, the Xiangjiang River flowed peacefully. Sisi said she wanted to bring her two daughters over here. Xiao Chen’s parents could drop them off and pick them up at school. Little Qiqi was a slow eater and tended to eat poorly at home. Perhaps she would complain about the lack of parental love when she grew up. Sisi thought it was unfair for her father to demand 40,000 yuan as gift money from Xiao Chen, because he had only demanded 20,000 from others. 

Sisi felt a sense of freedom with Xiao Chen. Xiao Chen did not try to control her. She wanted to get married with Xiao Chen that year, hoping he would buy her a ring and that they would go for wedding photos. 

On that day, Xiao Chen also talked about getting married. He was born in 1983. In terms of gift money, it was “My mom said…” In terms of school fees, it was “My dad said…” He was already 37 but still planned to rely on his parents, who were over 60 and still did hard manual labor. In the end, Xiao Chen said that he had heard that the house of his family would be demolished and if Sisi brought her three children here and settled down with him, his family could get more demolition money. 

In the years we’d known Sisi, we rarely talked about Tang Dongyun, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, had two reductions, and would be released in 2023. 

In 2022, Sisi and Xiao Chen broke up, and their son stayed with the Chen family. 

 

---------

Sisi, Little Qiqi, Little Guozi, Xia Changhe, Wang Yifang and Li Mu’en are all pseudonyms.

 

Thanks to attorneys Lai Weinan, Li Ding, and Zheng Xuemei of the Shenzhen Longgang District Hengchuang Public Service Center for Minors, Dr. Hu Bojun of the Beijing United Family Mental Health Center, and the social worker Ms. Maggie Weik for their help with Sisi and with this article.