Deng Guilian’s husband Hua Haifeng was in Ganzhou where he had been investigating working conditions at factories that until at least March made shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand
When the police called, Deng Guilian was at an indoor playground watching her 3-year-old. It was 2: 19 p.m., Tuesday, May 30.
The man on the phone said her husband had been picked up on suspicion of making illegal recordings and taking illegal photographs. He told her she didn’t need to know the details, he just needed her address so he could send a formal notification.
“Could you please say that again?” Deng asked.
Her husband, Hua Haifeng, was a thousand kilometers (620 miles) away from her, in Ganzhou, a city in southeastern China where he had been investigating working conditions at factories that until at least March made shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand. He and his colleagues at China Labor Watch, a New York nonprofit, were preparing to publish a report alleging low pay, excessive overtime, crude verbal abuse and possible misuse of student labor at Huajian Group factories. The company denies the allegations.
Deng grew furious at the man on the phone.
“I have to take care of old people and children. All the money comes from him, ” she spat. “You tell me what I should do.”
There was a pause. “I don’t know, ” the voice answered.
She hung up without giving her address.
Deng, 36, had entered the swelling ranks of relatives swept up in Beijing’s crackdown on human rights lawyers and labor activists. Hundreds have been detained, leaving many of their extended families with no source of income.
Beyond financial suffering, the Chinese government wields great power over the lives of its citizens, which it can use to make things better – or infinitely worse – for those left behind. Wives, husbands, children and grandparents are left to look on solemnly as their lives are systematically dismembered until all that remains are the bones of fear: How will I feed my children? Will we keep our house? When will we see each other again?
Deng was terrified. Standing at the playground, watching children trying to catch goldfish, she felt like she might fall down. She didn’t know whom to talk to. Her husband’s ailing parents didn’t know what kind of work Hua did. They just knew he made money for everybody.
Above all, she had to protect her children, from sadness and fear and whatever else lay ahead. She would tell them lies and buy them chocolate late at night when they cried for a father they weren’t supposed to know was missing. It would be days before Deng herself could eat.
“Papa was taken away by a monster”
Rewind. Back to when idealism didn’t seem to cost so much.
Deng met her husband in 2006 on an online chat group for people from Nanzhang county, where they are both from. A petite woman with a quick, wide smile, Deng liked Hua because he made her laugh. Deng began working in factories after high school, helping to churn out clothes, toys and electronics across Guangdong province, the heartland of China’s manufacturing boom. She sat in on information sessions Hua organized to help workers learn their legal rights, and fell in love with both the man – even though she thought he was kind of short – and his ideas.
She wore a white Western gown when they married in 2010. It was a simple ceremony, at home, with no rings or fancy jewelry. She believed they were on the right side of things, working to make society better for everyone, not just the rich and the lucky.
Hua’s latest investigation had taken him inside the Huajian Group, which has pumped out millions of pairs of shoes a year for brands including Ivanka Trump’s from factories in China and Ethiopia. In May, Hua went undercover as a worker at one of their factories in Dongguan.
When he tried to travel to Hong Kong, he was blocked and taken out for lunch by the police, who warned him to stop the investigation. China Labor Watch, which has been exposing labor abuses for 17 years, says authorities had never made such a move before.
Hua kept working, turning his attention to Huajian’s factory in Ganzhou, along with his colleagues Li Zhao and Su Heng.
Right up until Sunday afternoon, Deng and Hua chatted and exchanged photos by phone: Their 7-year-old daughter, Chen Chen, in a new dress, their son, Bo Bo, in mirrored sunglasses that made him look like a little bug.
Then Hua went silent.
“You disappeared?” Deng texted Monday afternoon, hoping to convince herself it was nothing.
That night, Bo Bo inexplicably burst into tears. “Papa was taken away by a monster, ” the boy said. He told his mother he wanted a weapon so he could transform himself into the superhero Ultraman and fight the monster.
“You do not have a weapon to transform yourself, ” Deng told her child. “And you are not Ultraman.”
But the boy insisted he would find a magical weapon and save his dad with his great new power.
“Each one was like a wolf”
Deng got the call about her husband two days after he disappeared.
