The past three months of Feng Zhenghu’s life eerily resembled that of Tom Hanks’ character in the film The Terminal.
For 92 days, Mr. Feng (55) was part of the furniture at Terminal One of Tokyo’s Narita airport. Caught in limbo between two countries, he relied on the kindness of strangers for food and used public restrooms to do his laundry.
A Shanghai-based activist, he had been denied permission to fly home to China, where he has served time for articles he wrote criticising forced evictions by the Shanghai government. Though Mr. Feng held a Japanese visa, he decided to protest the Chinese government’s decision by staying his ground in the Tokyo airport.
Clad in a white shirt with messages of dissent scribbled all over in black ink, he became a regular sight for travellers, who would leave him packets of biscuits and instant noodles to lend their encouragement.
His long protest finally ended on Friday when the Chinese government allowed him to board a flight to Shanghai in time for the Chinese New Year, which falls on Sunday.
He arrived in Shanghai to a hero’s welcome from a small group of supporters, including some residents who had lost their homes following the evictions. “Feng is great. He hasn’t done anything wrong but help us fight for justice,” one of them, Zhou Minwen, told the Associated Press.
Mr. Feng had been seeking a return to China since last June. He arrived in Tokyo in April 2009 to visit his sister. But when he tried to fly home, he found airlines were refusing him tickets. He was denied entry into China on eight separate occasions in the past year.
Once he managed to sneak on board a flight, only to be promptly sent back on the next flight out by authorities in Shanghai’s Pudong airport.
Mr. Feng has been on the radar of the Chinese government ever since he wrote articles criticising land seizures and forced evictions, widely regarded as the biggest source of unrest in this country. He was jailed for three years starting in 2000 for illegal business activities and spent another month in detention shortly before he left for Japan last year, a visit which concluded in the bizarre stand-off that has brought embarrassment to authorities in both Japan and China.
He came to be known in China as “The Terminal” activist, a reference to the 2004 film by Steven Spielberg which portrayed the story of a man who unwittingly found himself trapped in a New York airport after a revolution in his home country rendered his passport invalid, leaving him without legal status. The only difference here was Mr. Feng chose to remain in Narita’s terminal as a mark of protest.
He finally appeared to relent after Chinese diplomats met him in January. Shanghai’s Mayor Han Zheng said he would be allowed to return home “as long as he followed China’s laws and regulations”. Undeterred, Mr. Feng said upon his return to Shanghai on Friday that he would continue to protest and fight for people’s rights. But at least this time he will be on home soil.
