Fourteen years later, he turned his experience at the Cyber Rehabilitation Center into a game

In the summer of 2023, taking advantage of the fact that the insurance for studying abroad had not expired, Zhang Mengtai repaired his teeth and waited for his life to enter the next stage. He graduated with a Ph.D. from a university in the United States, majoring in Electronic Arts. Over the past three years, he has repeatedly chewed on a painful experience from more than a decade ago and presented it in the form of a VR game.

In 2007, Zhang Mengtai, a junior high school student, was sent by his parents to an online rehabilitation center in Beijing. In that small building in the style of Soviet architecture, they were "transformed" by floor. Just arrived at the Internet rehabilitation base, "Internet addict" Zhang Mengtai was placed on the third floor, which was the first stop for newcomers. When it is confirmed that the mood is stable and there will be no trouble, it will be transferred to the second floor with the largest number of people. On the ground floor are treatment rooms and offices. A month later, he was allowed to leave from there.

In 2007, his parents drove Zhang Mengtai to an online rehabilitation center. At the beginning of the VR game, Zhang Mengtai restored this scene. (Photo courtesy of interviewee)

At the beginning of the VR game, a car carrying Zhang Mengtai drove towards the cliff. Afterwards, the interior of the net ring center unfolds along a long corridor. In different rooms, he puts down his diary for the player to read. The diary reads: "I felt something was wrong and tried to escape, only to be caught by five men in camouflage uniforms and carried inside. ”

For many years, the attitude of the public opinion field towards Internet addiction has been ambiguous and mixed. In 2017, the director of the Linyi Internet Addiction Treatment Center was attacked on a large scale. In 2018, the World Health Organization recognized "gaming disorder" as a mental disorder, which once caused controversy.

In 2021, Zhang Mengtai adapted this experience into a VR game and short film "Diagnosis", which premiered at the Amsterdam International Film Festival in November of the same year. In 2023, the film won the Honorable Mention Award at the Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Competition (IFVA) VR Special Awards.

During the production, he constantly reflected on the impact that experience had on him. The following is based on two interviews with Zhang Mengtai by Southern Weekend:

"At the base, violence is everything"

Before making this game, I wrote a memoir, a general linear recollection, that is, from the time I went in, I wrote about what happened in order until I went out. [When making the game] take the bridges, the stories, and string them together from the memoirs.

The situation there is very similar to other online rehabilitation centers, beating people and imprisoning people. Most people are sent by their families, and in addition to Internet addiction, there are many other reasons, such as difficulty in discipline, disobedience, early love, and unwillingness to go to school. Talk to them about playing games, and those students will say that they think reality is not good, and the virtual world is better. Because there are traumatic experiences in reality, rely on games to escape things that cannot be solved in reality.

Most of the children who are sent to that place have very tense family relationships, and the parents have a little intention of giving up the child, hoping to have an intermediary agency, throw the child to it, give a sum of money, let it fix the child, the child is like a robot.

There was a chubby man, especially strange, who kept looking in the mirror in the water room on the third floor, and kept saying "I'm so handsome" in the mirror. I don't know what's going on. Later, I slowly learned that he seemed to be autistic, not born, because he was born with a birthmark on his head, could not grow hair on the top of his head, and was bullied at school. He was autistic, and he looked in the mirror all day in the water room and said to himself that you are so handsome.

There was also a little boy, probably fifteen or sixteen years old, I don't remember why he was sent in, but the instructor at the base kept accusing him of being a "sissy." The other person is very nice, very cheerful, and always chats with me. A ten-year-old kid who took off his pants because he learned to take off his pants with crayons at school was also sent here by his mother.

Unlike other online rehabilitation centers, this base will ask parents to join the treatment queue, hoping that they will accompany them, and most parents are reluctant to come, saying that they have jobs because they have to make money. The cost of this base is not cheap, in 2007 it cost 10,000 yuan a month, which is very expensive. You want a parent who can afford the price, at least a middle-class one, who is certainly not willing to give up his job to accompany the bed.

When a person goes and disobeys and has a physical confrontation, he is sent to a so-called "Morita treatment room." It's a small room, nothing, maybe a mattress, which is equivalent to confinement, and no one will talk to you, except for the one who delivers food. Ask you to keep a diary and write about your journey.

The other is arranged by the doctor, who feels that correcting a person's thinking is not only a physical management, but also requires people to reflect, which is a bit similar to thinking about the wall.

