Xia Dajun, the second-in-command of Ward 4, had grown haggard and stern over the past year or two, his eyes seeming to conceal unspoken worries. On the day Falun Gong practitioner Zhong Hua was released from prison after serving a 7-year sentence, Xia escorted him to the prison gates. Before they parted, he quietly handed Zhong a small packet of tissues and, in a hushed voice, asked for a favor.
After seven years away, Zhong finally returned home and reunited with his family. As life gradually settled back into a routine, he remembered the packet of tissues.
He opened it and found a small memory card hidden inside. The card contained only one document. When he opened it, his eyes fell on the title: “Letter of Withdrawal From the Party.” It was written in Xia Dajun’s own hand.
A CCP prison guard was asking a former prisoner to help him withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party.
A prison guard’s unexpected awakening
Zhong suspected that the letter was connected to the extraordinary changes he had seen in Xia over the previous year or two. But what could have caused a CCP prison guard to undergo such a profound awakening?
He began to read.
This was no ordinary letter of withdrawal from the Party. It was Xia’s account of a struggle between good and evil, an awakening born of suffering, and a painful reckoning with the life he had led. As Zhong read, the events behind Xia’s transformation seemed to unfold scene by scene before his eyes.
In the letter, Xia addressed Zhong directly.
A final act of protection
Zhong Hua, by the time you read this, you will have left prison, returned to your family, and resumed a life of freedom. Congratulations.
For seven years, you held fast to your Falun Gong faith, refusing to compromise or utter even a single word against your conscience. By standing your ground, you could very well have faced the horror of forced organ harvesting. Yet in the end, you were neither sent to the operating table at the prison administration bureau’s hospital before your release, nor forced into a police car sent by the local “610 Office” after leaving prison.
These were no coincidences.
Three months before your release, I used my position to alter your evaluation report. That report portrayed you as someone you are not — and not as you would have wanted to be seen. The responsibility for that lies with me, not with you. But the strategy worked, and you returned to your family alive.
You must be shocked. This is a complete turnaround from the person I used to be.
I know that over the past year or two, everyone in prison — from the guards to the inmates — has been gossiping about me behind my back. They say: “Instructor Xia has been acting dazed and lost lately. Has something happened at home?”
Their guesses were correct. Something did happen at home, and it completely changed who I am.
That is why, on the day of your release, I will hide this letter on a memory card inside a packet of tissues and hand it to you at the bus stop. I know the irony: a CCP prison guard whose hands were stained with the blood of Falun Gong practitioners entrusting his withdrawal statement to a former prisoner.
But you are the only person I can trust.
A devastating blow at home
It began on September 29, just two days before the National Day holiday. My only son, Xiao Jie, was taken into criminal custody by the Municipal Public Security Bureau. He was only 12.
He was detained at the municipal detention center on a charge of intentional homicide. The victim was one of his classmates.
We were told that we could not visit him while the case was pending. It was not until last Thursday that we received a copy of the verdict: our son had been sentenced to 15 years. Soon, he would be transferred from the municipal detention center to the provincial juvenile detention center.
So the very next day, my wife and I rushed to the detention center.
Seeing the system from the other side
Through the glass of the visiting room, we saw our child sitting inside.
Could this really be our Xiao Jie?
His head was shaved. He wore a thin yellow vest. His face was sallow and gaunt, and his eyes darted nervously toward the police officer pacing behind him.
Exactly 15 months had passed since our son was arrested.
Fifteen months.
How had a 13-year-old boy endured all that?
In that moment, I finally understood the suffering of the families I had once ignored. I finally understood the terror of losing a child to a system that crushes both body and spirit.
On the other side of the glass, my child had become a prisoner with a wary gaze. On this side, I had become a distraught and helpless family member of a prisoner.
That moment was my awakening. It was the collapse of my old identity.
My throat tightened. All the words I had prepared dissolved into a few broken sentences: “What’s done is done. Take care of yourself in there. Mom and I will come visit you often.”
My wife spoke through tears, pouring out 15 months of grief. The deputy warden quietly gave us extra time because he knew my position. He told me that dozens of juveniles were detained every year in our small town alone and that many faced bleak futures. With good behavior, our son might be able to reduce his sentence.
My wife tried to give him hope.
“Aim to be released by twenty-four. Twenty-four is still young. You can still go to college.”
Her words seemed to rekindle a small spark in his dull eyes.
After the visit, we walked home beneath a gray sky, our heads lowered as though we wanted to hide from the world.
Once inside, my wife collapsed onto the bed in tears. I went to the study where my son had once done his homework. Everything was still there — the desk, the books, the chair — except the child who used to sit in it.
There, I finally confronted the truth I had avoided for years.
I replayed my entire life in my mind. Some memories grew more bitter the longer I examined them; some truths became clearer.
I began to believe that behind my family’s tragedy lay what I came to see as “a larger, darker hand” — the same system I had served, enforced, and defended.
For the first time, I understood why Falun Gong practitioners spoke of karmic consequences.
“Karma, karma! The ‘karmic retribution’ that Falun Gong practitioners speak of has now befallen me!”
This was not merely grief. It was an awakening.
It marked the beginning of my break from the Party.
So I wrote this long letter — an outpouring of anguish and regret, and a desperate attempt at redemption. I could not undo what I had done, but I could choose a different path.
I could save at least one life.
I could save yours.
(To be continued)
Translated by Audrey Wang and reviewed by Helen London
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