tang ning was arrested. on august 7, three strange men knocked on his door at a motel in zhengzhou. they claimed to be from the subdistrict office, asked tang ning's name and id number, then grabbed his neck and dragged him into a car, taking him away as if they were "picking up a shipment."

the car drove to the "youth wisdom growth center" dozens of kilometers away. the three men were all employees there. this is a fully enclosed special training and discipline school. the 19-year-old tang ning is a child who needs to be "disciplined". according to his parents, he "stole things at the train station" and "just came out of the police station." not long ago, it was they who issued a commission to this institution and provided tang ning's identity and location information.

as soon as he got in the car, several men searched and emptied tang ning's pockets. during the next 40 minutes of driving, tang ning was pinned to the seat by the men with their arms around his neck. he was unable to move and even had difficulty breathing.

the men probably never expected that this was exactly what tangning had been expecting. rather than saying that they had captured tangning, it would be better to say that they were tangning's prey - the name and id number tangning gave were fake, her rebellious past was fake, her parents on wechat were fake, and even her two big "flower arms" were made of tattoo stickers. before the men arrived, the hotel had already set up three cameras. as soon as their car left the hotel, another car followed.

the teenagers named this cooperation "summer action". qin mai led the team; hu zi and xiao long had rich outdoor experience and formed an action team, taking on most of the tasks of climbing over the wall to enter the school; the relatively thin tang ning was responsible for housework such as washing clothes and ordering takeout. they put in all their efforts, especially the two boys in the action team, who kept saying "fuck the special training school" more than a dozen times a day, hoping to do something big.

in fact, this operation was more difficult than expected. they hid around the school for more than three weeks, moving day and night. before sending tang ning as an undercover agent, they had already fought two rounds of confrontations with the enemy.

their initial action plan was to find an insider in the school. although the action team had set up three cameras on the eaves of the courtyard, according to qin mai's experience, violence and harm always occurred in hidden corners that outsiders could not reach. in order to recruit an insider, the action team climbed over the wall and sneaked into the school, and randomly hid two notes with invitations in the shoes of students. they waited in front of the surveillance for three days, hoping to see someone accept the invitation and send the agreed signal, but three days later, the surveillance footage showed that the instructor led all the students to knock their shoes at the door of the dormitory. they were reported. the first battle failed.

a few days later, a bolder idea came up. they noticed a girl being punished standing on a bench in the courtyard under the sun for hours on the surveillance camera. "what if something goes wrong?" hu zi was anxious and suggested rushing into the school to grab the girl. isn't this the most powerful evidence? qin mai agreed to this action.

"would you like to come with us? we are here to save you!" that night, hu zi and xiao long put on camouflage uniforms, painted their faces with oil paint, and came to the girl with cross-covering. afterwards, the two regretted it very much, thinking that this was the reason why the incident went wrong. they were so busy saving people that they forgot to introduce themselves. the girl was confused and not only did she not follow us, but she was so scared that she ran straight into the inner room. a dozen instructors rushed out. another operation failed. relying on the slingshots and sticks they carried with them, the two boys barely escaped.

●a girl was punished to stand for a long time in a special training school. photo provided by the narrator

they pretended to be parents through a wechat account, paid a 2,000 yuan deposit, and made up a story about their experience. without showing their faces, they effortlessly sent tang ning to a special training school.

ideally, tang ning would use the recorder hidden in his shoe to collect as much evidence as possible. but the night he went in, his teammates suddenly realized that something was wrong. in the video the school sent to the "parents", tang ning's eyes and mouth were drooping, as if he was wilted.

the next day, 20 hours into the undercover operation, qin mai decided to close the net early. she entered the school alone to pick up tang ning, but she and the team waiting outside the school were surrounded by the instructors. both sides called the police.

at this time, tang ning had no idea what was happening outside. when the conflict broke out, the school locked more than 100 students, including tang ning, into an attic. they were asked to squat on the ground and were not allowed to communicate. as his friends had expected, tang ning was almost swallowed by fear at this time. from the moment he was violently pushed into the car, he couldn't control his shaking.

