As many of you know, we’re working on a documentary about kidnapped children in China. It’s part of the reason this blog is updated less frequently than it used to be. It’s also part of the reason I’m really poor, so feel free to help us out with a donation ((Money donated goes to funding the filming of the documentary, primarily covering our travel and lodging costs, which are higher than we expected. Donations also come with special benefits for the donors, see our “Finding Home” page for more info.)) if there’s money burning a hole in your pocket.
Anyway, in connection with that project, we will be helping some parents publicize their photos and information, in the hopes that someone somewhere out there has seen their children. If you have any information about the children in the photos below or if you think you may have seen one of them, please either contact the parents directly (if you speak Chinese) or contact us and we will get in touch with the parents ASAP. Please feel free to share these photos with others via Twitter, Weibo, your own blogs or websites, etc.
I’m not going to bother with translating the names, stories, and details at the moment; what’s important is the faces. But if it helps, several of these children were definitely kidnapped, possibly by the same gang, as more than one set of parents said that neighbors reported seeing their children being snatched and loaded into a white van.
Please click on the thumbnails to view full size images:
Posters from Taiyuan Street Event:
Posters from our interviews:
We will have more details on these cases in the future, and their information is already posted on all the Chinese sites (Baobeihuijia, Baidu Xunren, etc.). But getting more eyes on these photographs can’t possibly hurt. So take a look, and if you happen to have seen any of these kids before, tell us, or tell the parents directly. Thank you!
Miscellaneous Notes
- Oddly, on our trip to Taiyuan, we got kicked out of multiple hotels that refused to book foreigners at all. I know hotels have to provide a copy of foreigners’ passports to the local PSB, but I’ve never heard of there being rules against allowing foreigners to stay anywhere at all. But in Taiyuan, we were forced to stay in a three-star hotel, no place cheaper would take foreigners. Nice, but it cost about four times what we’d planned to spend on lodging for the trip. And it was a pain in the ass (somewhat literally) to have to drag ourselves and our mountain of gear up and down the streets of Taiyuan from hotel to hotel. The whole thing was strange, thought it worth remarking here to see if anyone else has had similar experiences recently. I’ve traveled in China plenty, but never run into this issue before.
- We (ChinaGeeks the blog) are always looking for writers, but we’re also looking for someone to help out with tech stuff, if there’s anyone out there interested. Specifically, I have a couple ideas for features to the site I couldn’t implement myself; they require someone familiar with WordPress development and probably some knowledge of a couple different coding languages. If that’s you, and you’re interested in helping out, let me know.
- This may be redundant at this point, but for more frequent updates on China stuff, as well as more bitterness and occasional cursing, you can follow me on Twitter (@ChinaGeeks), and several of the other contributors are on Twitter as well (for example, @AlexSTaggart and @ahkyee, and very occasionally 三水 uses @ChinaGeeksCN…did I forget anyone who’s on Twitter?) So, if you use Twitter (and you should), follow us!
chinageeksarchive 
Yeah, not all hotels or lodgings are licensed to serve foreigners. This has always been the case though I’ve only run into it once or twice personally, in Shanghai no less.
LikeLike
This isn’t terribly recent, but when I was traveling around rural parts of Sichuan and Gansu early last year there were a couple cheap hostels that turned me away, telling me quite frankly that foreigners weren’t allowed to stay there. I couldn’t really discern a pattern for the rejections, though.
LikeLike
I’ve been turned down by a few hotels in Henan. One in Kaifeng, another in Zhoukou. Also two in Sichuan (Leshan and Chengdu). I remember the one in Kaifeng told me that it wasn’t safe for foreigners and I thought that was sort of weird. Others gave me the same reason Kai pointed out.
I was wondering if any of you ChinaGeeeks had a sina weibo I could follow??
LikeLike
My Sina Weibo is also @ChinaGeeks, although I update it much less frequently than Twitter, and pretty much exclusively in Chinese. But feel free to follow me! Not sure if anyone else has one, will ask around.
LikeLike
It’s not so much an issue of licensing. I stayed in a hostel for a month in Suzhou, and after awhile I was practically working there. The owner explained to me the issue of foreigners in hotels. Essentially, if a hotel take a foreign guest, they have to go down to the PSB and register, and the police officer has to inspect every few days. When they inspect they are quite stringent, and if a hotel is not legal, or has some illegal operations, or code violations, they could be called out on it. Consequently, many hotels, will not take foreign guest.
Also, their is no such thing as hotels being licensed to take foreigners, but the PSB can reject foreigners staying in certain hotels for various reasons. At the Suzhou hostel, while I was there, the police very directly told them not to accept a Yemenese guest as they thought he was a “terrorist” (seems more like an excuse you would find in the US), and demanded his immediate eviction (just a few hours after he checked in). I would imagine in certain cities the police may also use this authority to disbar any foreigners from staying in hotels they find unbecoming or just a potential sore spot. I’ve been rejected for such reasons in Shijiazhuang and Shangrao, Jiangxi.
LikeLike