MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — After three years as a prisoner in Beijing, Cheng Lei is busy rebuilding her life. She’s written a memoir and a play, tried her hand at stand-up comedy and is pursuing her career as a journalist.She has shone a rare spotlight on the harsh conditions within the secretive Chinese prison system. She has also shared a personal story of resilience about how meaning can be found in suffering.“I think when your life gets shattered and you lose so many things that used to define you, you do have a kind of freedom to reorganize your atoms and create a new you,” Cheng told The Associated Press during rehearsals for a play about her incarceration, “1154 Days.”“For me, it’s a fuller appreciation of life and much more adventurousness and also a serene sort of quiet fearlessness,” she added.
Drama is part of former prisoner’s new lease on life Creating theater is one of the new experiences that have become part of the China-born Australian’s post-prison life that began when she was deported from Beijing in October 2023.She became an Australian citizen after migrating from China as a 10-year-old with her parents. She described herself as a bored accountant when she left Australia at the age of 25 in pursuit of a media career. Cheng had become an anchor for the “Global Business” show on China state broadcaster CCTV English, after building a career in bilingual journalism in Asia over two decades. That life ended abruptly in August 2020, when a Beijing State Security Bureau official told her at CCTV headquarters that she was being investigated for supplying state secrets to foreign organizations. She was blindfolded and led away to a secret location.
