Sitting on a moss-covered rock by the river’s edge, Cai watches as one boat after another docks at the pier and at least a dozen Chinese men and women cautiously but joyfully step onto the land: one man carrying a four-year-old boy, a middle-aged woman limping her way off the boat, another young man dragging his tattered slippers.

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Influx of Chinese migrants on hazardous Central American route to reach US

Influx of Chinese migrants on hazardous Central American route to reach US

Though strangers in their homeland, they now share an odyssey spanning thousands of miles, across jungles and continents. Their collective purpose is clear: they wanted to reach the United States by way of South and Central America – a once-unthinkable journey that has in recent months gained traction and become a popular migration route among people desperate to leave China.

Political oppression, stifled freedom of speech, prolonged unemployment, educational disparities and failing businesses were just a few of the factors driving their escape.

Cai, like his compatriots, started his trip in Ecuador, a country that has extended visa-free entry to Chinese passport holders. Using various modes of transport, he would cross borders north into Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico before finally entering the US.

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Once a negligible group along this migration trail dominated by Latin Americans, Chinese have recently become one of the main nationalities crossing the Darien Gap. The Panamanian government registered more than 5,000 Chinese migrants making irregular crossings into the country in the first four months of 2023 alone, and locals have taken notice.

Along the riverbank, vendors have set up humble shops and eateries, mostly selling food to these hunger-stricken travellers. Squinting his eyes, Cai sees peculiar boards hanging above the modest establishments: “Welcome, Chinese friends!” one sign reads in Chinese characters. Another spot has its full menu in Chinese.

“Look, these people definitely know how to do business,” Cai tells his fellow migrants, laughing. “They know we Chinese are coming, and we don’t speak English so they must have asked someone to write the menus in Chinese for us.”

Surviving the Darien Gap – arguably the most perilous leg of the journey – represents a monumental triumph for Cai. Showing me his feet covered in bruises, Cai says he is lucky to have made it. After wolfing down a generous portion of chicken thigh with rice he’s bought from one of the vendors, he recounts the story of how the mountains and the rain in the jungles “almost killed” him.

The gruelling three- to four-day trek in an essentially lawless land, frequently patrolled by armed bandits, demands an unwavering physical resolve. Migrants must climb up and down three mountains, cross a number of raging rivers, and traverse muddy and slippery terrains without marked trails, all the while avoiding poisonous snakes.

The rainy season that usually starts in May compounds the challenge by triggering flash floods and landslides. Just a few days after Cai has made it out, a Venezuelan migrant tells me how a round of floods swept away at least 20 migrants, their bodies nowhere to be found.

Cai faced additional challenges due to his advanced age and chronic asthma. In his eagerness to prepare for the journey, he overpacks, realising his error midway through the first mountain ascent. Unable to bear the weight, he enlists the aid of local guides.

“I didn’t have enough cash with me,” he says, “So I gave my watch to the guide for carrying my bag on the first mountain. The second mountain cost me my other phone, and by mountain three, I had given him all the non-essential things.”

A woman sitting next to Cai chimes in and says, “I would never ever want to do that again.” She pauses to examine her torn trousers before rhetorically asking, “If things were better in China, who would ever want to go on this painful journey?”

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During my month-long trip across South and Central America, I meet more than 50 Chinese migrants at various stages of the journey, and the reasons for their exodus are as diverse as the lands they are crossing.

In the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, where most migrants make their first landing on the American continent, I meet Cao Yangbo, a thirty-something from Chengdu, in Sichuan province. He recounts his decision to flee China, detailing the relentless harassment he has faced due to his political affiliations and opinions.

Two days before he fled China, he heard from his parents that police had called them, inquiring about his whereabouts. Fearing arrests and persecution, he decided to flee.

Not every Chinese migrant’s story is political. The vast majority of those on this journey have left China for economic reasons. However, unlike other migrants on this journey, including those from Venezuela or Haiti, most Chinese do not face crushing poverty at home.

Hailing from the middle or lower-middle classes, Chinese migrants can pay thousands of dollars for flight tickets and all the expenses of the overland journey. Having experienced decades of exponential growth, China’s current economic environment, especially following the three years of the zero-Covid policy, has all but decimated their aspirations back home.

