There are three kinds of foreign journalists working in Beijing: official media, such as China Daily;
The International Bureau with few personnel and difficult to crack;
Freelance.
As I did not want to re-enter the national media or find a job in the international media, I reluctantly resumed my career as a freelancer.
The staff of Asia Weekly continue to enter the office after the publication of the magazine, which is a way to provide our new unemployed people with daily life.
One of the editors of the magazine is Tom McKenzie.
Tom is as big as me, from England, Jude low-handsome and has a good reporter instinct.
A year and a half ago, my first weekend in Beijing, we met through friends.
Tom came to the city in early 2006, and like me, before joining Asian Weekly, he had already invested time in the official media.
Tom got along well with me and became good friends in summer.
Just a few minutes after Jasper told us he was going to close the magazine, the staff silently absorbed the news, Tom looked up from his computer and called me from across the office
"Mickey," he said.
I don't know what he's thinking --
Or how do I pay-
But I don't care. I was in.
We decided to report some stories on the road, but we didn't know which stories and where.
We still have no plans after several brainstorming sessions.
Tom and I realized that the trip was more than just an adventure.
We are all in our 20 s, not in our career that we want to be.
Tom wants to be a broadcaster.
I would like to write a topic for international publications.
We all know that to take our career to a new level, we need to name ourselves. we don't think there is much time.
No matter what stories we have to report, they need to be good.
A week after Asia Weekly was closed, Jasper asked the editor of Asia weekly for lunch.
He apologized for what happened and said he believed that we could all be freelancers if we re-publish our story in different markets.
"Don't look for stories that all foreign media are doing," he told us . ".
"Be sure to repackage the story and sell it three or four times.
Remember, sex can be sold. ”Sex sells . . .
Back in the office after lunch, Tom and I thought about the sexy stories we could sell.
Then I thought: Maggie's-
The nightclub is frequented by lonely foreign businessmen, some Chinese daily foreign experts and Mongolian prostitutes.
Maggie recently reopened after being shut down throughout the Olympics and she never brought me close to sexual temptation.
The few times I went there made me feel frustrated and guilty, but since the night of the Potter birthday party, I have been curious about the club and the Mongolian women who frequented the club.
I never talked to any of Maggie's girls about anything substantial, but I wanted to know their story.
Why are there so many available Chinese women, so many poor Chinese women, working girls living in Maggie's study, in other bars often frequented by foreign Mongols in Beijing, how they ended in China, what made them Maggie shut down during the Olympics, some of the regulars that murdered Maggie, rumors of all Mongolian prostitutes surfaced.
This is a story to be written.
Tom and I did some research online. We found the U. S.
According to the State Department's Trafficking in Persons report, human trafficking is an increasingly serious problem, with between 3,000 and 5,000 Mongolian women and girls being lured or forced into prostitution abroad each year.
Many people are recruited by deception, often friends and relatives, and most of them are eventually in China.
Many people come to bars and karaoke bars in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities in China;
Others are further south, in Las Vegas, Asia, in the sauna and casino of Macau.
We found an NGO posting a story online about human trafficking in a city on the Chinese side of the Mongolian border called Erlian.
We have never heard of it.
We learned that Erlian is famous for the dinosaur bones found in the dry salt lake in 2006, and the city is a crossMongolian train
On the way to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator and Moscow-
Stop the switch meter.
According to this story, the prosperous oil town Erlian is also a major human trafficking center, the first stop for victims to travel inland and the last stop for victims of human trafficking, due to fear of domestic discrimination, after being trapped in a brothel abroad, there is no other place to go.
The article talks about the street of Erlian with brothels and the abused trafficked women who live and work in dirty small apartments.
Tom and I searched online for any similar articles written in mainstream media.
We found nothing.
We think it's a great story, and we start planning the strategy of reporting it.
We have a list of potential contacts and a list of possible dates to travel to Erlian, where we will somehow enter the brothel and find victims of trafficking.
To learn more, I contacted several NGOs with Tom.
They confirmed the issue and filled in some gaps.
Most of the victims were uneducated and eager to get out of poverty.
Some are already prostitutes but are misled in terms of wages and conditions;
Others are attracted by advertisements in local newspapers that promise to provide overseas scholarships or provide vague employment opportunities.
Recruiters usually have contact in the destination country
It is often women who have been abducted by themselves.
NGO staff told us that these women are often physically and mentally abused once they reach their destination country.
Many were beaten, forced to take drugs, raped and repeatedly sold.
