By Li Yuchen
November 25, 2025, Chenghua District, Chengdu. Lawyer Yu Kai from Qingdao, Shandong, and his colleague, Lawyer Yang Hui, arrived in front of the gate with multiple plaques reading “Chengdu Mental Health Center” and “Chengdu Dekang Hospital.” Their purpose was clear:
To visit Xu Xinrui, who has been forcibly admitted here for eight years.
But in the end, they returned empty-handed.
A transcript of the conversation, compiled by the lawyers on-site, provided a truth full of contradictions for this eight-year-long treatment: within this tightly-knit closed-loop logic, the person who sent Xu Xinrui into the high walls of the mental hospital has the power to decide whether she is cured:
The sole right of interpretation.
1
There are many plaques hanging at the entrance of Chengdu Dekang Hospital. Besides the hospital’s sign, there are also titles such as the Chenghua District Disabled Persons Federation and the Eighth People’s Hospital Alliance Hospital. These gleaming copper plaques hint at a fact under the gloomy sky of Chengdu:
This is not just a place to treat and save lives, but also an important nerve ending in the grassroots governance system.
Lawyers Yu Kai and Yang Hui came with legal provisions. According to the “Mental Health Law,” involuntary hospitalization must be extremely cautious, and patients have the right to request discharge or be taken back by their guardians. But when they actually sat across from Director Tang, they found that the law encountered a dilemma in physics:
Too much resistance.
The one who received them was a female director. Director Tang seemed more like a victim than Xu Xinrui. Facing questions about the legality of the admission, she admitted that there were indeed:
Historical issues.
But then, changing the subject, she emphasized that the hospital was also helpless. In her narrative, Xu Xinrui currently lives in the third ward, does not refuse food, and is not even abused, everything is running on a compliant track.
But when the lawyers asked the most core question, “Is she now recovered, and can she be discharged?” Director Tang displayed superb language skills. She neither affirmed nor denied, but repeatedly emphasized a logic:
Who sent her, who takes her away.
This is a classic dead end: Xu Xinrui was deemed to lack civil capacity, and her guardianship was transferred to the community street office that sent her to the hospital; if she wants to be discharged, she needs the guardian’s signature; but the guardian believes she is ill and refuses to sign.
Joseph Heller predicted this kind of dilemma in “Catch-22” half a century ago: only a madman can be allowed to be discharged, but if you apply for discharge, it proves you are not crazy, so you must stay. In the third ward of Dekang Hospital, Xu Xinrui faces a more simple truth:
Madness is not a pathological state, but an administrative state.
According to the lawyers’ first-level audio evidence, Director Tang expressed great aversion to outside attention. She believes the hospital is:
Relieving the government’s worries, but inexplicably taking on the blame of illegal detention.
At the end of the conversation, the director even threw out a versatile defensive word on the internet today, she suspected that someone was manipulating this matter:
Is there any foreign force behind it?
A Chengdu native orphan, working in a community library with only a few hundred books, was imprisoned for eight years for reporting the leaders playing mahjong. If this can be linked to foreign forces, then the force’s hand is too long, even reaching into:
The drawer of the mahjong table.
2
Rewind eight years.
In 2017, Xu Xinrui had a resume that many people envied: she graduated from university with a bachelor’s degree, was young, and worked in the library of the Petroleum Community of Mengzhuiwan Street, Chenghua District. It was a quiet, book-filled idle job. According to the general life script, she would spend her life here peacefully.
But she made two mistakes.
The first mistake was that she was too serious. The community secretary at the time seemed to love mahjong more than managing books. In the space of the library, which should have been solemn, the sound of mahjong rose and fell. This may be a kind of relaxation in Sichuan, but in the eyes of the newly graduated Xu Xinrui, this was an encroachment on public resources, and even a violation of discipline.
So, she made a young person’s choice:
Report the community secretary for leading gambling and other issues to the Sichuan Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission in her real name.
She pressed the report button, thinking that she would wait for a just ruling, but what she waited for was:
A group of people who forcibly took her away.
She wanted to solve the problem, but for some grassroots managers, solving the person who raised the problem was obviously more in line with:
Cost-effectiveness.
The second mistake, and the most fatal one, was her background.
