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A Chinese massage woman in New York fell to death by fishing and was killed by law enforcement. What happened before?
American Chinese massage parlor is filled with Chinese girls who are forced to engage in prostitution...
A man with long arms and long legs is carrying a black bag and walking in the morning hustle and bustle of Flushing, Queens for some reason. He walked into the silent Quanfu Funeral Home, walked down the marble steps, and came to the place where the death documents were handled.
An employee in black clothing took him behind a wooden screen that provided a little privacy. On a table covered with golden tablecloth, there was a small white box, and a portrait inlaid in the frame behind the box was Song Yang, the man's only sister.
At Quanfu Funeral Home, Song Hai (left) reached out to his sister Song Yang's ashes
At the end of November 2017, Song Yang jumped down from the window on the fourth floor or fell down. At that time, the police were knocking on her door and wanted to arrest her again for prostitution. She landed heavily on Route 40, a half-block street known for restaurants and illegal massage parlors, with a woman shouting "Massage, massage?" on the sidewalk.
Song Yang was 38 years old at the time.
Her younger brother Song Hai and his mother Shi Yumei rushed from their home in northeast China to the strange Flushing, where they spent the next 15 months. Song Hai, 36, did not believe the police's statement and began to investigate the cause of his sister's death by himself. He posted a missing person notice on the street, exchanged information with reporters, and asked his sister's sex work colleagues.
He began to be convinced that the police had thrown his sister out of the window, and believed that the authorities were involved in covering up the facts. This is not the case with surveillance videos, and the investigation conducted by the Queens Attorney’s Office found no evidence of misconduct by the police, which is irrelevant. A strong sense of suspicion deepened his grief.
But Song Hai's investigation came to a standstill. The money was spent. The visa has expired. There is also a wife and five-year-old son waiting for him at home. It's time to return home.
is the time to bring my sister home.
Kevin Liu, an employee of the funeral home, opened the box. He explained to Song Hai that the box contained the cremation certificate needed by the customs, and a sealed bag containing Song Yang's ashes.
Song Hai raised a difficult question: how much rent is required to rent storage space for more than a year - about $600. But the funeral home knows the misfortune of the family very well. Whenever my younger brother and mother come to visit Song Yang's ashes, this mother would keep crying.
Mr. Liu finally decided to charge US$200. Then, at Song Hai's request, he wrapped the box with a piece of red cloth, a color that was to express his desire to pass through the soul safely.
Song Hai took out a black backpack from his bag, and the two carefully put the box and the frame in. Mr. Liu helped Song Hai tie his backpack to his back, shook hands with Song Hai, and said to him, "The journey is smooth."
The journey is safe.
We spent most of 2018 tracking the hardships of Song Hai and Shi Yumei in Flushing, living in the pain of losing their loved ones Song Yang. Later, in October last year, " New York Times " published a long report on her death and subsequent follow-up report under the title "The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail".
Song Hai carried his backpack and looked towards the balcony on the fourth floor. His sister fell from there during a police raid in Flushing, Queens.
It is now the end of March, and Song Yang's younger brother and mother have some last-minute things to deal with before ending their trip to the United States - including picking up things from the funeral home.
My sister's ashes were in her backpack. Song Hai walked across Northern Avenue and walked south on Myanmar Street. How many times have he walked on this street, looking for clues and sorting out what's in his mind.
walked through Wanning Pharmacy and Rainbow Women's Clothing Store. In front is the landmark building - St. George's Church in the Episcopal Church, where his sad mother found solace. Church members volunteered as volunteers for the church’s weekly activities to provide free food.
A construction worker wearing a hard hat leaned against the gray stone wall of the church, smoking a cigarette. He is the embodiment of Flushing's transformation into a land of glass-walled buildings. Song Hai walked past the blue and white smoke that the worker vomited.
He crossed a busy intersection on Roosevelt Street, where he once grabbed his sister's "boss": a man with a square head shape and elusive, and people called him "Lao Li". To use an apartment on Road 40, and to the illusion of being protected, Song Yang once paid Lao Li a rent of up to $400 per night.
The nervous encounter between Song Hai and Lao Li attracted onlookers. Song Hai waved his hand to stop a police car and insisted that the police arrest the "boss". The police explained that they could not do that in the United States, and letting Old Li run away hurriedly, which made Song Hai both confused and angry.
Song Hai continued to move forward, deafing the street hawking of immigrants. Woman selling beauty products. Man promoting tax filing services. A hawker selling Chinese books, one of the books is called "FBI Mind Reading: US Federal Bureau of Investigation Teach You to Decipher Body Language".
Song Hai turned right and walked on 40th route. He walked on the sidewalk south of the road, where his sister once called to the passing men.
In 2013, the recession of Saipan forced Song Yang and her husband to close two local restaurants they owned. After that, she and her husband, who were much older than her, came to Flushing. Because her husband couldn't work, she had to busy looking for trouble. Not long after, she began to provide paid sexual services on Route 40, a dangerously vulnerable job.
