Duan Jinggang’s life changed forever in 2011 after he held up a banner in China’s southernmost island province Hainan telling “all corrupt dictatorial regimes” to step down.
Amid a wave of pro-democracy uprisings in China inspired by anti-government rebellions in the Arab world in 2011, that defiant banner landed Duan in a Chinese police station, where dozens of police officers beat and interrogated him in a grueling 24-hour session.
In a frantic journey for safety that followed, Duan scaled mountains on the China-Vietnam border, and was left homeless and destitute wandering around Southeast Asia, desperate to find a place for refuge. For weeks, he spent his nights on a straw mat in the hallways of a Cambodian buddhist temple, where the cold breezes frequently shook him awake. Often, he had only one meal a day from whatever alms the monks shared with him….