According to the information disclosed by the public account “Youxi Hopeful,” Xu Xinrui’s parents both passed away, and she was the only child in the family. In the logic of grassroots governance, this is not a weakness, but a perfect:
Soft persimmon.
No parents means that there are no direct relatives who will go to the top, make a fuss, and fight for her. No siblings means that she is an island in the social network. As long as her connection with the outside world is cut off, she is a piece of plasticine that can be kneaded at will.
So, without even going through complex judicial procedures, just by the police station and the community, she was defined as a mental patient and sent to Chengdu Dekang Hospital.
After that, her life was forcibly paused. The sound of mahjong in the library may have stopped, or it may not have stopped, but Xu Xinrui could never return to that desk. She went from a citizen with flesh and blood to a:
Subject of admission.
Foucault pointed out coldly in “Madness and Civilization” that society defines the so-called normal by isolating the abnormal. In the eyes of some leaders in the Petroleum Community, a subordinate who does not understand human relations and dares to report the leaders is obviously the most abnormal:
To prove that the leaders are right, it must be proved that Xu Xinrui is crazy.
3
Back to Dekang Hospital in 2025.
Lawyer Yu Kai asked Director Tang to view the medical records. Director Tang refused. The reason is still the versatile one:
Protecting patient privacy.
This creates a huge absurdity:
Locking up a living person does not require protecting her privacy; letting her receive eight years of forced medication and possible electroshock therapy does not require protecting her privacy; but when the lawyer wants to check what disease she has, the right to privacy suddenly becomes sacred and inviolable.
According to a person close to the inside of Dekang Hospital, the hospital actually knows Xu Xinrui’s situation very well. Even:
Director Xie of the Fifth Department of Dekang Mental Hospital admitted that “Xu Xinrui’s condition is stable and can be discharged early.”
But in the face of the iron law of “who sent her, who takes her away,” the medical diagnosis is just a:
Waste paper.
As long as the Petroleum Community does not come to pick her up, even if Xu Xinrui passes the Certified Public Accountant exam in the ward, she is still a mental patient who needs to be treated.
This is not only the tragedy of the hospital, but also the shame of medicine. When the white coat becomes the shackles of power, the Hippocratic oath becomes a joke.
Lawyers Yu Kai and Yang Hui walked out of the gate of Dekang Hospital. The copper plaques behind them were still shining. They knew that what really locked Xu Xinrui was not the iron gate of the hospital, but a big invisible net.
To untie this knot, they must find the person who tied the knot:
Petroleum Community.
And there, a more absurd truth is waiting for them. That will be the most thought-provoking piece of the entire grassroots governance picture.
4
If she is not sent in, she may self-harm, or even endanger social security.
In the meeting room of the Petroleum Community, facing the lawyers’ questions, the community负责人 gave such a warm reason.
But when the lawyers turned their attention to the bulletin board on the wall, a shocking detail shattered all the warm veils in an instant: it turned out that the referee responsible for adjudicating the disputes and the athlete responsible for creating the disputes completed a perfect:
Internal cycle.
Chenghua District Mengzhuiwan Street Petroleum Community, a typical urban grassroots autonomous organization.
On the afternoon of November 25, 2025, Lawyers Yu Kai and Yang Hui entered the sixth floor of the community office building. The atmosphere in the meeting room was tense from the beginning. Sitting opposite were Deputy Secretary Zhou (male) and a director (female), and there was also a staff member specifically responsible for recording.
Neither side exchanged greetings, and they very tacitly took out their phones and took pictures of each other. The lens aimed at the lens, like a silent gun battle. In this space full of distrust, every word could become:
Evidence in court.
The lawyers’ demands are simple: Xu Xinrui has a cousin and does not belong to the three types of people who are without support, without a source of income, and without a guardian. The community, as a neighborhood committee, forcibly acted as a guardian and sent the person to a mental hospital for eight years, which is suspected of abuse of power.
Deputy Secretary Zhou’s answer was watertight. He insisted that Xu Xinrui was a person without support, and the community’s management was a last resort, out of humanitarian care:
If she is not sent to the hospital, who is responsible if something happens to her outside? Her condition at the time was very dangerous, she might self-harm, or even hurt others.
