Gui phoned his daughter Angela claiming he was now free and had chosen to remain in China for the foreseeable future. He said he had rented an apartment in Ningbo (Zhejiang province) and was able to see his family there. Over the next three months, Gui was in frequent contact with his daughter. From these conversations it emerged that he was not in fact ‘free’, but held in a type of residential surveillance, unable to leave China.