This includes Cai Fei, the man I had met at the end of Darien Gap. A restaurant owner in Xiamen, Fujian province, Cai bemoans the relentless cycle of lockdowns and the ensuing economic climate, which he says has rendered conducting business in China an insurmountable challenge.

When asked if he thinks the situation would get better after the government lifted the Covid policy, Cai sneers, “With that guy being in office, you really think things could change soon?”

Another middle-aged man, Pan Guogui, from Jiangxi province, whom I met in Quito, speaks of the local government’s decision to pull down his old house in the countryside to make room for a real-estate development.

Unable to hold back his tears, Pan says the officials did not inform him of the demolition plans. When he later tried to protest in front of the site, he was blocked from entering and had to witness his own house being razed to the ground.

“That’s when I realised that the government didn’t really care about us ordinary people at all.”

Just like the reasons for departing China, the challenges of leaving home and arriving in Ecuador are multilayered. While many people manage to leave without much trouble, for Cao Yangbo, the first leg of the journey was filled with uncertainties.

Sitting in a Sichuanese restaurant in downtown Quito and holding up his passport, which has been cropped, Cao divulges the intricate steps he has taken to escape.

With a useless passport, he says he had to use his Hong Kong and Macau visiting permit to depart via Hong Kong. He then boarded a plane to Bangkok, Thailand, then Istanbul, Turkey, and then finally Quito. Sensing my perplexity about how this all worked, Cao assures me that bribing immigration officials is a surprisingly common occurrence.

“Go on Taobao,” he says, referring to the all-encompassing China-based e-commerce platform. “Then search for ‘VIP visa package’ for a specific country and you’ll get everything sorted for you.”

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For others, leaving China can be the easy part, but entering Ecuador poses another set of challenges. As Chinese migrants make increasingly frequent appearances at Quito airport, the scrutiny process has also become more vigorous.

Li Gao, a graphic designer from Hubei province, who eventually made it to the US, says he was denied entry to Quito. He followed a common route – from Istanbul to Quito, with a layover in Bogota, Colombia.

Upon his arrival, Ecuadorean border-control officers subjected him to a barrage of questions: “Do you speak English? Have you booked your hotel? How much money do you have? When will you leave? Can you name five tourist attractions in Quito?”

Unsatisfied, the immigration officer told Li that she could not let him in. He was ordered to board the next plane to Istanbul, with a layover in Bogota. Li attempted to resist, but upon witnessing two officers seizing the arms of another Chinese man and forcing him to board the plane, he thought to do so would be futile.

While on layover in the Colombian capital, Li suffered a bout of intense pain due to his chronic heart disease, triggered by stress. After examining him, medics at the airport advised the immigration officer to have Li escorted to a hospital in Bogota to receive treatment.

As he lay on the hospital bed, thoughts rushed through his mind: this could be his last chance of making it to the US. He just needed to come up with an escape plan.

Curious as to why a Chinese man had showed up, escorted by a number of immigration officers, a guard at the hospital approached him. Unable to converse in English or Spanish, Li uttered the word “America”. The guard smiled, nodded, and typed down a few words in a phone translation app and showed him the text. “Freedom! I understand. I will help you, friend!”

The next morning, before immigration officers came to escort him back to the airport for the next flight to Istanbul, Li hastily packed his single backpack and had the guard order a taxi for him.

“Go to this hotel,” the guard told him, pinning down a specific location on Google Maps. After thanking him, Li got in the taxi and asked the driver to skip the hotel and drive to the bus terminal instead. “I didn’t want to risk being arrested or putting the guard in danger for helping me, so I didn’t go to the hotel,” he tells me.

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His next destination was Necocli – the Colombian Caribbean town where all migrants congregate before entering the Darien Gap. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank God for my heart disease,” Li jokes.

Amid these unexpected twists and turns, Li managed to elude the most common concerns shared by Chinese migrants on the treacherous Quito to Necocli leg of the journey.

The hazardous road conditions, the menacing tactics of Colombian law enforcement and the nerve-racking experience of their first undocumented border crossing all contribute to the exhilarating nature of the Colombian expedition – a journey that Lin Haoyu, a 32-year-old man from Jiangsu province, knows all too well.

I meet Lin in a guest house in Mexico City, where he is making a temporary stop before continuing north to the US. Sipping tea in the kitchen, he recounts his journey, which has already spanned seven countries from Ecuador to Mexico.

