Reply to Bureaucracy No. 1

We are very grateful for your concern and your suggestions. The process of seeking help has been as follows:

First, we contacted our constituency’s Member of Parliament. The MP immediately reached out to our national government’s foreign affairs department. The foreign affairs department told us to contact the Canadian Embassy in China. The Embassy told us to contact the Consulate in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou Consulate said they had no way to help and told us to find a Chinese lawyer. The Chinese lawyer took us to a Chinese government department, and the Chinese officials only gave us one sentence — “suspected job-related crime” — and then told us to leave.

And that was the end of it.It sounds ridiculous, but it is the truth.

We very much want Chinese government officials to answer two questions:

First, how is it possible for us — two underage foreign citizens — to have committed any kind of “job-related crime” in China?

Second, in the absence of any evidence, is imposing restrictions on the personal freedom of underage foreign citizens considered a form of kidnapping?

Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to demand answers to these questions from them. We earnestly ask our national government to ask the Chinese government these two questions on our behalf.

At the same time, we suggest that our government issue a travel warning to all citizens. If we could have known in advance that a certain country’s government might place restrictions on foreign minors, I believe no reasonable person would allow their children to enter such a country.