Women who are trafficked often find themselves in a system of "trapped slavery", and employers demand reimbursement for travel expenses and other expenses.
Debt could be badly damaged.
Some girls ran away, but most girls were forced to stay for a few years because they didn't have the money, travel documents and any kind of help.
Some women returning to Mongolia continue to suffer.
Many people need advice on the treatment of depression and sexually transmitted diseases.
Their family avoided them.
With no work experience and no choice, some went back to what they knew, turned themselves into human traffickers, or went back to prostitution in cities like Erlian.
Our plan continues to move forward.
Tom contacted a friend of his, Esso. Esso, a former Mongolian journalist living in Beijing, raised two teenage sons.
She will come to be our translator.
We got in touch with photographer Jim Wasserman.
Jim is forty years old. six-year-
The old man from Philadelphia has worked in the news media all over the world.
He has been a freelance worker in Beijing for three years.
We decided to meet at a bar at Holiday Inn Lido, a place known as a gathering place for Mongolian prostitutes.
While drinking beer, we told Jim what we thought.
Go to Erlian and then go south to Macau to write a story that we hope to publish in a large media in the United States.
He's ready.
To get our report off the ground, we tried to talk to some Mongolian girls gathered in the bar.
They are happy to chat but don't like to talk about their stories.
"It may be difficult," said Tom . "
In fact, I wonder if we can get the story.
We don't know what we're going to find in Erlian, and I suspect we'll even find victims of trafficking, let alone have them talk to us.
But unemployment and bankruptcy, I think we have nothing to lose.
"Don't worry," I lied, lied, after a pint.
"We will solve it.
"The night bus from Beijing to Erlian smells of foot, body odor and smoke.
Passengers sprayed a few cans of air fresheners to cover up the smell of cocktails, but none of them worked.
After midnight, it was cold and dark outside.
There are about 50 passengers on board, most of whom speak Mongolian.
They carry large plastic bags wrapped in tape in red, white and blue, filled with cheap goods purchased from the Beijing market for cross-border sales to go home.
Everyone made a row of beds.
I can't sleep.
I was lying in an awkward angle trying to squeeze the frame I reached out into the small bed and I was trying to read a book with a pocket flashlight between my teeth.
We arrived at the second company at 5 in the morning. m.
Still in China in the dark and cold, but hardly.
A taxi driver took us to a hotel.
When the night attendant showed us the room, there were cockroaches under the bed.
During the trip, I stayed in a hotel with cockroaches and the situation was worse, but after a long and sleepless bus journey, I needed something more comfortable. We all did.
The second hotel the driver showed us was clean and had a hot shower.
Next to the bed in our room there is a sex pack with condoms and a variety of joy enhancing creams --
The first sign of a two-connected transaction.
After a few hours of sleep, we set out to the market in the city.
A few minutes later, two old Inner Mongolia women with black teeth approached us and asked if we were looking for girls.
Before noon.
We told them they didn't, but asked where we would find them.
In the north of the city, they told us on Jinqiao Street.
We continue to walk in the city.
There is a statue of a naked woman in the center square of Erlian, her hair flowing, her palm sticking out a globe, the paint falling off and turning yellow.
In the Forgotten Cities of China, you will find this kitsch, but this one is different from Mao Zedong's statue and other heroes in Chinese history.
We asked the locals what it meant.
They told us about the beauty of Mongolian women.
The corner of the square is the town market, where dozens of Jeeps are parked, loaded with goods, and drivers are standing nearby, smoking, waiting for one of the daily trips across the Mongolian border.
We hired a taxi driver to take us around town for a day. three-year-
The ancient Mongolian nationality is called Hawa.
We asked him questions and he answered them in Mongolian through Esso.
He said: "Yes, there are many Mongolian girls here.
Hava said the girls spent about 300 yuan. fifty-five dollars—
But according to their age and "experience", prices have dropped significantly.
We asked hava to take us to the brothel.
He parked outside a police station on the corner.
Golden Bridge street light area.
There is a big arch at the entrance of this street.
We decided that the four of us would get too much attention together, so Esso and I would go first and see if we could talk to anyone and Tom and Jim would go later.
It was a sunny afternoon and Golden Bridge Street showed signs of life. In glass-
Women of all ages curl up on the sofa, yawn and watch TV.
Some sweeping and clean windows lined with dolls and stuffed animals;
Others went to a grocery store on the street to buy cigarettes and green tea.
Every few minutes a taxi passes through the tall arch near the street entrance of the police station to get a girl who works all night off.
