More than a decade ago, Sylvia Yu Friedman’s last encounter with death is also powerfully remembered.
Therefore, a young journalist and director, Friedman traveled to a red-light area outside of southern China to take footage of young girls engaging in the sex trade for a documentary.
” The courtyard was pitch dark, no street lights. A small developing had large windows, sliding glass windows, and pink lights.
” There were criminals with pale white eyes milling around and women wearing makeup and short skirts that looked terrible. Violent dogs were barking. You had manifestly sense the ickiness and the risk,” she recounted.
A frontliner who had Friedman with her advised her to walk through the courtyard while pretending to be a traveler and secretly picture the picture on her phone.
No adult visitor was seen in this region of the country, according to Friedman’s gut feeling, so she knew she would never get ahead with it. But she hushed her inward voice and braved the dark alley to get the film because she was so determined to get it.
She made a quick getaway car with the images in hands.
In a rhythm, criminals and mamasans surrounded her, shouting ominously and demanding to see her phone. Shaking with fear, Friedman deleted her film, but they did not permit her left.
” I was therefore scared,” she said”. When one of the criminals said the officers were coming, and they immediately dispersed like insects when you shine a light on them, just as I was about to see my life display before my sight.
That evening, Friedman screamed in her chamber from the terror and pain. Her post-traumatic stress disorder lasted for months and she had to get counseling, she told CNA Women.