For 50-year-old Liu Hua, the horrors of the labour camp are still fresh. In the last seven years, she has been sent to the "re-education through labour" camps a total of three times for protesting against what she says was a government land grab in her home village.
But during her last stint, Ms Liu did something truly extraordinary: she wrote a secret diary documenting her experiences.
The mother of one worked 11-hour days making coats for the Chinese military. When the guards weren't looking, she stole pieces of coat lining to write the diary.
In her small Beijing apartment, she laid out what appeared to be a patchwork quilt on a small table in front me. But if you looked closely at the sections, which had been taped together, they were actually diary entries from a two-year period.
The extraordinary document reads like a roll call of abuse. One entry from 13 September 2011 talks about a fellow inmate being tortured by guards who used electric batons. "Her face was all purple after she was beaten," it said.
Earlier this month, Beijing announced that it would abolish its much hated re-education through labour camps - the country's equivalent of the Russian gulags. In the past, petty criminals, and often dissidents or people who protested, could be locked up for four years without a trial.
Following her experiences, Ms Liu is trying to return to normal life as best .
