Chen Jianxiong: Searching for Jia Pin

Jia Pin has disappeared once again, but this time there has been absolutely no word from him for more than several years. I privately asked several old friends who knew him well, but none knew the specifics. This has made me increasingly worried and concerned.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of personality, but in certain respects Jia Pin’s way of dealing with people and affairs indeed does not make him particularly well-liked. But that can never constitute a reason for everyone to pay less attention to or care less about him.

Because, first and foremost, he is one of our fellow travelers. In this contemporary era, with information technology so highly developed, a fellow traveler who disappears without explanation for years, with few people paying attention or searching, and even fewer asking about him, is, for those of us who watch out for and help one another, something I can only describe as an extraordinary tale—and even more as a reality resembling a cruel joke.

Here I also want to express the hope that more people will pay attention to Jia Pin, to this true idealist who has been missing for years yet has attracted little notice.

In fact, Jia Pin has not disappeared for the first time! By the same token, this disappearance should not be without a trace or any clues to pursue. I also hope that those who, though unable to speak openly, know something about the clues can provide me with some information, so that I can search for him again. My thanks to everyone.

It has been more than two months since I was released from prison again when I learned that Jia Pin had been missing for more than three years during the time I was incarcerated. I have always been concerned about Jia Pin, and for me this cannot stop at merely paying attention. This is because, on the streets of the South in the past, he was not only a fellow traveler who had advanced and retreated together with me, but also an old brother who had shared hardships with me, gone from the streets into prison, and eaten prison meals alongside me. That is why I cannot put him out of my mind or simply let the matter go.

Many people who knew or had heard of Jia Pin have probably also seen a picture that once circulated online. The location was marked as the crowded square outside Changping Railway Station in Dongguan. Jia Pin from Henan and Nie Guang from Hubei, risking arrest at any moment, unfurled a banner in the square and gave speeches and conducted publicity at the scene. The eight-character slogan on the banner was also an ideal we jointly pursued: “Democracy Constitutional government Human rights Freedom.”

Knowing that something cannot be done yet willingly risking one’s life to do it can only be based on the fearless courage of consciously acting in pursuit of an ideal. The courage this displayed was also an inherent characteristic and style of the street movement in the South: fellow travelers at the front and rear forming a unified whole, putting their ideals into concrete action, and thereby calling upon and leading more fellow travelers into the streets to carry them out and advance them. This was an important point of the “Southern Movement’s” practical position—“A single stand in the street is better than a thousand pleas.” But regarding this approach, for some of our so-called fellow travelers who prefer sitting and debating theories and pontificating about national affairs, they may express appreciation verbally while inwardly disdaining and refusing to acknowledge what these grassroots people do—isn’t that so?

On the contrary, over the decades, China’s democracy movement has never lacked theorists full of scholarly idealism who pontificate about national affairs. What it has lacked most are teams that respond to one another, form an integrated whole, and put things into concrete action to promote and advance them. Groups form a collective, collectives come together into a whole, and only the strength condensed in this way can truly become the main force for creating change. There is actually already a broad consensus, but ideas cannot be unified; opinions are varied and divergent, and the disorder of each faction occupying its own territory has never been willing to unite—this phenomenon is especially stubborn and conservative overseas. How could China’s democracy movement, thus resembling a rabble, truly accomplish great things?

I have gone off topic. Let’s not discuss these matters.

Let us return to the search for Jia Pin, who has disappeared once again. Let me also recount the process of searching for him after his first disappearance; perhaps it can serve as a lesson.

Jia Pin knew what the consequences of that on-site activity would be, and he soon received confirmation in the form of retaliatory suppression by the local authorities. That was also his first sudden disappearance, and there was likewise no word from him externally.

The square activity took place in mid-March 2013. As for the exact day, more than a decade later I can no longer recall it. But I still remember that he and Nie Guang were suddenly arrested and taken away in the middle of the night from the same rented residence. There was not even time to send out any information. Of course, I only learned the details of the arrest later, when we met in prison.

Under the southern sky, several days after Jia Pin was arrested and disappeared in mid-March that year, we spent several days making inquiries both online and offline during the then-intense Southern street movement, but received no news. Yuan Xiaohua, Wu Lü, and I decided to take several friends to Dongguan to look for him. We found the rented room where he had been staying in Tianxin Village, Hengli Town, Dongguan. Naturally, the person was gone and the room was empty, and asking the neighbors produced nothing. We had no choice but to report it directly to the police. When personnel from the local police station arrived, we pressed them about his whereabouts, and only then were we told by the police that he had been taken away by the national security officers of the Changping Public Security Sub-Bureau in Dongguan.

Once we had found a clue, we naturally followed the trail to the Changping Public Security Sub-Bureau in Dongguan. We found the national security officers at the sub-bureau and asked them about the matter, but they refused to respond to any questions about the disappearances of Jia Pin and Nie Guang on the grounds that we were not relatives. We of course refused to give up in the face of such evasive behavior.