the attic was claustrophobic and hot, tang ning couldn't stand it anymore, he rushed out from the crowd of students, "i'm going to show my cards! i have a recorder, it can be live-streamed online!" the second half of the sentence was actually to scare them. he spent a lot of effort not to show his weakness: "we took down the surveillance cameras, we cut the barbed wire, we are here to mess with you!" tang ning later admitted that he was really panicked at the time, he was afraid that the instructor would "kill" him, so he confessed everything. in the end, they just took him to an empty room to stay there.

it was the police who finally found him. on august 8, the farce came to an end with the intervention of the police. as they left the school by car, tang ning felt relieved, but qin mai beside him said nothing, holding his friend's arm tightly with one hand.

before knocking on the door, qin mai and the people inside had never thought that one day they would face each other in this way. her idea that day was actually very simple. as a former victim, she would be more straightforward in ending the confrontation.

six teachers surrounded her, asking her, "why can't you tell us what's wrong?" "what have we done to you?" even though they didn't do anything, she still felt a strong sense of oppression. she kept telling herself that she was free and she would not be trapped here again.

more than a year has passed, and she still can't get rid of that memory. she said that the trigger for all that was simply telling her parents that she wanted to drop out of school and repeat a grade. it was 2023, and qin mai was a sophomore at a university in the north. this was the second university she had attended. in 2018, she passed the first college entrance examination and entered nankai university. because she didn't like the medical major at the time, she asked to repeat a grade, and her parents agreed, but later they forcibly intervened in her volunteer application after the second college entrance examination, causing her to go to a school she didn't want to go to. when she asked to repeat a grade again, her parents objected.

qin mai had had enough of being controlled and dominated for more than 20 years. she ignored her parents' objections and moved out of her home, planning to prepare for the third college entrance examination on her own. this move was unreasonable in her parents' eyes. a violent conflict broke out between the two sides, and qin mai, who lost control of her emotions, launched a fierce verbal attack on her father, who was then saying that he would take her out to play and relax. she didn't know that what was waiting for her was actually a trap.

just like what happened to tang ning, several strange men broke into her residence at the time. she tried her best to resist and finally called her mother before being carried into the car. her mother gave her a more fatal blow, "go with them."

after a seven-hour drive, she was dropped off at this "growth center." she lived there for two months, and the so-called "growth" education was actually a thorough obedience training.

every day, dozens of hours of running, "duck turns" and crawling make people exhausted. in the ideological education class, filial piety education is always the core, "you are worse than pigs and dogs for treating your parents like this." qin mai must listen to every word while suppressing her nausea, and then confess to her parents in the "ideological report". otherwise, she may be punished.

"stay up all night" is one of the most common punishment methods. students are required to stand on a small bench for at least 24 hours under the supervision of a specific person. in the victims' experiences she collected later, there were boys who were lifted up and thrown by the instructor, and a girl who was repeatedly pushed down by the instructor and pulled by her hair to stand up.

many students did not dare to discuss similar experiences until they left school. the school implemented a strict public opinion control system, with teachers selecting "ideological backbones" to monitor and report students' speech at any time. "don't say what you shouldn't say, don't look at what you shouldn't look at, don't ask what you shouldn't ask", "it is strictly forbidden to spread comments that damage the school", are written in the student rules that students must recite every day.

she learned to be silent, "when i heard those disgusting words or was physically punished, i forced myself to withdraw from reality." this indifferent and obedient attitude made qin mai appreciated by the instructors. she was frequently taken away from the school to the office area to help the staff organize materials. there, she not only had access to computers, but also had relatively free movement, which created opportunities for her to escape later.

more than a month after she entered the school, she had a chance to meet her father face to face. she wanted to have a good chat with him, "how long has it been since we last talked? you never listened to me seriously before." this made her father, who was still smiling a second ago, change his expression instantly. he stood up suddenly, "you are still like this! if you continue like this, i can keep you from coming out for the rest of your life! i will never come to see you again!"

qin mai was stunned for a moment, and then she felt an indescribable pain, feeling abandoned again. qin mai said that this was actually a common experience for many students there. after experiencing the same turn, a 14-year-old girl drank a bottle of iodine, and another girl jumped from the second floor. qin mai couldn't stop crying that day, and she started to have a fever that night, and the high fever continued for several days.

