When he finally returned home in October 2023, Xu Bochun only had to run his hand through his hair for it to fall out. His body was in pain. In three months, fear had changed him. Even today, his eyes welled up as he recounted his ordeal in a quiet voice: Twelve weeks spent at the hands of online scam mafias, trapped in an old hotel in a guerrilla-held area of northeastern Myanmar.

It all began in Shanghai in the early summer of 2023. Xu, then aged 37, dreamed of becoming a film actor but settled for roles as an extra. For three years, since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, he had been without a steady job. So when a new contact in a group of aspiring film actors on the messaging service WeChat offered him the chance to shoot a TV show, he thought his chance had come. The fee was decent (€1,300 for one month), and the series was supposed to be widely distributed on Chinese television.

Xu sent a few samples of his previous work. His interviewer quickly confirmed that his application had been accepted. Production then sent him a train ticket to Yunnan, on the other side of the country. After a two-day journey, the 30-something arrived at the address provided in Xishuangbanna, one of the towns closest to the Myanmar border. When a man took his ID card and phone, Xu wasn't overly concerned: Film crews sometimes ask for the ID card in order to deal with accommodation.

Lawless zone

Three other men waited silently with him for the journey to the film location. Other actors like him, he presumed. After a long hour's drive in a white car, they were asked to continue on foot as night was falling. They discovered that there were no technicians or cameras in this remote area, only men with guns ordering them to follow them: They had to help smuggle products originally from Thailand from Myanmar to China. Border trafficking, in short.

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