Freedom Fighters

Behind Hong Kong’s Protesters, an Army of Volunteer Pastors, Doctors and Artists
By Andrew Jacobs

Volunteers with the group Protect the Children at a protest in Hong Kong last month.

HONG KONG — The pastor pulled on his respirator and ran directly into the fog of tear gas in central Hong Kong. 

He was trailed by a homemaker, a retired accountant and a middle-school teacher.
Undaunted by the pandemonium of gasping protesters, they pointed people to safety and poured saline into the eyes of those overcome by the fumes.
With their yellow vests and portable loudspeakers, Pastor Ka-Kit Ao and his volunteers are an unmistakable presence at the antigovernment protests that have upended this semiautonomous Chinese territory. 

They form human cordons between protesters and advancing police. 

They beg baton-swinging officers to go easy. 

And they solicit the names of those being hustled away in handcuffs so pro bono lawyers can follow up with assistance.
“I sometimes wonder whether we are doing anything of value, but we can’t just sit at home,” Pastor Ao, 34, said one recent afternoon before heading into the maelstrom with members of his group, Protect the Children.
Now entering their sixth month, Hong Kong’s protests have been notable for their longevity, and for the huge throngs willing to defy the authorities with their demands for democracy and police accountability. 

Thousands of protesters, including office workers, descended Tuesday on Central, the main business and shopping district, forcing businesses to close and paralyzing traffic and the city’s fabled tram service.

Volunteers treated an injured woman at a shopping mall in July. Protesters there had clashed with the police.

Behind the scenes, this largely leaderless movement has been sustained by a vast network of ordinary people who hand out bottled water and red bean soup at marches, drive home stranded protesters late at night and donate the gas masks that fortify demonstrators during their pitched battles with police. Hong Kong professionals have been especially vital.
Graphic artists create the eye-catching protest posters across the city. 

Psychologists provide free counseling to the emotionally distressed. 

And emergency room doctors, working in clandestine clinics, set shattered bones.
One measure of community spirit can be heard many nights at 10 p.m., when residents in densely packed neighborhoods open their windows and shout protest slogans to the heavens. 

Another is expressed through the crowdfunding campaigns that have raised millions of dollars for medical treatment, legal defense funds and other expenses.
“Without this public support, the movement would have lost steam a lot sooner,” said Victoria Hui, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame and the author of a book about the Umbrella Movement, the 2014 pro-democracy protests that fizzled after 10 weeks. 

“It encourages young people to keep going, giving them the sense they are not alone and that what they are doing is righteous.”
Although actions like setting the man on fire risk eroding support, the protest movement so far has enjoyed broad backing among Hong Kong’s seven million people. 

A recent survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that nearly 60 percent of respondents approved of the protesters’ violent tactics, agreeing that they were justified in the face of an increasingly aggressive police response and a government unwilling to compromise.

Posters and protest-themed art on a wall in the Ma On Shan neighborhood.

This public support presents a thorny challenge to the authorities, who have been hoping to quell the protests by driving a wedge between the increasingly radical agitators and those sympathetic to their cause.
“The more the government suppresses this movement and tries to scare people, the more people will step out and stand up,” said Pastor Roy Chan, a founder of Protect the Children, which has nearly 200 members.
The encrypted messaging app Telegram serves as the town hall for the support network, with dozens of channels that match volunteers to those in need. 

Most prolific are the channels offering rides to protesters affected by the subway shutdowns that the authorities impose to dampen protest turnout. 

The rides also help protesters avoid the police sweeps that target public buses.
Like many drivers, Patrick Chan, 38, a garment factory manager, said fear of arrest kept him away from the protests, most of which the police have deemed illegal.

Guilt and shame, though, are powerful motivators.
Mr. Chan spends hours in his beat-up BMW sedan ferrying weary, sweat-drenched protesters to housing complexes across the city.

“These young people are trying to right the wrongs that we have long been avoiding,” he said, referring to Beijing’s two-decade effort to chip away at the vaunted liberties that differentiate this former British colony from mainland China. 

“They are paying with their futures, risking the possibility of being locked up for years. We owe them.”
The sense of public service has also mobilized dozens of doctors, nurses and medics. 

Much of their work takes place in secret. 

That is because all but the most grievously injured protesters avoid Hong Kong’s hospitals following the arrest in June of several people who had sought care for broken bones and blunt trauma. 

These days, the injured are sometimes treated at clandestine clinics that provide X-rays and rudimentary surgery.
Dr. Tim Wong works the protests after his regular hospital shift. 

