Qincheng Prison - Jail Cell

Jail Cell

The original jail houses include four three-story brick buildings with sloped roof, each is named after celestial stems instead of numbers or alphabets: Jia (甲), Yi (乙), Bing (丙), Ding (丁). Area in front of each building is fenced with brick wall for prisoners to exercise, forming its own independent yard. Each exercise yard is divided into two sections evenly by a wall in the middle, on top of which guard patrolled, and would watch both sections. Each building is equipped with electrically powered laundry machines from the beginning, a luxury in China until mid-1980s, and toilets are flushed by stepping on a foot paddle. Each floor of the building is divided into many halls, on one side of the hall, there is a wall, opposite to the wall is were the cells are located, each individually locked with a padlock. There are at least 10 cells in each hall.

The area of each cell is around 20 square meters. The wooden door of each cell is sandwiched between two iron plates, and there are two peepholes: one at the level of the toilet, while the other is above it. Around a foot from the ground, there is a rectangular window for delivering meals. The only furniture inside each cell is a bed that was around a foot from the ground and when a prisoner needs to write a confession or other materials, a desk similar to those in elementary schools would be provided. However, there would never be any chairs and prisoners must sit on the bed to write. For safety and security reasons, every sharp edge inside the cell has been changed to smooth/round shape. There are also special suicide watch cells with walls made of rubber so prisoners could not commit suicide by running into the walls.

There is a window for each cell designed for lower-ranking prisoners. The area of the window is around one square meter, located more than two meters above the ground. The windowsill is sloped upward with window opens upward toward outside, but of course, prisoners are unable to open the window themselves. There are three layers for every window: screen, iron fence, and glass painted white. In the cells for high-ranking prisoners, there are two windows but the outermost layer is sanded glass instead of glass painted white. Prisoners could neither see the courtyard nor any other buildings, but some could see the mountain and sun from their cells. A 15-watt light bulb with sanded glass is on the 3.5 meter high ceiling, and it is covered by iron mesh, and the dim light is controlled by guards via a switch outside.

In 1967, six more buildings were added, also named after celestial stem, continuing as Wu (戊), Ji (己), Geng (庚), Xin (辛), Ren (壬), Gui (癸). The new jail houses is built of concrete and contain much more cells because the new cells are much smaller in comparison to those in the jail houses built in 1958: the area of each cell is only 5 to 10 square meters. The toilet in these new cells could not be sit on, but instead, prisoners must squatting down when using the toilet and must carry water from wash sink to flush the toilet. There are two doors for each cells built in 1967: the outer one is an iron door and the inside one is a wooden door. Other features of the jail houses built in 1967 are similar to those built in 1958.