Almost immediately upon entering Quito, Lin wasted no time and made a beeline for the bus terminal, eager to reach Tulcan, an Ecuadorean town on the Colombia border.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of idling away precious days,” says Lin, even though most migrants prefer to linger in Quito to contact snakeheads – smugglers who facilitate their journey northward.

Overwhelmed by language barriers and apprehensive about potential obstacles, many Chinese migrants feel compelled to pay hefty sums to snakeheads to avoid any complications along the way.

Lin, however, was sceptical towards the sprawling smuggling network and chose to navigate this treacherous path independently. The four-hour bus ride from Quito to Tulcan unfolded uneventfully, but upon arriving at the Tulcan bus terminal, he found himself surrounded by an inquisitive crowd.

Whispers filled the air as people repeated a single word to Lin: “Ipiales” – the border town that lay just across the Ecuador-Colombia divide. The mere presence of an East Asian-looking man in Tulcan was enough to reveal his intention.

After some shrewd negotiating, Lin and a fellow Chinese migrant he had met on the bus secured the services of a taxi driver to take them over the border into Ipiales for the princely sum of US$100. Lin’s instincts, however, told him to be suspicious.

Just five minutes after crossing the border, upon spotting a group of police officers, the taxi driver slyly flicked on his hazard lights. “In that instant, I knew the taxi driver intended to betray us to the authorities,” Lin recalls. The police soon arrived, demanding a sum of US$120 before promptly returning them to Ecuador.

Undeterred, Lin made a second attempt the following day with a different taxi driver and managed to reach Ipiales.

The next leg to Necocli was a 32-hour bus journey, one notorious for encounters with Colombian police who would board the migrant-laden buses in search of cash.

To safeguard his money, Lin resorted to stashing it in his underwear, and in a cleverly stitched pouch within his backpack. But, despite his efforts, the officers found every dollar bill he had.

By the third police search, Lin had been left with a mere 100,000 Colombian pesos, equivalent to US$25. Addressing one of the officers, he lamented, “Your colleagues have taken every last bill I had. Why not take a photograph of me and send it to them for verification?”

Unbothered, the police demanded the remaining 100,000 pesos. Lin pleaded and said that he wouldn’t have any money left for food. By the time he reached Necocli, he had lost nearly US$300.

Necocli town has become a hotbed for snakeheads, with virtually all migrants having to yield to their demands in order to navigate the jungles of the Darien Gap. To the great relief of many Chinese, the snakeheads have enlisted Chinese nationals or Mandarin-fluent individuals from their own ranks to cater to the demand.

Using WeChat, the messaging app predominantly used by the Chinese community, these snakehead assistants have concocted various packages, costing from US$270 to well over US$1,000, offering distinct routes and equipment.

As before, Lin tries to circumvent the snakeheads and embark on the jungle trek alone. However, the trail through the rainforest has been transformed into an industry monopolised by a select few snakeheads.

So, when Lin approaches the pier to buy a boat ticket, the ticket officer meticulously inspects his passport, only to discover the absence of a Colombian entry stamp. Without missing a beat, the officer reaches for his phone and dials a number. Before long, a man arrives on his motorbike and informs Lin that it is mandatory to hire the “guides”.

Defeated by circumstance, Lin begrudgingly forks out for the cheapest package, at US$270. The snakehead assures him of a secure passage but omits any details about the duration of the trek. “It depends on your athletic abilities,” is all he says when Lin inquires about the journey’s timeline.

As it turned out, Lin’s trek would take five and a half days. Later, having spoken to other Chinese migrants who had paid for a range of packages, he learns those who spent up to US$1,150 managed to exit the jungle in just a single day.

“Money truly does smooth the path,” says Lin.

Even before he arrives at the trailhead, the boat that carried him and other Chinese migrants had driven at a reckless speed across rough waters. About 20 minutes after the boat left the pier in Necocli, and seeing the dense clouds over the rainforest, Lin begins to worry about the rain.

As he feared, over the next few days he encounters two intense downpours and one small landslide. Fortunately, Lin remains unscathed other than a few cuts on his leg. And through their shared adversity, he forges connections with fellow travellers from various countries.

A Venezuelan family of four struck up a conversation with him on day one, and through translation apps and hand gestures, they walk together and offer each other emotional support. They share tents and food, and when Lin needs US$20 for another boat ride through the jungle, the family pay for him.