An emergency room doctor, he decided to act after the police made a number of arrests at his hospital, which he declined to name for fear that it might endanger his employment.
“Since then, no one has come to our emergency room for treatment, unless they are escorted by the police,” he said. 

“It’s outrageous. Hospitals should be sanctuaries.”
One recent evening, he hovered near the front lines of a skirmish as Molotov cocktails, bricks and tear gas canisters arced overhead. 

Many of those needing medical treatment were bystanders caught up in the mayhem.

Medical workers staged an anti-government protest in the lobby of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in September.

Just then, Pastor Ao and another member of his group rushed by carrying a man injured by a tear-gas canister. 

All three of them were weeping. 

“I can’t believe this is happening to our city,” the pastor wailed as they dragged the man to a first aid clinic inside a Methodist Church that has become a beacon for protesters.
Earlier that afternoon, Pastor Ao and scores of volunteers had gathered at a subway station to plot the day’s movements. 

After dividing up into teams of seven, he reminded everyone to refrain from chanting slogans and urged them to be polite to law enforcement authorities.
“They might call us cockroaches but we should refer to them as police officers,” he said. 

Then everyone bowed their heads in prayer. 

“May we have God’s protection and the patience, love and wisdom to deal with the police,” Pastor Ao said.
Volunteers say the police rarely return the favor, treating them as antagonists. 

In September, the police were widely criticized after a video emerged that appeared to show a knot of officers kicking a Protect the Children member as he lay on the ground. 

The man, wearing the group’s trademark yellow vest, was later arrested.
At a news conference, a senior police official dismissed allegations of abuse, suggesting that the video had been doctored and that what many saw as a person was actually “a yellow object.” 

In the weeks that followed, the group’s ranks swelled with new recruits, Pastor Ao said.

A volunteer driver is stopped at a roadblock set up by protesters in September.

Many of the group’s volunteers are retirees like Ah Lin He. 

A fiery, reed-thin woman, Ms. He, 68, was born in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and swam to Hong Kong in 1972 to escape the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. 

She doggy-paddled for 10 hours with five other people. 

Only three of them made it to shore.
“I’ve seen the repression and madness that can be unleashed by the Communists in China,” she said as the group trudged to a protest that had turned violent.
Walking beside her was Joe Pao, a 29-year-old pastor, who joined the group after a brief stint as a protester. 

“I realized I could do something more useful than throwing bricks,” Pastor Pao said.
He acknowledged that his role as a putative peacemaker was rarely gratifying. 

Most of his work involves urging the police to exercise restraint. 

“When they catch people, we tell them to please respect the powers they have and not abuse them,” he said. 

“The impact is definitely small.”
The majority of protest supporters operate more independently. 

Nam Kwan, a cultural foundation administrator, has fed, housed and comforted scores of youths whose parents, enraged by their participation in the protests, tossed them out of their homes.
She traces her transformation from silent sympathizer to frenetic den mother to June 12, when the police escalated their tactics by firing rubber bullets and beanbag rounds at unarmed protesters.
“When I heard the first gunshot, a bell rang inside me and I automatically found my place,” she said. “Nowadays my phone is on 24 hours a day because I’m afraid I might miss urgent messages or calls for help.”
In addition to buying protective gear for protesters, she coordinates financial support and car pools from wealthy friends eager to help but reluctant to do so publicly. 

Oftentimes, she finds herself on the street, dispensing hugs or patiently listening to the worries of young protesters.
“Every time these kids go to the front lines, they fear for their lives,” she said. 

“But what they fear more is abandonment, that one day we will all turn our backs and leave them alone.”

Why birth tourism from China persists even as U.S. officials crack down

In America’s Chinese enclaves, there is a cottage industry of Chinese midwives, drivers and doctors who accept cash and “maternity hotels” for the alien women during their pregnancies.

By Frank Shyong

At 10 a.m. on a cold morning in April at Whittier Medical Center, Sophia was born.
She was a healthy baby girl at 7 pounds and 1 ounce, with a future in America to look forward to, if she chose it.
Her mother, Tracy, came from Shanghai to give her this choice — a chance at the world’s best education, a safe childhood and reliable medical care without long lines.
“I’m here to give my kids better options,” said Tracy, who asked to be referred to by her first name because she has read stories about U.S. officials cracking down on mothers who come to America to give birth.
Even as middle class incomes in China enjoy explosive growth, and 96% of Chinese people in a recent Pew Research poll say their lives are better than their parents’, an unknown number of "birth tourists” like Tracy cross oceans each year to have their babies in America.
And in America’s Chinese enclaves, they find a cottage industry of Chinese midwives, drivers and doctors who accept cash and “maternity hotels” — apartments or homes run as hotels for the women during their pregnancies.
Chinese listing sites show several hundred maternity hotels in Southern California.
Anyone who lies about the purpose of their visit to the U.S. can be charged with visa fraud, but birth tourism per se is not illegal.
“There is nothing in the law that makes it illegal for pregnant women to enter the United States,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Critics, however, blast the practice as a way to gain citizenship for children by unfairly gaming the immigration system. 

