A Detainee's Diary

by Amy Smith (Canada)

I didn't expect to find China

I had been to China ten years ago with my father. I loved it and wanted to share a glimpse of that with my husband, Mamoun. I was returning to China now as a 32 year old who had been to 32 other countries. I was confident that this 12 hour layover in Beijing would be easy. Our goal was to see the Wall of China, catch a meal near Tiananmen Square and walk around before heading back to the airport. My husband and I recently launched our Youtube Channel and had bought some impressive camera equipment. We were looking forward to capturing some footage. We opted out of taking a group tour because we wanted to travel at our own pace. So we got a private driver and were on our way. Just one problem, I overlooked getting an interpreter. Our driver didn’t speak a word of English and I found myself stumbling around Google Translate. Apparently our driver was only giving us three hours for the wall or he would leave, with or without us. I thought, “No problem, we could probably do it in two”. We were dropped off and I couldn’t get my bearings. We walked 30 minutes out and I was so thankful I left my heavy knapsack with valuables like the GoPro and my DSLR back in the vehicle. We approached some buses and that’s when Google Translate told us we needed to walk exactly 30 minutes back to get our tickets. I must have missed the sign. When we got to the ticket stand, I did some quick detective work. I saw a picture of a cable car going over the wall and figured we didn’t need that and got us walking tickets instead. We quickly caught our bus and were dropped off at the bottom of a mountain. We would have to climb all the way up before getting to the wall. I was menstruating and my flip flops didn’t look too sturdy. We were half way up the mountain, when we looked at our watch. We had 30 minutes left before our driver left with all of my equipment. That’s when we knew Mamoun was not going to see the wall. The guilt of not getting cable car tickets, not carrying my backpack and missing the sign just wrecked me. After translating what happened to our driver, he talked us into paying him more to take us to Tiananmen Square. Once all of our money was officially gone, he dropped us off and refused to wait. We took a heavy breath and figured we will grab some cash and a taxi back to the airport when we were done. We started to film our experience. That’s when the local police detained us. We waited until they found someone who spoke English. They thought we were journalists. They thought we were reporting about the recent tensions in Hong Kong. They thought we were spies! Really we were just exhausted. We didn’t see the wall, we didn’t see the square. We did see a lot of guns and stern faces. They finally let us go when Mamoun cracked a few jokes and deleted a whole lot of nothing off our cameras. We spent our tenth hour trying to find a taxi, some cash and a washroom. We found 2/3. The washroom would have to wait. On our way back to the airport, our taxi driver took pictures of our passports, took pictures of us and eyed us from his rear-view mirror. At the airport lounge, I am certain a woman was dedicated to watching us. She followed me into the washroom and waited in front of my stall. She followed me as I gathered all the caffeine and sugar I could find and stood beside me as I scarfed it down. She was right next to me when I returned to the washroom to wipe my face dry. I’m sure she would have aggressively held my hand all the way to the plane if I let her. I didn’t expect to find both fear and heartache on our 12 hour layover, but here I was face to face with her.