He remembers fondly the children, covered in mud, who seemed to view the trek as a whimsical day out at an amusement park. Sometimes, when confronted with a steep hill, they would simply roll down it, embracing the experience as if they were on a park slide.

“Their innocence gave me immense psychological support,” Lin says with a smile.

Once they emerge from the jungle, the migrants’ journeys become a series of countless bus rides. Starting from the migrant reception centre in Panama, located on the outskirts of the Darien Gap, they catch buses to the Costa Rica border.

The journey entails crossing four Central American countries via snakehead-arranged vans or buses – US$20 from the Darien Gap to the Panama-Costa Rica border, US$50 from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, another US$150 to Honduras, where, as the bus makes a stop by the roadside, police come aboard.

The officers ask all the Chinese to get off, and demand cash. “Why just us Chinese?” Lin asks in dismay. “Honduras doesn’t welcome Chinese and Russians,” the officer replies.

During these bus rides, as time ticks away, the migrants find solace in daydreaming about their lives in the US. Lu Zeyuan, a young man from Hunan province, shares his thoughts during a bus ride in Honduras, saying, “I don’t have many specific skills, so I’ll take things as they come. But even if I can’t find a job immediately, just expanding my horizons and learning some English would be great.”

Cai Fei texts me, expressing his intention to open another Chinese restaurant once he has settled in the US. Lin Haoyu on the other hand, simply desires “a life of tranquillity and dignity”. Although their aspirations are far from grandiose, whenever they talk of their dreams, a sense of bliss and optimism permeates their words.

In their eyes, Yu Qian, a young Chinese man from Henan province, embodies the dream. After more than a month on the road, he managed to enter the US. Now, while awaiting the processing of his asylum claim, Yu works part time in a restaurant and part time at a construction site in Los Angeles.

We arrange to meet at a bubble tea shop in California’s Monterey Park, a predominantly Asian area, where many Chinese migrants find their first homes in the US. As we sit by a park where young people are playing baseball, Yu shares that his life in the US has been, so far, bittersweet.

Having finished his Latin America journey, he found himself in Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, the Texan city where he would make his long-anticipated American landing. On April 24 this year, with the help of another snakehead, Yu crossed the border under the dark of night, and was soon detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

After spending three days in a detention centre, he was released and instructed to appear before an immigration court in July to present evidence justifying why he should not be deported. Until then, Yu could legally stay in the country, near his registered residence – a Chinese-run Airbnb-style house in Monterey Park.

Unlike other stories I hear along the way, Yu tells me that “being gay in China, especially in a conservative place like Henan province, is not easy”. His long hair had drawn scolding from his parents back home, and while he had attempted to hold down jobs there, including as an accountant and bank teller, he faced discrimination from his employers.

Yu says his life in China lacked dignity.

He misses his friends and family, and can’t work legally, so he has had to rely on cash-in-hand jobs primarily with Chinese employers. With his limited language skills, Yu anticipates difficulties even if he obtains asylum status.

To counter this, he has enrolled in free English courses at a local community college while hustling to secure daily work. But despite all the uncertainties, Yu is hopeful about the future.

“I never expected my life to instantly improve after coming to the US,” he admits, acknowledging that his current quality of life is lower than that which he experienced in China. “But I know I made the right decision, and this is just the first step towards a much better life.”

As we speak, Yu keeps admiring what is happening around us: dog owners picking up after their pets, two men holding hands, one young woman break­dancing nearby. “This is all just so nice to see,” Yu says with a smile.

After sharing a meal, Yu and I walk to his rented accommodation. It is a house shared by 12 people, all Chinese migrants who have recently made it to the US. Upon our arrival, his roommates are engaged in lively conversation about the pig trotters they have just prepared.

Yu shows me the room where he sleeps – a modest space with four beds, each separated by a cloth curtain. “It’s not the most ideal arrangement, but it takes me back to my college days, when things were simpler and easier,” Yu says as he takes a seat. “I’m eagerly looking forward to what the future holds.”

He knows Monterey Park isn’t the place for him: about a month has passed since he moved to the city, and Yu expresses a desire to leave as soon as possible. Having heard that West Hollywood is a gay-friendly area, Yu is keen to relocate there.

“I speak Chinese every day with my Chinese roommates in a very Chinese city,” he says. “If you didn’t tell me otherwise, I might think I was still in China.”

All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.