every day after that was unbearable for qin mai, and she began to think of ways to escape. in may last year, she used the office computer to contact a friend, and after planning for nearly half a month, she escaped from the office when no one was paying attention, jumped into the car that came to pick her up, and left the place completely.

she didn't dare go home, and couldn't go back to college. her parents issued a false certificate for her to take a leave of absence on the grounds of "colitis". now that the semester is halfway through, she has missed too many classes and can only return to school in the next semester according to regulations.

later, she went to a city in the south, working as a tutor while saving money. during that period, she was trembling with fear, registered a new wechat account, and did not easily leave messages online. she was too afraid of those lurking hands, thinking that they could easily make a person disappear from the original world, so she could only hide herself.

by chance, she found a group of young people on the internet who had similar experiences.

these young people usually work in groups, and sometimes cooperate with each other, forming a loose and hidden alliance. most of the alliance members are junior and senior high school students. they are accustomed to using "public opinion" as a weapon, making online videos and pictures to publicize the dangers of special training schools; radical ones are good at using force to attack, and they will rush into the school fully armed to save people.

not long after escaping from the special training school, qin mai joined a group called "chixing", which had nearly 100 members. the group leader was 15 years old and a high school student. he had a clear division of labor and appointed a psychological minister to the group to do psychological scales for everyone and provide companion communication. during the rescue operation, it might be necessary to locate and query identity information, and special personnel were also arranged to provide "technical support". qin mai served as the minister of external affairs here, responsible for liaison, communication, and deployment of operations.

in the past year, qin mai has participated in many offline rescue operations, including a younger brother who was sent to a special training school by his parents and his sister came to him for help; and a transgender person whose parents restricted their movements and kept him at home was approached by his friends for help.

this experience helped qin mai break free from her state of isolation and helplessness, and also helped her quickly establish her own camp. next, she decided to investigate the violence and harm inflicted on her by the special training school and unite the forces of her allies.

qin mai's team only had more than 20 people, most of whom she had recruited from other volunteer groups and social networking sites. in an alliance mainly composed of middle school and high school students, hu zi, who could maintain high efficiency, was an important force in the team.

hu zi first learned about the existence of the special training school through the news of yuzhang academy. he was fifteen or sixteen years old at that time, and the experience of his peers made him "feel very bad". he dropped out of school very early and drove a car in the south. he has rescued more than a dozen cases in the past few years. when taking formal actions, hu zi would wear camouflage clothes, a belt, and paint his face to prevent himself from being photographed clearly and posted online. the tools he must bring include a flashlight, a slingshot, an assault backpack and hydraulic pliers.

tang ning's hatred for special training schools stems from the experiences of his good friends. when he was in high school, two of his friends were sent to special training schools. later, some of them moved away from home, and some of them changed their personalities. "i regret not rescuing them at the time." since then, tang ning has often criticized special training schools online. once, qin mai noticed it and pulled him into his group.

tang ning was an introvert, and being an undercover agent was the most daring decision he had ever made. although he had prepared himself mentally, he did not expect that once he entered the door, the instructor's threats and the high walls covered with barbed wire would destroy his psychological defenses. he remembered his friends' joke, "pay the tuition fees in full after you get in," and he was afraid that he would really be left there.

in addition to the young people at the scene, there is another person who is also closely following this action hundreds of kilometers away. he is bei bei, a victim of yuzhang academy. seven years ago, he joined several victims to expose the illegal behavior of yuzhang academy. not only did he successfully shut down the school, but he also got several instructors convicted and imprisoned. bei bei entered the media for internship last year. in less than a year, he has written three reports related to the special training school.

during the "summer action" planning process, beibei has been helping them analyze and give advice remotely. what kind of evidence is the most convincing? can evidence that cannot be used in legal procedures be used for media exposure? as a person who has experienced it, beibei understands the choice and persistence of the teenagers, "this is their way of self-salvation. the more people think about themselves, the more they know what they have experienced."

although the action ended with a settlement between the two parties after the police intervened, qin mai and his partners did not intend to stop there. before leaving zhengzhou, they brought a loud speaker to the school gate: "students inside, please pay attention. if you encounter illegal phenomena inside, you must bravely defend your rights and do not believe their brainwashing." just after the cycle was completed, the school teacher opened the iron gate and rushed out, and the teenagers quickly jumped into the car and evacuated the scene.