Walking down the street, I was very nervous and knew my existence well.
We didn't see any Westerners in town, where I was tall and obvious, walking on a street with a brothel in the middle of the day.
I felt like everyone was looking at me, but when I looked around and looked at the women in the window, and a bunch of men in leather jackets smoking and talking, I noticed that no one was paying attention at all. Esso, young-
Looking at her late thirties with long, straight black hair, she stopped in front of a room and several girls were lying on a colored sofa.
"Do you want to talk to them ? " I hesitated. “I don’t know.
"Come on, do you think they can speak ? "
She grabbed my arm and opened the front door.
The room was full of ashes and cigarette butts.
A puppet played a large piece of broken drywall on the floor and drank a bowl of solidified milk.
Sitting under half a poster
Naked American blonde, three young women smoking on two sofas.
When we walked in, the girls in there barely looked up.
They seem to have just gotten up, their hair is messy and they are wearing loose sweaters and sportswear.
Esso told them that we were doing a story reporter and we wanted to ask them a few questions.
One of the women
Chubby, heavy makeup, green nail polish, dyed with brown hair --shrugged.
"Okay," she said.
Her name is Alimaa. She was twenty-three.
She told us that she worked late the night before and was exhausted today.
Two years ago, in Ulan Bator, she and a friend were recruited by two men to work in a karaoke hall in Beijing.
When she arrived in the Chinese capital, her recruiter told her that she had to be a prostitute.
They made it clear that she had no choice.
"They took us to different rooms in the hotel and showed us the Chinese girl who was raped," she said in her translation of Esso, which I wrote in my notebook.
"They said, 'Take a look, this happens if you don't.
I took notes frantically and tried to capture all the details.
This is exactly what our story needs, and we got this in our first interview.
When the reporter reports such a story, there will be some numbness.
You are recording terror to your notebook, but you are not really dealing with it;
It's like a surgeon who is not sensitive to blood.
I can hear the story of Alimaa but I can't feel it.
Later, I will feel sorry for her and others like her, but now I focus on one thing: get to know the story. She went on.
After Alimaa was taken to a hotel in Beijing, she put her passport on her boots and later that night she ran away.
Two days and two nights, before a Mongolian contact in Beijing took her to Erlian, she hid at a construction site.
Alimaa went bankrupt and had no place to go and started working in a brothel.
She has been in second place since then.
Another woman in the room, called Gerlee, a woman in her twenties. two-year-
The economics of the job explained that her face was round, her cheeks were Ruddy, and there was a faded heart tattoo on her shoulder.
She gave the boss 30% of what she did, a pint-
Throughout the conversation, it seems that Chinese men entering and leaving brothels did not notice our presence.
The boss paid the rent and the girls stayed in the room behind.
When I asked her if she felt trapped, Gerlee, came to Erlian after falling --
Go out with her inner Mongolia boyfriend and say, "I'm just looking for money.
Whether it's good or bad.
Esso and I thanked them and walked back into the car.
"It's incredible," I said, sitting in the back seat of the Haval car. “We got it.
"I told the story of Alimaa, and when I finished, Jim and I went for a walk, Tom and Esso went back to Golden Bridge Street for more interviews.
Jim longed for the soft light of the afternoon so he could go back and take pictures.
I pushed out the uneasiness I had just heard;
I know we have a good story and I am going through this rush.
While we were walking, I fell into the sewer halfway and thought for a minute that my leg was broken.
We went back and forth to the brothel that afternoon and Jim went back and took pictures alone.
The rest of us sat in Hawa's car, slowly up and down on Golden Bridge Street, watching the scene unfold on the street and in the window.
These women pose to attract customers.
Men stroll, hands in their pockets and view options.
It feels like we are undercover police, both stimulating and humiliating.
Later, Hawa drove us to the suburbs.
There are dozens of apartment buildings, brands-
New, huge, bought with oil money.
A high school has just been built and looks like it's in Orange County and there's a football field built with artificial lawns.
Erlian is a strange town, rich and fallen, and I feel the pride of a traveler who somehow comes to a place that does not belong to him.
The next morning, when we were walking in the city square, the same two blacks
Women in Inner Mongolia approached us.
Their faces were dark and tough, and they sucked some sugar.
One of the women asked us "you want girls" through Esso ".
"I can give you 300 yuan per person.
They can go to your hotel room.
"We said no and asked if she knew how these girls came here.
She said that human trafficking has become increasingly difficult;
Last year, border police stopped traffickers from carrying 20.