This set of rhetoric sounds impeccable and is full of paternalistic care. But everyone present knew very well that Xu Xinrui’s so-called dangerous state happened precisely after she reported the community secretary in her real name.
Here, safety is redefined. Locking you up, you will not self-harm, and you will not report, which is safe for you and safer for the community. This is a win-win situation, except for the one who loses freedom:
Besides the cost.
In the face of the lawyers’ questions about the report letter, the community cadres chose to talk about other things. They repeatedly emphasized the compliance of the procedures – it was decided jointly by the police station and the superior department, and the community was only the executor.
This evil of mediocrity’s passing the buck tactic plunged the entire conversation into a stalemate. Until the lawyers walked out of the meeting room, they found a name on the wall of this office building.
5
I often find in non-fiction writing that sometimes the reality I write is more like a novel than a novel.
In the course of the visit and investigation, Lawyer Yu Kai first went to the Mengzhuiwan Police Station in the jurisdiction, hoping to report the case of illegal detention. But on the police announcement board of the police station, they saw a familiar face.
The man in the photo was wearing a police uniform, his eyes were sharp, his police number was 010520, and his position was: Community Police Team. His name is:
Liu Jian.
There is nothing strange about this. But in the subsequent Petroleum Community Party organization members’ announcement board, the lawyers saw this face again.
The photo is exactly the same, the name is exactly the same. The only difference is that the title here has become:
Deputy Secretary of the Petroleum Community Party Committee.
These two photos together constitute a suffocating closed loop.
This is a nuclear-level solid hammer. It explains all the dead ends in the past eight years:
Why didn’t Xu Xinrui’s police report work? Why did the lawyer call 110 to report the illegal detention, but the police station that received the report said that they had no right to deal with it? Why could the community so smoothly mobilize the police force to send people to the hospital?
Because Liu Jian is the connection point. He is both the enforcer wearing a police uniform and the:
Party affairs cadre.
When Xu Xinrui became a problem because she reported the community’s problems:
As the deputy secretary of the community, Liu Jian needs to solve the problem.
And when it is necessary to use force to send people away:
As a police officer, Liu Jian has legal violent tools.
Finally, when Xu Xinrui tried to call the police for help:
The one who received the report was still Liu Jian’s colleague, or even Liu Jian himself.
This is a perfect magic trick. The left hand is the majesty of law enforcement, and the right hand is the autonomy of the grassroots. When these two hands are on the shoulders of the same person, Xu Xinrui is destined not to get out of that circle.
This institutional innovation, which is called the integration of police and the people or the community deputy secretary wearing a police uniform, is called in many propaganda drafts:
Breaking through the last kilometer of serving the masses.
But in Xu Xinrui’s case, this last kilometer became:
Her one-way street to the mental hospital.
The referee responsible for adjudicating the disputes and the athlete responsible for creating the disputes completed a perfect internal cycle in one body.
Next to Liu Jian’s photo is a photo of Luo Xiaojuan, the secretary of the Petroleum Community Party Committee. In this rigorous organizational structure diagram, the people in each grid perform their respective duties, maintaining the stability and harmony of the community. And outside the grid, the name Xu Xinrui has been:
Completely erased.
6
After discovering the secret of the double-faced person, lawyer Yu Kai realized that he was not facing an isolated illegal act, but a sophisticated system that had been running for eight years.
This system is meshed by four gears, each turning for its own benefit or to avoid liability:
Gear 1: The Hospital.
Dekang Hospital is not only a medical institution, but also a business with a long-term stable source of patients.
Xu Xinrui, as a person with no status, is supported by the government, which means her medical expenses are paid in full by:
The Civil Affairs Bureau or the medical insurance fund.
For the hospital, as long as the person doesn’t leave, this is a long-term meal ticket. Therefore, Director Tang must insist on “whoever sends them, takes them away.”
Gear 2: The Community.
The Petroleum Community, by sending away Xu Xinrui, eliminated an unstable source of reporting. As long as they have guardianship, they can keep Xu Xinrui silent forever. Therefore, Deputy Secretary Zhou must insist that she is a “person with no status.”
Gear 3: The Police Station.
The police force, represented by Liu Jian, provided the backing of coercive force for this process. They converted the problems that administrative detention could not solve into medical treatment, thereby avoiding the cumbersome procedures of legal trials. Therefore, the police must insist that this is a “medical dispute.”