from yuzhang academy to today, young people have never stopped rebelling and fighting. with more experience, this group of teenagers even figured out their own "action outline".

a 26-page document titled "analysis of escape methods for illegal kidnapping of minors in internet addiction treatment schools" was once circulated in various qq groups of the alliance. the members who participated in the writing said that this document is committed to allowing young people in danger to have the right to choose survival and safety; to provide complete safety solutions for victims who report crimes and defend their rights; and to let groups that rely on violence for profit understand that the weak in the blind spot are not as powerless as they imagine. the writing members called it the "twilight project."

section 2 chapter 1

the vast majority of kidnappings targeted in this article are carried out by groups of 2-5 people. the most pressing issue is to handle the relative position between the criminals and avoid being besieged.

1. adjust your own position and try to make each enemy team member be directly in front of you, and the person in front of you and the person behind you form an obstruction relationship.

2. keep moving while taking defensive measures to increase variables and make it more difficult for the enemy to control the situation.

section 2 chapter 2

if a suspicious person attempts to take you away under the pretext of police investigation or other excuses, you should identify him/her immediately:

1. observe the police uniforms. police uniforms must have four types of police insignia: rank, number, chest badge, and armband.

2. request them to show their id. those who refuse to show their id will be considered as counterfeiters.

ling zhi is a member of the "twilight project". he is 22 years old and said that he was sent to a special training boarding school for nearly three years because of his naughty personality in elementary school and his parents had no time to take care of him. ling zhi said that he had experienced almost all the corporal punishments known to the public today, and they were only more serious. "that was more than a decade ago, and there was no supervision like there is now."

after leaving school, ling zhi could not stay in the same room with his parents for a long time. once they met, there were endless quarrels and complaints. he could not touch any news about the internet addiction treatment school, which would also make him suffer and lose self-control. until 2019, the online author "wenrou" released a video, telling how he and other volunteers had been harassed, insulted and threatened for a long time after exposing yuzhang academy two years ago, and some volunteers were forced to commit suicide.

ling zhi saw the video online and said, "i used to avoid it and didn't dare to face it." the volunteers and students reported and sued the internet addiction treatment school together, which made him see another possibility. "i just want to be like them."

like hu zi, he often went to the internet addiction treatment school at his own expense, checked out the place, observed the situation, and then took "weapons" with him. while all the students were playing in the playground, he climbed over the wall and brought out the target to be rescued. he always had direct conflicts with the instructors in the school, and even some students. "it was inevitable that i would get hurt more or less." he could understand other students who came out to stop them. in such an environment, "obedience would make them feel better after returning, at least they would not be beaten for several days."

the twilight project was first launched in february 2022, and a dozen members were recruited. some were sent to schools to treat internet addiction, and some had certain english skills. according to the members themselves, they referred to foreign materials and textbooks written by top international martial artists and security experts. it took them 17 months to complete the document in june 2023.

in july of that year, ling zhi was invited to join the group and was responsible for making videos and uploading the content to public platforms in batches, hoping that "escape methods" could help more victimized students. sometimes he would also provide some survival advice to the escaped children, such as sleeping at the door of the hospital emergency room at night when they were short of money, or sneaking into the toilet at the subway station. although the environment was average, "at least it was 100% safe."

however, the number of views of the "escape methods" videos uploaded by lingzhi is average, and no children have ever given him feedback on whether these methods really helped them. it must be acknowledged that it is difficult to ask a group of untrained children in their early 20s or even minors to skillfully use escape and fighting skills to fight against the entire organization.

another more realistic question is, what happens after escaping from school? lingzhi said that most of the students they rescued, especially minors, will eventually be sent back home. parents, without exception, were surprised at first, "why did you get out?" after hearing lingzhi and the children's stories about corporal punishment and beatings in the special training school, the parents' expressions were also normal. some parents felt that "beating is the only way to control children."

this was the most helpless moment for ling zhi, "there is no other way. where else can i go if i don't send him home?" he once rescued a boy, but a few days after he sent him home, the boy's qq suddenly lost contact and there was no reply. ling zhi knew that the boy had been sent to prison again.

