Lots of people have asked Amy if anyone wanted to escape from the re-education camp. Amy says she only knows one person, who happened to be her neighbor. She never knew him, but apparently they were on the same train to the re-education camp.
She recalls her mother pawning off her wedding ring to get enough money to buy some food from Hong Kong. Amy recalls that gradually all her mothers jewelry went to the pawn shop. The shop owner gave his son a Rolex as insurance to pay for a way home. There were “coyote’s” who would help people escape from China. Amy considered escaping to Burma, but did not know what she could do once she got there. Amy recalls hitchhiking closer to the border. She recalls the first battle was untrained kids who “all got killed”.
Amy describes how difficult it would be to communicate with someone in Burma to get transport to Hong Kong. The pawn shop owners son traded his Rolex for passage to Burma, with the hope of meeting a relative in Hong Kong, but later his dead body was found, most likely having been killed for his watch.