Four women entered China.
Still, trade is booming, she said.
"A lot of girls work here.
"Some girls know they will be prostitutes," she said . ". “Some don’t.
The second woman brushed it next to Esso.
She asked, "Are you Mongolian ? "
"Can you find us girls?
If you can find five of our girls, the brothel owner will give you 2000 yuan per person.
Esso politely refused.
We don't want to go back to Beijing by night bus.
We agreed to pay 1,000 yuan for Hawa. about $160—
Drive us back to town, eight. hour trip.
We drove past the Mongolian beauty statue in the city center and continued along the new apartment building and high school.
We passed the original statue of the dinosaur outside the city.
A Lei long.
A triangular dragon-Rex
It was built to commemorate the bones found in the dry salt lake.
We are excited to talk about how good our story is and congratulate ourselves on doing well.
Later, when I told my friends about this trip, when I was in the second company, I felt guilty because I didn't feel guilty and talked to those women whose lives were broken --
Compared to the women we interviewed, I felt guilty about my life.
Hava drove us to Beijing in his bad car.
Some of the Chinese brands I have never heard of, a rust bucket that is on the verge of collapse at any time.
The seats are too small, but after a year and a half in China, I am used to this.
I put my knees on the dashboard and watched the sun fall on the grass-covered Inner Mongolia plain.
A few weeks later, Tom and I went to Guangzhou by train in the Pearl River Delta, 20.
Four hours from Beijing
We read books on train trips and talk about our stories, travel and plans for the future.
As a freelance writer overseas, we accept a new identity.
We feel like stars in our own movies.
Jim flew down and met us in Guangzhou. The three of us took a picture.
A one-hour bus ride from former Portuguese colony Macau to Asian gambling city.
We're here to cover the second half of our human trafficking story, but we don't know what to do.
NGO staff warned us that Macau could be a place of violence and that those with a vested interest in sex trading would not be happy with three foreign journalists walking around the town asking too many questions.
Macau is a strange town.
It has been a Portuguese colony for centuries, but was returned to China in 1999.
As the same "one country, two systems" policy allows Hong Kong to remain relatively independent from the mainland, Macao is booming as a gambling destination.
The flow of money through Macau is about five times that of Las Vegas.
But Macao lacks the same pleasure as the United States.
Main hotels-
MGM, Wynn, Venetian-
While gorgeous, as impressive as their Vegas counterparts, it feels like no soul.
The restaurant and bar they stayed in were quiet.
The casino only serves serious gamblers.
The bar on the downtown street, lit with neon lights, sits on the ground floor of the humble office building, pumping cold air
Adjust and cruel European club music through their open windows.
The three of us stayed in a cheap hotel on the narrow streets of Macau's old town.
We were on the main island, only a few miles from the luxury hotel on Cotai Avenue, and we wandered around the neighborhood on our first day.
The building was out of repair.
The air conditioner leaks to the sidewalk below, and the walls of the building are stained as the water drops wind down.
There is a rural feeling in the old town where people run small shops on the streets and gather on benches to chat and smoke.
This is a mix of Portuguese and Cantonese.
The food was delicious-
We ate in a Portuguese restaurant serving chicken, rice, salted fish and hot bread;
And Atah Cantonese cave-in-the-
The wall of dumplings soup and duck slices is provided.
The city seems stubbornly nostalgic, proud of its past, and uncertain about the new reality of betting on bousd and private jets.
We cross the crowded crowd on the cobblestone streets of Senado Square in the heart of the old town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, not far from several churches and places of worship of different faiths.
From some of the streets of the old town, we can see the Grand Lisboa Island, the golden --Window, Lotus-
Formed in a disgusting shape, forming a line on the beach between the ancient, quaint, charming ancient city and Vegas in Asia.
We went through the crowded casinos, through the sky, to the Grand Lisboa --
Walking distance to its predecessor, stanley Ho, Macau's gambling giant, founded the Macau casino in 1970.
Lisboa Casino is a gorgeous, shiny monster show with fancy chandeliers, a man in a terrible suit, a woman wearing too much perfume and a big hair.
Lisboa feels like the scene of the Cohen brothers movie.
Jim commented on the photo: "This place is like a shag carpet, or like your aunt's house, everything is covered in plastic.
"In Macau, signs of sex trade are everywhere, from freelance prostitutes wandering in the casinos of major hotels to the entire floor of small hotels specializing in" saunas.