Gear 4: The Civil Affairs Bureau.
As the funding party, the Civil Affairs Bureau should have reviewed the compliance of fund use. But under the stable overall situation, spending money to buy peace has become the default rule.
These four gears mesh with each other, forming a huge black hole. Xu Xinrui is in the center of this black hole, being swallowed up bit by bit.
The lawyers tried to use the legal wrench to jam one of the gears, such as going to the Civil Affairs Bureau to check the accounts, or going to the Municipal Public Security Bureau to report the case to a higher level.
In the next 24 hours, they will experience what is true buck-passing art. It is a way of passing responsibility between various departments like a burning coal, but never landing:
A unique skill.
7
This matter of yours is not under our jurisdiction.
This is the most common sentence that lawyer Yu Kai heard in Chengdu.
From the police station to the Civil Affairs Bureau, and then to the Municipal Public Security Bureau, every door opened a crack for him, and then quickly:
Closed.
On November 27, 2025, when Yu Kai was standing at the security checkpoint of Chengdu Tianfu Airport with his boarding pass, he knew that this journey of searching had to come to an end. The plane was about to take off, and Xu Xinrui was still in the hospital named Dekang, waiting for a perhaps never-coming:
Signature.
The day before, after discovering the secret of the double-faced person Liu Jian, lawyer Yu Kai decided not to get bogged down in this perfect grassroots closed loop, they chose to report the case to a higher level – directly to the superior department.
The itinerary of this day can be called a textbook-level:
Buck-passing observation class.
The first stop is the Chengdu Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau. Since the police station said it was government assistance, and the community said it was managed on behalf of, then someone has to pay for the eight years of medical expenses
If it is fiscal appropriation, it involves the use of public funds; if it is defrauding medical insurance, it involves fraud.
But the door of the Civil Affairs Bureau is even harder to enter than the hospital. The gatekeepers are strict, and the lawyers can only communicate with the Social Assistance Office through an internal phone at the door.
The civil servant on the other end of the phone was polite and distant. Faced with the question of whether they were defrauding state funds, the other party recorded the question and then gave the familiar answer: “Involving personal privacy, it will not be disclosed.”
It is not called an invasion of privacy to imprison a living person for eight years, but checking how much taxpayers have spent in these eight years has become an invasion of privacy.
In this logic, the right to privacy is like a piece of plasticine, it becomes larger when it needs to cover up shame, and it disappears when it needs stability.
If you are not allowed to see the accounts, then report it to the police. Yu Kai dialed 110.
He clearly reported in the phone call:
Mengzhuiwan Police Station and the Petroleum Community are suspected of illegal detention.
According to common sense, reporting the police station should be handled by the superior authority or the public security of another place.
But only a few minutes later, Yu Kai’s phone rang. The unit displayed on the incoming call made him feel a kind of black humor-like absurdity:
Mengzhuiwan Police Station.
The unit he reported called to handle his report. The police in the phone call were tough, dissatisfied with 110 diverting the police situation to them, and directly defined it:
This is not under their jurisdiction.
Yu Kai angrily questioned in the phone call:
You are the reported person, and according to the law, you should avoid it, how can you handle the report against yourself?
The communication once again fell into an ineffective dead end.
Before going to the Municipal Bureau, lawyer Yu Kai had also personally gone to the Mengzhuiwan Police Station. The one who received them was a Deputy Director surnamed Zeng.
The face-to-face confrontation was more direct than in the phone call. Deputy Director Zeng tried to block the lawyer’s mouth with a procedural problem:
You are not a family member, nor are you the person involved, why are you asking this?
This is a common “identity threshold” in grassroots law enforcement. If you are not a person with an interest relationship, you are not qualified to ask questions. In this logic, the legal issue is cleverly transformed into a qualification issue.
But Yu Kai’s counterattack was precise and powerful, he did not get entangled in the identity of “family members”, but directly brought out an identity that everyone could not avoid:
I am a citizen. According to the law, any citizen who discovers clues of a crime has the right and obligation to report it to the state organ.
This answer plunged the conversation into a brief silence. It bypassed all the procedural barriers about “family members” and “entrustment”, and went directly back to the most fundamental question:
What qualifications does a citizen need when reporting a possible eight-year-long illegal detention crime?