After walking out of the sub-bureau, we divided up our tasks right at the entrance. Everyone bought ink, brushes, and large sheets of paper, and began writing slogans on the spot. We raised the placards; the themes were not only demands for the release of Jia Pin and Nie Guang, but also declarations of our positions and wishes. One person’s calligraphy was particularly good. Those taking photographs on the spot, giving speeches, and shouting slogans made the scene lively all at once.

More and more onlookers gathered at the site. Soon we were surrounded by the sub-bureau’s police, who had almost all rushed out after hearing the commotion. We were all taken into the sub-bureau and questioned separately for several hours. Even now, the initial handling of the matter at this stage still feels surprising to me! Praise Dongguan’s national security officers for their “wisdom and sense of justice”—they were the ones who had arrested Jia Pin and Nie Guang; criticize them for “acting recklessly”—yet they released all of us who had openly protested against them at the entrance to the sub-bureau. After the questioning ended, they not only released us, but even returned the placards to us. There were just more placards than before, and they had specifically bought a woven sack to hold them all.

We walked out of the Dongguan Changping Sub-Bureau, but don’t be optimistic just yet. The unexpected consequences of our search for Jia Pin at that time were not yet over, and neither were matters between us and the authorities. Yuan Xiaohua and I were later held to account one incident after another, and were dealt with three times in total. But that is another story.

After several hours of questioning, our trip had not been in vain: the national security officers finally truthfully told us where Jia Pin and Nie Guang were. We learned that they had been transferred and detained at the Dayouyuan Detention Center in Dalang, Dongguan.

After walking out of the entrance to the Changping Sub-Bureau again, Yuan Xiaohua and I said goodbye to everyone one by one. There were more than ten people in this “everyone,” including some fellow travelers who had come from Shenzhen and Dongguan to meet us after we sent out information on the way to Dongguan. Because we were concerned that this might cause them trouble, it would not be appropriate to disclose all their names here.

It was already late, so Yuan Xiaohua and I found an inexpensive hostel nearby and spent the night there. The next day, carrying a woven sack of placards, we tracked Jia Pin to the Dayouyuan Detention Center in Dalang, Dongguan. While asking about Jia Pin’s specific situation in the detention center compound, we again clashed with the detention center police. The prison guards reported it to the police, and the police report brought officers from the Dalang police station in Dongguan. After briefly questioning Yuan Xiaohua and me, whom the prison guards had already restrained, they took us to the Dalang police station.

While we were being questioned at the Dalang police station, because the matter concerned Jia Pin’s case, the police sought instructions from the national security officers of the Changping Sub-Bureau. After Yuan Xiaohua and I had eaten boxed lunches, we were escorted back to the Changping Sub-Bureau for the national security officers to handle.

They were no longer so accommodating toward us this time. The placards in the woven sack were spread out one by one and photographed for evidence. After successive interrogations, it was already afternoon the following day by the time the relevant procedures were completed. Yuan Xiaohua and I were sentenced to 15 days of administrative detention for allegedly disturbing public order and sent to the Dayouyuan Detention Center in Dalang.

At that time, everyone sent to Dayouyuan had to work every day. The next day, in the workshop to which we were taken for labor, I took advantage of an opportunity to transport finished products and looked around along the way. I finally found Jia Pin, tall and thin, bent over making plastic flowers. The brothers had finally reunited in prison; exchanging smiles, we were overwhelmed with emotion. At noon, we squatted together in an open area of the workshop to eat. I also learned in full detail how he had been arrested and been unable even to send out a message. Serving time together did not matter; after all, we had gone to such lengths to find him, and sitting together, eating prison food and chatting, put our minds at ease!

But 13 years later, after Jia Pin has disappeared again and there has been no word from him for years, where are you, Jia Pin? And this time, the search is no longer equipped with the conditions we had back then. But we will not give up. Wen Fei in particular, despite continuing to be restricted after his release from prison, has still been doing his utmost to make inquiries online and offline.

I have always been reluctant to write long articles, so I’ll stop here!

A few words aside: After serving our not particularly long terms at Dayouyuan, we were released one after another and all returned to Guangzhou. At that time, the atmosphere on the streets of the South remained intense. Not long afterward, under the guise of “concern,” Guangzhou’s national security officers began another round of dispersal and cooling-off measures against us. One after another, we were again driven out of Guangzhou by Guangzhou’s national security officers. After returning to our hometowns, when we gathered again in Chibi on May 25, we were subsequently arrested once more by the Chibi national security officers, who had prepared in advance. As for Yuan Xiaohua and me, our detention in connection with the search for Jia Pin in Dongguan became one of the major charges for which Chibi’s national security officers made several trips to Dongguan, forcibly added the so-called charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” and handed down heavy prison sentences.

July 2, 2026