On March 22, a 28-year-old Chinese national named Chen Lili reportedly swallowed all of the handwash in the bathrooms aboard her flight back to China from the United States.
Chen, from Changle in Fujian Province, was being repatriating back to the PRC after her application for political asylum was denied. In 2004 she entered the United States using a fake passport; having spent over a decade in Ohio with her husband and two children, the prospect of being seperated from them in China clearly terrified her.
Soon after boarding her flight at Port Columbus International Airport, Chen tried buying herself more time in the USA. Immediately taken off the aircraft and rushed to hospital, Chen succeeded in doing this, and is currently in an American hospital bed in stable condition.
It is not known what Chen's grounds were for claiming political asylum were, but her story seems to suggest that her intense reluctance to return to China is more about family circumstances than the threat of political persecution.
"I want to stay in American," Chen said, "returning to China on my own with no husband or children would be worse than death."
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