She has been beaten, robbed, and sexually assaulted. She has also been arrested twice, and she had feared that it might hinder her chances of legal residence in the United States.
In late September 2017, Song Yang was depressed after being arrested again. “I feel like I’m hopelessly degraded,” she wrote in a WeChat message to a lawyer trying to help her. "What's the point of living without a goal or direction?"
On the night of November 25, 2017, she once again became the prey of the trap arrest operation. The operation was carried out by an operation team composed of 10 police officers. The code name they gave her was "Jane Doe Ponytail". She brought an undercover officer to her fourth-floor apartment in the dilapidated building with a house number of 135-32 and offered to provide him with sexual service for $80, but he refused and left. Almost immediately she saw the police going upstairs on the surveillance camera in the apartment.
Song Yang hurried to a small balcony overlooking Route 40. Just as the plainclothes policeman walked out of the building, she fell on the sidewalk a few feet away from him.
Now, her brother is looking up at the balcony from where she fell. He walked into the building and climbed the tiled staircase leading to the apartment she once lived in. Shortly after her death, another massage parlor called Heaven on 4th opened there. But the renovation blocked the stairwell, and the Chinese sign on the windows of the first-floor dining room explained what was happening.
After Song Yang's death, the balcony and its facade located on the upper left of the building were renovated. The situation on
40 Road changed.
First of all, the police are targeting clients, which is in line with the police's announced policies, and they no longer focus mainly on employees of illegal massage parlors, but pay more attention to their bosses and customers.
Police have also begun to enforce laws to reduce obstruction. One of the goals of the first batch of actions was a massage parlor in the building across the street from No. 135-32, run by Song Yang's former "boss" Lao Li. Authorities have locked the doors of the massage parlour with padlocks and posted signs of "Courtary Order Close" and "Restriction Order" on the windows.
Several municipal departments—including police, fire and construction departments—have finally set up a task force to focus on property owners and business owners, for example, on apartments with illegal divisions and problems with water pipes.
In addition, the news media's attention to Song Yang's death - including our newspaper's reports - has increased political pressure to solve the problem of 40 sex transactions. New York City Councilman Gu Yaming has been directly complaining, saying that women on the street are openly engaged in sex transactions, and he began calling the landlords to ask them to pay attention to the matter.
In recent months, illegal massage shops on Road 40 have been banned, including a one across the street from the massage parlor where Song Yang worked during his lifetime.
Gu Yaming said that he warned them not to rent houses to illegal enterprises again. And make sure that tenants don’t sublease the space to shameful businesses.
On an afternoon not long ago, a woman who claimed to be Tiaodong and often wore a short pink jacket walked out of a restaurant on Route 40 with takeout. “We’re all separated,” she said in Mandarin. "We can't stand on the street anymore."
However, later that day, Dongdong wandered outside her old place, mostly alone. She and other women now only contacted customers after midnight and took them to other places in Flushing.
40 Road was noisy, with basketball thumping sounds heard on one side of the court, and business sounds came from the fruit stall on the other side. But at least now, you rarely hear the once ubiquitous “massage, massage” inquiries.
In Myanmar Street, Song Hai continued to walk south with his bag on his back, ignoring the person who sold a patch that would certainly relieve pain under the Changdao Railway Bridge. He turned right into 41st Avenue and passed a 9-storey building that was not yet available when he arrived in Flushing 15 months ago. Then he entered a low building with a group rental house for the kitchen and bathroom.
His mother Shi Yumei is waiting for him in a room of nearly 13 square meters where they shared. Through the window, you can see the back of two huge Chinese characters - "Happy" on the sign of the senior citizen center downstairs.
In the room rented in Flushing, Song Yang's mother Shi Yumei sat on the bed. This was her last day in the United States.
There are medicine bottles and lighters on the bedside table. On her mother's bed, there was a teddy bear, one of her daughter's beloved dolls. There are 8 suitcases stuffed with things in the corner, several of which contain some items left by Song Yang.
That night, Song Yang's mother and younger brother will set off for Kennedy International Airport. It took them a whole day to return to their home in Liaoning, northeastern province of China, and they planned to bury Song Yang on a mountain.
66-year-old Shi Yumei sat on the bed, bent over. She is much weaker than when she first came over a year ago. A few months ago, she was tripped or knocked down on the street and needed a hip replacement. She began to talk about her gratitude to the United States.
But the son, who was sitting opposite her, turned dark when he heard his mother praise the US government. He believed that his sister's death was caused by the government and tried to cover it up. Suddenly, he threw a suitcase lock out angrily. The lock hit the wall and fell to the ground with a clang.
"My sister is left with this box of dust," he said. He also expressed other grievances in his heart. Mother who has collapsed both physically and mentally. Father with white hair. My wife and son whom I haven't seen each other for more than a year.
"I feel like Job in " Bible ".
In the subsequent silence, the small room seemed to have become smaller. The 8 large suitcases in the corner now have 9 pieces of black backpacks. In the backpack is the ashes of their beloved Song Yang, who fell to death in Flushing.
Song Hai said to himself, how can he get so many things?
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