But after the silence, the final answer given by the police station was still:
This matter, we can’t handle it.
Since the phone call and the on-the-spot report did not work, they could only continue to report to the next higher level. The lawyers came to the Criminal Police Brigade of the Chengdu Municipal Public Security Bureau.
At the gate of the Municipal Bureau, the lawyers waited for a full:
An hour and a half.
In the end, Du, the captain of the Fourth Brigade of the Criminal Police Brigade, had to come out to receive them. But he obviously didn’t intend to take this hot potato.
He refused to make a formal inquiry record, and even refused to issue a “Case Acceptance Receipt”.
Yu Kai brought out the rigid regulations of the Ministry of Public Security:
The public security organs must accept the report on the spot, make a record on the spot, and issue a receipt on the spot.
This is the famous “three on the spot”.
But in Captain Du’s place, these three on the spot became:
Three no cares.
“I won’t give you a receipt.”
Captain Du said it righteously.
At that moment, Yu Kai felt the physical limit. The long-term running around, the fierce arguments, and the sense of powerlessness in the face of the high wall, made his heart beat violently. Soon, due to severe discomfort in his heart, Yu Kai swallowed a piece of:
Nitroglycerin.
The tablet melted under the tongue, and the bitter taste spread. This may be the most symbolic scene in the whole action: the legal relief, like this tablet, although swallowed, can only relieve the symptoms, but cannot cure this systemic stubborn disease.
8
While hitting a wall in the real world, the battle in the virtual world also suffered a dimensionality reduction attack.
Lawyers and volunteers tried to publish the investigation on the Internet. An article titled “Xu Xinrui was forcibly admitted for eight years: Where is the law, where is justice?” turned into that familiar red exclamation mark:
This content cannot be viewed due to violations.
The speed of deleting the post was astonishing. This shows that:
Although the relevant departments are not efficient in solving problems, they are surprisingly efficient in solving the people who raise the problems.
At the same time, some fragmented information about the internal situation of the hospital began to circulate on the Internet. According to the Weibo account protecting medical insurance, there are forced measures such as electric shock and binding of disobedient patients in mental hospitals.
Although the authenticity of this information is difficult to verify one by one, they are like a series of cold background sounds, which side-by-side set off the fear of the world inside the wall.
The official account “Youxi Hopeful” wrote in the article:
“It’s not medicine that treats her, it’s fear; it’s not the doctor who controls her, it’s silence.”
Xu Xinrui is the girl who has been silenced for eight years. And now, everyone who tries to speak for her is also being silenced one by one.
On November 27, 2025, an airline boarding pass from Shandong Airlines showed that lawyer Yu Kai was about to leave Chengdu on flight SC4860. At the moment when the WeChat group named “Xu Xinrui Incident Research” was about to be disbanded, lawyer Yu Kai posted a photo in the group and left the last sentence:
Return to Qingdao. Chengdu, goodbye.
This is not a triumph, but more like a helpless retreat.
The plane roared and slid towards the runway, and the huge push-back feeling pressed people firmly on the seat. With the increase in altitude, the prosperous city of Chengdu gradually turned into a flat map.
In that vast urban texture, Dekang Hospital is just an insignificant point. And in that point, on an iron bed in a certain ward, Xu Xinrui is still there.
No one knows what she is thinking. Maybe she is thinking about the mahjong table eight years ago, maybe she is thinking about the unreported letter, maybe she is not thinking about anything, just quietly watching the sky outside the window under the effect of the medicine.
We are looking for Xu Xinrui, in fact, we are looking for a kind of certainty.
This is not just Xu Xinrui’s story:
If you are also an only child, if you also have no background of power, if you also happen to see that mahjong table that you shouldn’t see, if you also believe in the rules like her and press the report button, will you be the next Xu Xinrui?
At the moment when the plane passed through the clouds, the sunlight was dazzling and cold. We finally understood a cruel truth:
No one is looking for Xu Xinrui, because the Xu Xinrui who is locked in a cage and defined as a madman is the Xu Xinrui that this system needs most. As long as she is still there, some people’s sense of security is there.
Li Yuchen’s article stands in the dust
Written on November 29, 2025
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