And spurred in part by those complaints, U.S. officials at every level are exploring ways to crack down on maternity hotels.
That the practice persists, birth tourists say, is a testament to the hold that America still has on Chinese imaginations.
Restrictive family planning policies may have driven some Chinese mothers to give birth in America before 2015, when the one-child policy ended. 

But many others are simply curious about America and exploring the possibility of a life in the U.S., said Kelly, a birth tourist who has settled in Riverside County’s Eastvale neighborhood.
“China has developed very quickly,” said Kelly, who also declined to provide her first name. 

“But Chinese people still have this perception of America as a dream place to live, that it is bigger, better, stronger.”
In 2015, the State Department issued 2.27 million visas to Chinese tourists. 

It does not track what proportion of visas are issued to birth tourists. 

Childbirth is a legitimate reason to travel to the U.S., and as long as Chinese nationals provide the correct paperwork and evidence they can pay for their medical care, they will be issued a visa, department officials said.
But other federal officials have handled the issue differently, acting on suspicions that the practice involves large-scale visa fraud. 

Border Patrol agents at major ports of entry such as Los Angeles International Airport have recently tightened security for pregnant Chinese women and sometimes block them from entering the country.
And last year, ICE officials raided birth hotels in Riverside, Rowland Heights and Irvine, accusing the operators of tax code violations and of committing fraud by helping birth tourists get visas under false pretenses.
“People who provide false information in order to gain entry to the U.S. pose a potential security vulnerability,” Kice said.
In the San Gabriel Valley, where birth hotels are an open secret, local leaders field a steady stream of complaints from area residents who oppose maternity hotels. 

In Chino Hills, a group of residents protested the presence of birth hotels in the neighborhood, and Arcadia police even assigned a detective to investigate the businesses in response to residents’ complaints.
In 2013, Los Angeles County formed a birth tourism task force to tackle the issue. 

The task force has identified and cited 34 birthing hotel operators for running businesses on land that is zoned for residential use. 

But there is still no county regulation against running hotels for foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. for the sole purpose of giving birth.
The same year that authorities cracked down on birth tourism, “Finding Mr. Right,” a dramatization of a Chinese mother’s trip to Seattle to give birth, grossed $82 million in China, the ninth-highest-earning domestic film that year.
The film wraps the controversy of birth tourism in the familiar narrative confines of a sugary romantic comedy, telling the story of a Beijing tycoon’s wife who flies to Seattle to give birth and falls in love with a driver at the maternity hotel.
One of the first scenes shows her preparing to navigate customs by wrapping a loose cloth around her pregnant belly. 

At customs, she tells the officer that she’s here to “travel.” 

When he asks if she’s married, she responds by performing Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance.
Rosy depictions of the U.S. in that film and others fuel the American dreams of the growing Chinese middle class. 

And a deteriorating belief in China’s future drives still others to consider giving birth in America.
Food safety, pollution and income inequality are now among Chinese citizens’ top concerns, according to Pew Research. 

Just 6% of high-net-worth Chinese individuals say they plan to remain in China full time, according to a Hurun Report poll in 2015, and the U.S. is their top destination.
Authorities say it’s virtually impossible to tell how many Chinese birth tourists come to the U.S. each year. 

The Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank, estimates that nearly 36,000 Chinese nationals give birth in the U.S. each year, but “that’s just a guess,” said Jessica Vaughan, the center’s executive director.
Birth tourists are using U.S. citizenship as a safety net, Vaughan said. 

And they can use welfare and healthcare benefits that they did not pay taxes for. 

She thinks the government should make it harder for babies born from birth tourism to retain their citizenship by requiring them to spend the first five years of their lives in the U.S., rather than allowing families to take the babies back to their homeland.
“Birth tourism commodifies U.S. citizenship rather than keeping it something that is earned through the legal immigration system. It cheapens citizenship in the eyes of native-born Americans,” Vaughan said.

Karin Wang, a vice president at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, says she is concerned that such attitudes toward birth tourism reflect xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiment. 