in july this year, lingzhi received a request for help from a 19-year-old transgender person named xiaoxu who was sent by her parents to a behavioral correction training school in hunan and suffered severe beatings. xiaohang, the person who found lingzhi, said that after learning that his friend had been taken away, he called the police and received a case filing notice. he also went to the community and the women's federation with volunteers and called the city government hotline, but failed to rescue his friend.

xiaohang was actually prepared for this outcome. he thought it was a necessary step before the battle, otherwise he would be questioned in the future as to why he did not go through the normal judicial process. at this point, he suddenly asked, "do you know ares, the god of war?" he continued to talk to himself, "ares, the god of war, only cares about fighting, he doesn't care who wins." while seeking help through legal channels, he found lingzhi online, trying to find the school's location and snatch someone. he said that under the circumstances, they could only win in their own way.

in the world of these children, almost all adults are synonymous with bad, untrustworthy and unable to provide help, but 46-year-old xu qiuju is an exception.

in september 2022, xu qiuju entered a special training school in henan as a psychology teacher. on her first day, she came to the school's "transformation growth camp" and found that most of the children had numb and stiff expressions. on that day, a third-year boy was just sent in by his parents. because he did not obey the order to change into school uniforms and asked to talk to his parents who had just left, the boy was pressed to the ground and an instructor hit him on the buttocks with a stick as thick as his arm. the boy begged for mercy again and again, and blood seeped through his pants, but he was still beaten for more than ten minutes until there was no sign of resistance.

xu qiuju was angry and shocked. she had never encountered such a "disciplinary method" before. she felt her heart bleeding. "more than a dozen children's faces were swaying in front of me." after returning to the city from the camp in the suburbs, she immediately consulted her friend at the police station, who told her to preserve more evidence. that night, she stayed up all night, searching for relevant articles such as "closed training camp", "yuzhang academy", "internet addiction treatment industry", etc., and wrote down her anger in her diary:

"this is not treatment at all, this is torture!" "corporal punishment, violence, and punishment, the so-called making children obedient, is essentially domestication."

the next day, jing haiyong, the founder of the special training school, took xu qiuju and two other teachers to a local middle school for public welfare consultation. before entering the school, jing haiyong said in the work group, "the key is to establish contact with the class teacher and let the class teacher know what we can do to help them." he sent a file that recorded the situations of more than 20 "problem students", such as "class 17, li xx, addicted to the internet, has not been to school for two weeks."

a week later, during the second consultation at the middle school, xu qiuju said that the target students and parents recorded in the files would be invited to the office for individual consultation. during the consultation, some parents might be told that their children's problems were more serious and could be sent to a training camp for further correction.

according to the official promotional article of the special training school, from 2016 to september 2023, jing haiyong and the teachers of the institution gave mental health lectures in at least 15 local middle schools. jing haiyong himself appeared in the local daily newspaper twice, claiming to have 17 years of experience in the industry. some parents also reported that it was the local psychiatrist and psychological counselor who first recommended jing haiyong to them, saying that "he has been doing this for nearly 20 years."

xu qiuju said, "many parents really thought they had found a lifeline and sent their children there at first."

perhaps because of the presence of an “outsider” like her, xu qiuju said that the camp instructors never beat the children in front of her. but every time she saw the children, “they had blood seeping out of their pants, limped while walking, and still had to train.”

in the camp, she tried to have a private conversation with each child. at first, the children did not trust her and were worried that the content of the conversation would be reported and they would be beaten again. she could only wait patiently. some children saw that the other people she talked to were not beaten and looked happy, so they slowly began to send her some distress signals.

she tried to secretly use her phone to record some children's voices, asking their parents to pick them up as soon as possible. the recordings could not mention that they were physically punished in the camp, so that the parents would not go directly to the school to question them and alert the school. "so i made an agreement with the children that in the recordings, they would only say that they missed home and that they would change for the better. they had to speak in a normal and relaxed manner, so that their parents would pick them up as soon as possible."

one boy recorded the video four times because he couldn’t help crying every time he pressed the recording button. after his mother listened to the recording, she “finally went to the camp to see the child, but she thought the child was fine.” the boy stayed in the camp for several more months.

