After traveling across 10 countries—including eight in South America—for nearly three months, a Chinese family finally arrived in the United States seeking freedom.
The trip was full of hardship and danger, among them surviving a Panamanian rainforest and its swift rivers.
A Young Man’s Dreamland
Since he was 13, Sun yearned for a free life in the United States.In 2001, Sun heard a song by Hong Kong rock band Beyond about a free land where there was no prejudice and where all people—regardless of their color, race, and origin—were equal.
The song gave the young boy his lifelong dream of living in such a country. In his mind, there was only one place in the world with freedom and equality: the United States of America.
In an interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Jan. 1, 2023, Sun talked about his childhood dream and how he endured hardship and risked his life for his dream to come true.
Chinese top leader Xi Jinping’s backsliding to Mao-era totalitarian rule and the past three years of stringent lockdowns made Sun decide to flee China, according to a phone interview.
Sun searched for anything he could find about fleeing from China to the United States and made a careful and detailed plan for his family’s escape. Their first stop was especially important because the Chinese regime doesn’t allow commoners to travel freely.
Narrow Escape at Zhuhai Customs
In August 2022, China was still under strict lockdowns and wasn’t allowing overseas travel.Sun said that they started the trip as tourists to Macao, China, formerly a Portuguese colony and now back under China’s rule.
Sun was stopped at the customs gate in Zhuhai, a city next to Macao.
To exit, one has to scan one’s fingerprints at customs. The gate will open automatically if the scan verifies the person is clear to go, according to Sun.
But the gate didn’t open for Sun, who had once posted his pro-Ukraine opinions online and was detained by local police for several days.
Frontier police immediately approached and led him into a small room. The police checked his phone and his social media accounts but found nothing.
Sun had deleted all his escape plans and posts that were against the CCP. After interrogating him for half an hour, the police let him and his family leave.
He now knows that what an elderly relative had told him about the massacre was true. But he didn’t believe what the old man had told him when he was in China. He couldn’t read anything on this topic due to strict censorship by the communist regime.
Wife Falls Ill in Ecuador
According to Sun’s plan, they would get valid visas to countries as close to the United States as possible. Then they would follow online human-smuggling routes from South America to the United States.The family flew from Macao to Thailand and stayed in Bangkok for nine days. Then they flew to Istanbul, Turkey, on Aug. 19, 2022. Only in Istanbul could they buy air tickets to Ecuador’s capital, Quito, according to Sun. The plan was to then head north from Quito.
They lived in Istanbul for half a month until Sun was able to purchase economy air tickets to Quito.
Quito is the first stop in South America, from which the family went all the way north to the United States to enter illegally.
Sun created a Twitter account on Sept. 9, 2022, and used “Northbound All the Way” as the account name.
Trekking Through the Panama Rainforest
While Sun’s family had valid visas to visit Ecuador, from then on, they were traveling illegally.They traveled across Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico before they climbed the border wall between Mexico and the United States and arrived on U.S. soil.
The most dangerous part of the journey was the five-day trek through the Panama rainforest, which has become a major human-trafficking route for migrants who want to start a new life in the United States. Only the lucky ones survive the trek through the jungle.
This long walk is an ordeal for adults, but Sun also had three children in tow who are aged 6, 9, and 11. Despite the difficulty, the children followed the adults and made it out of the jungle.
On Oct. 3, 2022, Sun said he saw nearly 600 people near the jungle outside Acandi, a beach town in Colombia. The members of Sun’s family were the only Chinese in the group.
He recorded the whole trip on his phone and uploaded video footage and pictures to his new Twitter account.
Sun also noted a woman with only one leg, who was also struggling through the forest alongside them.
“We are grassroots people—these people in this jungle, we all are. But in China, grassroots people are bullied; we’re not treated even as humans, we are just slaves and laborers,” Sun said in the interview.
No matter how despised by the communist regime they are in China, grassroots people have the right to pursue freedom and happiness, Sun said.
On the third day of their trekking through the jungle, his wife fell from a rope that hung across a river as a bridge. His wife could not swim, but she was luckily saved by several South American migrants who had been traveling with them through the jungle.
Sun and his wife were grateful to their fellow migrants. He said his wife would have died without them.
Sun didn’t regret his decision to flee China.
When they saw an American flag in a refugee camp, his children told him, “The American flag looks nice; much better than the Chinese flag.”
They eventually came to Mexicali, a Mexican city on the U.S.–Mexico border.
At midnight on Nov. 3, 2022, Sun’s family climbed over a border wall. Several human traffickers put up a ladder for them to climb over the 20-foot-high wall.
They were the first to climb over the wall, and more than 20 people followed them. American border police didn’t stop them as they climbed.
The moment they got off the ladder on the U.S. side, Sun cried, “I have made it!” It was early morning on Nov. 4, 2022, almost three months after he and his family fled China in August.
“My dream has come true because I have come to the United States of America,” Sun told The Epoch Times in the interview.
