I think about my family, all of us working together. It was a basic life, it was secure and connected. I think that the warmest picture in my mind about my family is dinnertime, everyone would come back from work in the field and just squat there on the soil - the stuff you call dirt here in Australia. We had simple meals and would tell good stories about farming life and history.

I have two identities - at home I am a farmer's son and that's the identity I was born with. When you are a farmer, born in a country that claims it is a socialist country but actually doesn't bother about the well-being of the working class, particularly people living in the rural areas, you are doomed to struggle just for a subsistence lifestyle. Later on you find you have two ways to get away from that life: one way is join the army and become a soldier; and the other way is going to university.

To go to university free of charge means you have to be among the top 5% of your peers - and that's very tough. A very challenging and very ambitious plan for a kid, for a farmer's son, to get such an idea, such a plan, and to have such a desperate need to restructure your life.

In 1989, I was teaching in University during the student demonstrations. We gathered together with young people to express dissatisfaction with the government. We didn't feel like a distinct club, or group, or anything at that time, we were just some young people who had dreams for their lives and who were not happy with the existing regime. The demonstrations expanded to different regions and attracted lots of support from workers, even small business people. We stopped teaching and our students walked in the streets protesting. We went with them and sometimes we would lead them. After the third of June, the early morning of the fourth of June, the government suppressed the protests with the help of tanks and machine guns. After they got control of the event they chose people to set up as examples to be punished, as a warning to others. It is what they call 'To settle the account after the autumn harvest', (from an old Chinese saying). The young teachers were to be sent to one year re-education camps. I refused the order to go to the re-education camp and the university used me as an example, so I was expelled from the teaching job.

In that society expulsion is very damaging. They keep a file on all of your movements and that file follows you everywhere you go, all your life. I felt all the warning signals: systematic interference from officials; discrimination; restraint of freedom; my mail was checked and my phone messages recorded. I looked for work outside of the government system, private business or foreign business, or even contract work, which in China is very insecure as only about 5% of people in China at that time didn't have permanent work. I was scared about my future and my security. I thought, 'Do not die here, find a new land to lead a dignified, simple and honest life. I was not born as a free man but I can hope to die as one - a free soul.'

I started to plan to get away. From 1989 to 1995, I looked for ways to leave. In 1995, I had finally found a job and was touring Australia as part of my work. My superiors reported back to China that I was too liberal in my mind, by their standards, and expressed too much personal opinion. They ordered me to surrender my passport. I knew the implications - it's like a detention order.

I went back with them to an Asian transit airport. At the last minute I decided. I walked three steps towards China - it would just be a matter of buying a train ticket and going back there. Three big steps. And I suddenly asked myself, 'Should I go back there or should I turn around and find a flight back to Australia?' I thought 'If I go back to China I will have to go through all of the 'due process' and be discriminated, and discarded, and persecuted'. I had a black hole in Australia, I didn't know what would happen to me there, but I had a long tunnel ahead of me in China, I couldn't see the end of it. It was hard. It's just by habit, you know, you walk home, that's your land. I walked through the airport and bought a ticket to Australia at the counter. My clothes were soaking, I didn't have anything; just a trail of water behind me, dripping off my clothes, and a cleaner following me with a mop . When I arrived in Australia I was afraid that the group I had been travelling with would inform the police. So in Sydney airport I was first out of the plane. I rushed through the airport and went straight to the toilets. I looked out the window but I couldn't see anyone there. I didn't want to come out through arrivals, in case they were waiting for me there, so I snuck through the luggage area, where the trucks come through. I ran out of the airport, jumped straight on a bus and straight into town. That's where the crowd is, that's the safest spot, because no one knows you. I went into a public toilet and there was this drunk guy there who was coming towards me and yelling at me. I was so frightened I ran out of there, found a greyhound bus and came straight to Brisbane where I at least knew of a few Australian people.

I stayed in Spring Hill when I first arrived. I was told that if I went to South Brisbane Immigration and Community Legal Service (SBICLS) they would be able to help me. They were very busy but they opened up their resources to me and I was able to do my own research for my case. That is why later I went on to study law. I very quickly ran out of money and they told me to go to the Asylum Seekers Centre (now the Refugee Claimants Support Centre), they helped me find somewhere to live. It was helpful to be with local people who can help you to get used to things and just chat and share with you. I had no contact with Chinese people in Brisbane because before you leave China you have to sign a form declaring which contacts you have in Australia. The Chinese government had that information on me and contacted those people. I cut off all my contacts, and for four years I have not ventured to make any Chinese contacts unless they are simple students.

You see, if the government of your country knows that you are a refugee claimant that means you express a protest against your government. Most of us come from such authoritarian governments that if you apply for protection, it is an anti-government action. They draw what they would call a rational, logical inference from your application. So the first step is to keep your application confidential. You are so worried that if they know you are seeking protection what impact will that have on your family and friends back home. You are also worried that the government will track you down. I still remember when I lived in Spring Hill. I lived in a room downstairs and there were grapevines, trees and possums outside my window. On rainy days, with the wind and the thunder, I always thought that any noises I heard was someone outside my window who had found me and was looking over all my actions. I had to go to the Queensland Programme of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma (QPASTT); I was under so much pressure it had made me a little paranoid - I couldn't live with that fear.

It took 13 months for my application to be accepted by Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) but now it can take any amount of time. I think most people can handle around 6 months of waiting but after 12 months people have obvious depression, and after 2 years most people suffer permanent depression and damage to their mental well being. It is my observation, that if you can survive the fear, uncertainty, lack of recognition, and rejection from the department and other parts of society, you must be very strong. But even if you survive, you still suffer some permanent damage.

Here they have a very cruel and organised prejudice against refugee claimants. The media and this government have launched a systematic, consistent negative campaign and people in the general community have no choice but to believe it. They are saying that refugee claimants are a burden on society, that they are consuming Australia's resources, that they are using up quotas of the immigration programme. But I had no choice but to come to Australia, it was the only valid visa I had, it was the only place I could go. Legally I was stuck with it. We are not queue jumpers - we are struggling with our lives.

Under the international treaties and conventions Australia has a duty to provide basic shelter and protection for these people. To secure protection is for the benefit of Australian citizens as well. Human Rights are not guaranteed or secured with this government. Even Australian people should stand up and fight for their rights because today the government may discriminate against us, but tomorrow it may be against the normal Australian citizen.

But I still believe that Australia is a land of hope. Australia is still a country which believes in human rights, even though the current government doesn't seem to respect them. We have to work together. We want a society that has compassion, humanity, and dignity for our fellow human beings. People come to Australia because they think Australia cares about human rights. Don't turn that impression into a delusion.