Zhou spent most of his six months of detention at Qiaotoubao, known as a model center for anti-corruption efforts. The local government conducts regular tours of Qiaotoubao to warn party cadres against corruption. On an official tour in 2011, Zhou himself had noted the audio and video surveillance in each room and concluded that it seemed like "a safe environment" for detainees.
In Qiaotoubao, Zhou's questioners punched him and dragged him on the floor by his hair, he says. They made him smoke 10 cigarettes at once with his face near lit coals. They pressed his face into water in a sink until he thought he was drowning. They slapped his face with shoes and broke four teeth.
On at least three nights, they pinned him down and force-fed him feces and urine with a spoon. They dubbed the meals "American Western Feast" and "Eight Treasures Porridge."
Most painful of all, they showed him a video of his 22-year-old daughter being detained for 48 hours and interrogated.
It was in September that the interrogators broke his leg. Two weeks later, Zhou started slipping into unconsciousness. Only then, he says, did they let him go to a hospital under the false name of Wang Yan, with the story that he had fallen in the bathroom.
Medical records show that upon admission to the Zhuzhou City No. 1 People's Hospital on Sept. 29, his thighs, calves and feet were swollen, his skin red and hot and his left thigh badly bruised. Further tests revealed fluid in his thighs, kidney stones, an enlarged liver and swollen lymph nodes on his groin. Scans confirmed that his left thigh had broken into several pieces.
A week after surgery, Zhou's investigators took him back to Room 109, he says.
It was three months later, in the winter, when Zhou finally caved. He signed a confession saying he had accepted 40,000 yuan, or $6,600, in bribes and wrote a resignation letter.
He was released in January last year. An amateur video shot that day by his family shows a visibly thinner Zhou hobbling out of the building on crutches. He was helped on a stretcher and into an ambulance.
A week later, Zhou submitted complaints to party and provincial authorities. In November, prosecutors decided not to indict Zhou, according to a notice from the Liling City Procuratorate.
A year after Zhou's release, no action has been taken against his interrogators. Strict censorship rules prevent Chinese state media from reporting on the case, so Zhou says he is taking the tremendous risk of talking to the foreign media.
Since the AP contacted Communist Party officials for comment, Zhou has received two calls warning him not to talk. Wang, his wife and his younger brother got similar calls threatening "consequences," and Wang was told he would no longer receive a salary or health insurance.
Despite everything, Zhou hopes for justice.
"I still believe that the Chinese Communist Party is a good ruling party," Zhou says. "I also believe that not too far in the future, there will be a place in the People's Republic of China in which we can speak freely, a place where my terrible case will receive a fair and just response."
