The first thing Daniel Hsu noticed about the room was that there were no sharp edges.
The walls were covered with beige rubber, the table wrapped in soft, grey leather. White blinds covered two barred windows.
Five surveillance cameras recorded his movements, and two guards kept constant, silent watch.
They followed Hsu to the shower and stood beside him at the toilet.
Lights blazed through the night. If he rolled over on his mattress, guards woke him and made him turn his face toward a surveillance camera that recorded him as he slept.
He listened for sounds of other prisoners -- a door slamming, a human voice. But he heard only the occasional roar of a passing train.
First, keep healthy, Hsu told himself. Second, keep strong. He had no idea when or how he would get out.
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Hsu is a U.S. citizen. He has not been convicted of any crime in China, yet he was detained there for six months in solitary confinement under conditions that could qualify as torture under international conventions.
Authorities from eastern Anhui province placed exit bans on Hsu and his wife, Jodie Chen, blocking them from returning home to suburban Seattle in August 2017 and effectively orphaning their 16-year-old daughter in America.
Critics say the Chinese Communist Party's expanding use of exit bans to block people including U.S., Australian and Canadian citizens and permanent residents from leaving China reeks of hostage-taking and collective punishment.
They also warn that it lays bare China's will to exert influence, not just over Chinese citizens in China, but also permanent residents and citizens of other countries.
American citizens are too often being detained as de facto hostages in business disputes or to coerce family members to return to Chinathis is shocking and unacceptable behaviour by the Chinese government and a clear violation of international law, said James P McGovern, chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Hsu says Anhui authorities have been effectively holding them hostage in order to convince his father, Xu Weiming, to come back from the US and face charges he embezzled 447,874 yuan (worth USD 63,000 today) over 20 years ago an allegation Xu denies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has added grave new urgency to their desire to leave.
Despite fear of retribution, the family is speaking out for the first time, offering a rare account of life inside China's opaque system of exit bans and secretive detention centers.
Their story is supported by Chinese court documents and correspondence and interviews with US and Chinese government officials.
Some details could not be independently verified but are in line with accounts from other detainees.
Five days before Hsu entered the smooth beige room at a Communist Party-run education center in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, his stepdaughter, Mandy Luo, boarded a flight from Shanghai to Seattle alone.
She had been on a family visit to China and was supposed to return with her mother to finish high school. But airport security had blocked her mother from boarding.
Mandy vomited for 10 hours on the flight home.
When Luo felt bad, she liked to curl up on her mother's lap. But now it was just her, a barf bag and a snoring man next to her.
Mom, she kept thinking, why are you not here? The answer to that question lies in Chinese laws that give authorities broad discretion to block both Chinese citizens and foreign nationals from leaving the country.
Minor children, a pregnant woman and a pastor all with foreign passports have been exit banned, according to people with direct knowledge of the cases.
The US, Canada and Australia have issued advisories warning their citizens that they can be prevented from leaving China over disputes they may not be directly involved in.
People may not realize they can't leave until they try to depart.
US diplomats frequently raise the issue of exit bans and the need for transparency with the PRC government, a State Department spokesperson said in an email.
The Department has raised Mr. Hsu's case at the highest levels and will continue to do so until he is allowed to return home to the U.S.
The misuse of exit bans is troubling, said a spokesman for Canada's Foreign Minister.
Promoting and protecting human rights is an integral part of Canada's foreign policy.
Australian consular cables obtained by the AP through a freedom of information request show that diplomats have repeatedly flagged concerns to Chinese counterparts about the growing number of exit bans on Australians.
Within China, exit bans have been celebrated as part of a best-practices toolkit for convincing corrupt officials to return to the motherland for prosecution, part of President Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign to purify the ruling Communist Party and shore up its moral authority.
Many corruption suspects fled to the US, Australia and Canada, which do not have extradition treaties with China.
Requests for comment to Anhui Province's Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, Public Security Department and procuratorate, as well as the province's foreign affairs and propaganda offices all went unanswered.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing declined to comment.
Hsu was accused of being a co-conspirator in the corruption case against his father, Xu.
The Hefei Intermediate People's Court found that Xu embezzled money for real estate in the 1990s, while serving as chairman of Shanghai Anhui Yu'an Industrial Corporation, a developer owned by the Anhui Provincial People's Government.