after two months, xu qiuju still couldn't accept the way the school treated her child and resigned. she once seriously mentioned to jing haiyong the psychological trauma of her child after being beaten. the chat records of the two showed that jing haiyong said that he had been reflecting on it for the past two days, "try not to beat him in the future" and "accompany him with his heart."

she thought the situation would get better, but she didn't expect that the damage would last so long.

at the beginning of 2023, not long after leaving school, she received calls for help one after another. one night, the parents and children of the same family took turns calling her. the child said that he was standing by the ditch and really wanted to jump into it and die. the father in his 40s claimed that he had collapsed and could not support himself, and ran away from home for the first time. and the mother was crying.

xu qiuju knows this family. the child lives in the countryside and had good grades in the past. his parents had high hopes for him. after entering junior high school, the child showed signs of aversion to school. with the recommendation of a psychologist, his parents borrowed money from everywhere and spent tens of thousands of yuan to send him to a special training school, despite the average family conditions. "but after the child came out, he not only hated the beatings and abuses, but also said that he hated himself because he had no power to resist and had to please the instructors in that environment. he also had many accusations and complaints against his parents, saying that they all blamed him for ruining his life."

these accusations also make parents collapse. "the child's mother also feels that i have tried my best. we have spent so much money. they expect a good result, but the actual situation is completely different from what they imagined. the child's condition is even worse."

some parents initially approached jing haiyong to ask for an explanation, but gradually, "(jing) stopped answering the phone and replying to text messages." xu qiuju eventually became the middleman between the emotions of parents and children.

over the past year or so, she has tried to communicate with her children once a week, and made plans with them to go hiking or take walks in the park. she also assigns homework to parents, "for example, i would ask them to observe their mood swings throughout the day, under what circumstances they are easily irritated, explode, or lose their temper with their children uncontrollably, and sort out the reasons with them so that they can stay aware of their own emotions."

however, only a few parents consciously seek help from xu qiuju. she has enrolled more than 30 parents in the special training school, but only five or six of them have approached her to try to save their destroyed family relationships.

she has never charged these parents for psychological counseling, and she does not call the work she does "psychological counseling". "i have told the parents and children that what i am doing now is not formal and professional psychological counseling. professional psychological counseling has requirements for venues and time, and you can't even use private wechat to add visitors." another foreign social worker who has been with the child for a long time once accused her: you are not a qualified psychological counselor, and you don't maintain a good boundary with your child.

xu qiuju also struggled with doubts, but she later convinced herself, "if i really set boundaries with my children, i may not be able to get into their hearts. the support they can get is very little," xu qiuju paused and organized her words carefully, "no matter what method, i think the most important thing is to make the children feel that i am safe and supported, and that there are people who can understand me and accompany me."

in november 2023, xu qiuju went to the local police station with evidence including statements from parents and students, chat records, etc. that she had collected over the past six months, reporting the corporal punishment and beatings in the special training school.

before the "summer action", qin mai also thought about other ways to protect his rights.

she once told a police officer about her experience, and the police officer asked her if she had any problems before being sent to such a place. she was unwilling to accept this, and asked her friend who worked at the police station, who also advised her to give up, saying that it was likely to turn into a family dispute. shortly after returning to school, she went to a hospital's psychiatric department for help because of severe psychological distress. the doctor wrote "persecution delusion" in her medical record.

as for her parents, after she escaped from school, she held on to a glimmer of hope and wrote a letter to her father, which detailed her experiences over the past two months. her father's reply once again proved that her attempt was unnecessary, "it is impossible to educate a child with problems in a friendly way. (the school) will definitely take some compulsory measures, which is normal."

the predicament qin mai encountered is a microcosm of many victims in the alliance. social worker liu er has been engaged in youth protection work for many years. since 2017, he has assisted dozens of victims of special training schools in defending their rights. in liu er's view, when children are harmed in special training schools, whether from the perspective of defending rights or trauma repair, what is needed is actually the support of their parents. on the one hand, the damaged parent-child relationship and the child’s lost sense of security urgently need to be repaired; on the other hand, if the case enters a long legal process, it will be difficult for the teenagers to proceed if they rely solely on themselves, "especially minors. if they do not have the support of their parents, it is almost impossible to defend their rights."

