One of my stops in China was Shenzhen, the southern metropolis that’s dwelling to many Chinese tech corporations, like Tencent, Huawei, and DJI. I had a number of causes to go to Shenzhen, however there was one which made me nervous: I needed to go to Tencent’s mysterious customer support heart to get my 15-year-old social media account again.
If you didn’t know, the primary software program that launched Tencent’s empire was QQ, the go-to prompt messaging platform in China in the course of the desktop web period. From there, Tencent grew into a robust conglomerate providing blogs, electronic mail providers, music and video streaming, gaming, and ultimately WeChat. For a very long time earlier than WeChat’s success, a QQ account was basically a digital id—individuals used it to attach with one another and entry every kind of Tencent providers.
I’ve private archives—together with diary entries, chat histories, {and professional} emails—in QQ that span greater than a decade. But I haven’t been in a position to entry them since November 2021, when my account was all of the sudden suspended. In the months earlier than that, I had used it to report on a narrative about QQ’s censorship of LGBTQ content material and to attach with sources for different tales I used to be engaged on. But it wasn’t clear whether or not that exercise resulted within the suspension.
I attempted to recuperate my account, however I hit a wall as a result of it was registered with my childhood cellular quantity, which had lengthy been deactivated. I mainly gave up on it—till I discovered in regards to the customer support heart in Shenzhen.
Dealing with customer support can all the time be irritating: lengthy wait instances, boilerplate responses, and unhelpful representatives are the norm. Tencent affords a bodily heart as a final resort. If you’re prepared to journey to Shenzhen, you possibly can meet with a consultant in individual to make your case.
In January, a 16-year-old Chinese teen went viral after he traveled over 800 miles by himself to the Tencent customer support heart. Like me, he’d had his QQ account suspended. After months of communications with Tencent and formal complaints that went nowhere, he lastly bought his account again due to his go to.
I arrived on the customer support heart on a moist April day. The heart is on the primary ground of an workplace constructing unrelated to Tencent, but just a few miles away from the corporate headquarters. It felt weirdly secretive: there was no signal on the outside signifying what it was. A safety guard stood outdoors the door and was wanting to query all passersby about why they have been there.
When I walked into the reception room, six individuals have been within the line in entrance of me. We have been directed to undergo a safety detector and retailer all our luggage and drinks. No recording, images, or loud conversations are allowed on this heart, the indicators on the wall mentioned. I attempted to file audio however was quickly observed by one of many three safety guards there. “Sir, you cannot record here,” he mentioned, earlier than watching me delete the recording.