She cast birth tourism as the side effect of a broken immigration system.
“If the immigration system itself worked better, then these convoluted paths that people take to secure status in America would lessen or disappear,” Wang said.
Birth mothers often arrive in the U.S. a few months before they’re set to have their babies because their pregnancies aren’t as visible then, and they’ve heard that officials block pregnant women from entering the country.
Many mothers stay in the U.S. at least long enough to observe the Chinese custom of zuo yuezi, a month-long regimen and diet that is supposed to promote health among new mothers.
Before and after the birth, the mothers, who are sometimes joined by their husbands, fight boredom in the suburban communities around Los Angeles where the hotels are often located.
On a recent weekday in Rowland Heights, a block from the birth hotels raided by immigration officials last year, Target was having a 50%-off sale on baby clothes and items. 

Pregnant Chinese mothers packed the aisles.
Tracy settled into a chair at the Starbucks in the Target, wrapped a jacket around Sophia, installed a toy in her chubby fists, then warmed her hands on a cappuccino.
For better or worse, Chinese mothers’ first impression of American life is often in places like Rowland Heights, a mostly-Chinese sprawling suburb of homes and vast strip malls 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Birth tourism is the neighborhood’s incognito economic engine — dozens of pregnant Chinese women visit these shopping centers each day, walking from nearby maternity facilities or transported by cars the hotel operators provide. 

There’s Osh Kosh B’gosh, Baby’s R Us, Ibiya Family, mattress and crib stores, doctors, dentists and Chinese banks.
Life in America tempts from the strip malls. 

Among the baby stores, there are home loans on offer, car rentals to go see the homes, real estate agents to guide shoppers and immigration attorneys to handle paperwork.
Many mothers, like Tracy, consider staying. 

Her reasons have more to do with China’s flaws than U.S. freedoms.
In Shanghai, she says, the buildings are tall and modern, but the rent is high. 

The skyline is beautiful, but the air isn’t clean and the food isn’t safe. 

The airport is architecturally impressive but inconvenient.

The people speak her language, but they are always judging and comparing, evaluating the clothes she wears, the home and neighborhood she lives in, the school her children will attend. 

A life in America is a break from all of that.
“Here people are not so competitive, trying to wear better clothes and use better things,” Tracy said. “I don’t even have to wear makeup.”
Later in the afternoon, two pregnant Chinese women wandered into the Starbucks at the Target with a pint of Haagen-Dazs each, searching for spoons
They couldn’t speak English, and the employees behind the counter were busy with a long line of customers. 

They settled for wooden stirrers, poking away small dabs of ice cream at a time, laughing at each other’s failed attempts.
The women are birth tourists from China who met in Los Angeles. 

Zhu is not married yet, and she’s not sure when she will be or if she wants to stay in the U.S. 

But she flew from Guangdong to have her baby because she says she has no other choice.
She says she’s fleeing family-planning regulations that fall particularly hard on single mothers in China. 

To have a baby, the government must issue a reproduction permit, and single women have had trouble getting them. 

In Wuhan, China two years ago, authorities even considered fining single pregnant women 80,000 yuan.
Rowland Heights, along with Arcadia and Irvine, have long been plagued with rumors that the communities host “mistress villages” — a slang term in China to describe a housing complex where rich Chinese men house their mistresses.
The rumors are unverifiable, but birth tourists, birth hotel operators, nurses and other people working in the industry told The Times that Chinese single women form a significant part of the birth tourism industry.
A baby without the proper permits can’t access public services like school or healthcare, Zhu said. And mothers giving birth out of wedlock face withering social persecution.
So a few months ago, she came to the U.S. alone to give birth. 

It was her unborn child’s only chance at a future, she said.
Green fields, tall trees, modern cities, stylish people and nothing to worry about — those are the things Kelly expected before she came to America to have her baby.
What she found was something slightly different: a big empty home in Eastvale, with nothing but suburbia to see for miles in every direction but the occasional strip mall and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Still, they own their home, something they could have never afforded in Zhejiang. 

And her husband, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, has found better career opportunities than he ever could have in China.
“As a young person in China, you walk slowly upwards, unless you have an uncle in the right place,” Kelly said.
Eventually she plans to go back to work. 

But for now her life consists of trips to the nearby library, walks to the park and time spent in the living room of their home, where on a recent weekday, she tries to steer some noodles into the mouth of her 7-month-old son.
For the time being, they plan to stay.
“We haven’t really decided that we want to be American, but we like America,” Kelly said.