in fact, in specific cases, parents are rarely willing to help their children defend their rights. lawyer shang manqing has taken over many similar cases, and the clients are basically the victims themselves. shang manqing said that the difficulty of this type of rights protection case is that "not only are the investigation methods limited and evidence collection difficult. it is also very difficult to promote the public security organs to file a case and the subsequent judicial procedures." shang manqing was also the attorney for the student lawsuit against yuzhang academy. the case was sent back for retrial and tried in other places many times. "in six years, the lawyers have changed four or five times, and everyone is exhausted."

xu qiuju, who tried to report the school where she taught, also encountered difficulties. after she called the police, the media reported the school's violations. xu qiuju said that at that time, public opinion was a big deal and the local authorities set up a special task force to investigate, but a month later, the police told her that the matter was very difficult and there was insufficient evidence.

due to the lack of support and the high cost of legal rights protection, the alliance has become the "self-help" choice for more and more children. in recent years, liu er has often been surprised by the boldness of children and the variety of rights protection methods they have come up with, but he is pessimistic about this. given the conditions of the children, it is difficult to form sustained and effective actions, and in the end it may just be a waste of time.

in august this year, when liu er and xu qiuju learned about qin mai's plan, they advised the children to give up more than once for safety reasons. but qin mai insisted on carrying it out. liu er said that they were actually worried about the children during those days.

qin mai is very grateful to these people, "they are all very special adults i have ever met." qin mai said that since she participated in the anti-special training school, she has heard too many opposing and derogatory voices, until she met these "adults", they helped her and told her very clearly: you are doing the right thing.

for qin mai, it seemed that she had to do something to fight against that nightmarish memory. after returning to class, she was forced to repeat a grade because of the interruption of several months of classes. many times when she walked on campus and realized that she was in the class of 2022, not the class of 2021, she couldn't help crying.

"i feel like this is not my life." qin mai said that she imagined herself to be wearing her favorite blue-purple suit, with a ponytail and a blue-white schoolbag, walking in the university she longed for, instead of wearing black every day like now. "i can't find my old self anymore, and i feel very sorry for myself."

after escaping from the special training school, she never returned home. she stayed with relatives during the spring festival and stayed in hotels during the winter and summer vacations. she avoided being alone with her parents, and even communicated online through a third party. when she first got out, she would accept living expenses from her father, but later, when her father threatened her to "be obedient" by not giving her money, she completely cut off contact with them.

not long ago, she and her allies made a video of "summer action" and posted it online, pointing out the violent corporal punishment in the school. a few days later, the special training school issued a lawyer's statement, saying that the content of the video was untrue and had affected the operation of the institution, and that it would reserve the right to pursue legal responsibility for the publisher.

lawyer shang manqing provided legal assistance to qin mai. based on the evidence qin mai currently had, he believed that the school was suspected of committing a crime. next, they will compile relevant materials and report the case.

tang ning also shared the video on his wechat moments. for him, the regrets he had in high school were finally made up this summer. he did not block his parents from watching the video, and a few days later he received messages and phone calls from them.

qin mai was also present when the call came in, and she guessed that it must be a voice of blame, just like what she usually faced in the past. but the situation was not quite what she expected. after hanging up the phone, both young people were in mixed feelings.

during the phone call, tang ning's father cried and said that he admired their courage very much, but he didn't want his son to do such a thing. his mother sent tang ning a letter on wechat, in which she wrote:

rather:

society needs justice, but the current power you have to speak out for justice is too costly! society needs to be awakened... even if such a school disappears, some parents still hope that a new one will emerge! this is like the weeds in the field, which can never be completely removed...

maybe one day, you will have a stronger social status, economic strength, and voice, and you may be able to do this with half the effort... or maybe in the future, we will have the opportunity to run an ideal school that meets the diverse growth needs of children, solves the confusion of parents, and guides parents to correct their views. then such dark schools will have no market and will die on their own. it's like planting a natural enemy of barnyard grass in the fields to make it disappear.

(except xu qiuju and shang manqing, all characters in this article are pseudonyms)