"Most of the young women working in sauna are from mainland China, as well as Southeast Asia, Taiwan, South Korea and Mongolia.
Many of them were sold to the owner of the sauna and were forced to work.
Their passports were confiscated and they lived in a small dormitory.
If they complain, they are threatened with violence or rape.
A year ago, according to a non-governmental organization staff member we interviewed,year-
The little girl's tongue was cut off by the kidnappers after texting for help.
In Macau, we arranged to meet with a Mongolian woman named Naran, who is an outreach worker in Ulanbaatar and is an international NGO in Hong Kong. She was twenty-
Four years old, tall and thin, long black hair, prominent cheekbones.
For the past four months, she has been looking for Mongolian sex trade workers in Macau and Hong Kong to try to understand their stories and, if possible, help.
"They don't want to talk to me," she said on Cantonese food on our first night in the city.
"They are worried about being killed.
Tom asked her how she knew the women.
"I pretended to be one of them.
He asked "a prostitute ". “Yes.
I told them that I had a visa from Hong Kong and when we talked, I asked them about their health and whether they felt safe. ” She went on.
"The traffickers control everything about the girls.
They threatened to call their families and say they were prostitutes in Macau.
The pimps use these girls as machines to make money, and they control them in any way to make them debt.
After dinner, Naran took us to the bar and sauna where she knew the Mongols were working.
She stopped outside the 18 saunas at the Golden Dragon Hotel.
The rainbow-colored light jumps over the entrance and next to it is a golden and red glowing dragon.
On the street, young people in suits try to attract customers to pass by the street.
We talked about how we were going to cover it.
Obviously, it won't be as easy as Erlian, and when we mention to Naran that we're going to try to interview these women, the prospect of violence comes up.
We decided that Tom and I would go to the sauna first and pretend to be a customer, Jim would come in later and try to take pictures with a hidden spot --and-shoot camera.
Tom and I climbed the stairs of eighteen sauna rooms.
We were welcomed by the waiter.
Up to twenty years old, wearing a loose suit
Who handed us the laminated menu with dead corners
The most expensive "Taiwan model massage" on the menu costs HK $1,914-about $250—
Followed by massages in Korea, China and the Philippines at different prices.
About half of the list is HK $1,705 "Mongolian massage ".
"We want to see the girls first," said Tom . ".
The young waiter replied, "no problem . "
He grabbed Tom's elbow and escorted us along a short corridor to the dimly lit bathhouse.
The circular room, lined with shower rooms along the wall, smelled of soap, while the steam came out of a large peanut --
There is a hot tub in the center of the room with dozens of men inside
Most of them are Chinese. There are a few foreigners.
Wait with a red towel.
In electronic music, about 70 women in underwear marched in front of men and turned around the hot tub.
Every woman has a number nailed to her bra.
I was surprised at how beautiful some of them were.
Others seem to be exhausted and flinch, and several have bruises on their legs.
Men quickly made a choice and walked down the line, standing opposite the girl they liked.
They touch each other and flirt with each other.
They have an hour.
Tom and I stood at the door and watched the waiter stand behind us.
"It's more frustrating than I thought," Tom whispered . ".
The waiter leaned between us.
"15% of the government tax," he said, tapping the index finger on the menu.
"It's cheaper to work by hand.
"We stayed in Macau for a few more days, visited more saunas posing as customers, and attended a conference on human trafficking where Naran spoke.
We had everything we needed and decided it was time to go back to Guangzhou and we planned to cover another story there.
On our last day in Macau, we took a taxi to Cotai Avenue, which is home to most of the big casinos --
The hotel includes the Venetian, the largest casino in the world.
We walked around the lobby of the hotel.
I bought a magazine from the souvenir shop and ate a 15-
A tepid pizza on the food court.
There is a fake canal in the hotel that winds and is in a low mood.
It looks like the Middle East man is boating on the boatman.
They gave us nowhere to ride, and we waved politely to show them off.
A few minutes later, the three of us stood on a bridge on the canal and watched it all happen.
I think of the women we have seen in the past few days.
I want to know, what are they doing now, the girls in the sauna, do their parents know where they are? They have friends here. they are young girls.
Do they have any plans for the future? Where will they go next?
I went to a brothel in Beijing to find Maggie. I took some coins.
Several Pataka Macau-
From my pocket, I made a wish and threw them into the water below.
Excerpt from Mickey moksley's apology to my censor.
Published by Harper all the year round.
Copyright 2013 for Mitch Moxley.
Reprinted with permission from the author and publisher.