Life is militarized management, get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, run downstairs to train in the team, come back to sort out internal affairs, and run to eat. Then there is the morning class, which is divided into two parts, either the psychologist tells everyone why you are not happy, pours you a little chicken soup, such as asking everyone to join hands in a circle and say something encouraging to each other.

The center implements militarized management and begins training in line at 6:30 a.m. every morning. (Photo courtesy of interviewee)

In the afternoon, I came again, either for psychology classes or for team training. After dinner, there is a half-hour to an hour's break. In the evening, either organize entertainment, such as watching a movie or singing a song, or disband.

The very sad point is that all kinds of laws, written in black and white, are there, but in this place of base, violence is everything. Those who are older than me, people in their twenties or so, are even more indignant, because they are adults, why lock me up here, I have personal freedom. They would argue with the psychologist in big classes and flirt them back and forth. However, the psychologist also spoke very harshly, saying that even if the child is over 18 years old, the parents still have absolute control.

I have checked that the premise of parents having control is that the child has a serious mental illness and he cannot take care of himself, so parents have to be responsible. But we can't refute him, what else can we do? Scold him? It is useless to scold him, it does not solve the problem.

Almost all the people who just went were quite mentally broken, and many people had the heart to die. As soon as the time passes, everyone is familiar with it, they are very helpless, and they will say some depressed words, such as coming here, what can you do, anyway, you can't go out, what do you want to do so much? I started to say depressed words, but everyone was still giggling, just bitter fun.

"Try harder to pretend to be normal in their eyes"

I had the impression that almost all the doors had to be open during the day, and the instructor wanted to know what we were doing inside, and there could be no privacy in that environment.

Every once in a while, someone would push a cart with some medicine on it and bring it to us. Usually doctors will push them into the hallway, call people in the corridor, and those people will line up to pick it up. The doctor will make you open your mouth, let you take the medicine, open your mouth, turn on the flashlight, let you raise your tongue, open your mouth and shake it, so that it is over, to check whether you have eaten it.

After taking the medicine, everyone went to the toilet and picked their throats and vomited out. So in the VR game, there is a child character who says: don't take these medicines, quickly vomit, affecting people's sexual ability. I didn't pick it, I swallowed it.

There are more people on the second floor, there are many small circles, and many people live for three or four months, like "old fritters" and "big brothers" in prison, forming a strange class. After I went to the second floor, I have been avoiding them. Because the base already has such a Big Brother instructor and a Big Brother psychiatrist, I don't want another Big Brother to come out and bring him tea and water.

There are also some people on the second floor who will become the eyeliner of the instructor, or even the eyeliner of the psychologist. Some people may be sent in because teenagers smoke, so theoretically they can't smoke, but they can get cigarettes. I don't smoke, but I helped them hide.

One night, they showed us a movie. At first, it was called "Devil Knight", which was an American horror film in the 1990s. Unexpectedly, a few minutes or so after the start of the movie, a woman with a naked upper body suddenly appeared, and the instructor immediately turned it off, apologized to everyone, pumped his face in front of everyone, and did not speak, he was silent for a minute or two, saying let's watch another film, and then broadcast "The Fuse" to us. I was very surprised that the Internet rehabilitation center often blamed the game for violence and teaching bad teenagers, but the second film, "The Fuse", was unusually violent, more violent than many video games.

I was very impressed with this film. While broadcasting, some students were very excited, saying that they had played well, and began to learn Donnie Yen's way of throwing people with the people around them. To be honest, they showed people such a film, and the speed of spreading violence can be faster than that of video games.

I had a chance to go out when I was inside for two weeks, when the base held a parent-child meeting, and it was an opportunity for me, I could finally meet my parents, cry with them, and let them quickly get me away. I did.

But what I said to my parents seemed to be heard by the psychologists present. You can't tell the psychologist that I can't wait to go out, and the psychologist will feel that you are not ready and open your heart to acceptance. The psychiatrist called an instructor who had a good relationship with me and said, Meng Tai, there is a person upstairs who wants to give you something. I told my parents, I'll go up and take a look. My parents also told me to pack my things and get ready to go. I was so happy that I didn't expect to be locked upstairs after going upstairs.

The psychologist personally negotiated with my parents, and the parents left. After this, I was bored for about three or four days, but I didn't expect to be deceived at the beginning, and then again in the middle. Since then, I have worked harder to act, harder to pretend to be normal in their eyes, and at the same time less communication with other people on the base.

When I stayed for a month, they gave me a conversation and asked if I wanted to come out. I told him a bunch of stereotypes, which are the chicken soup for the soul that I learned in those so-called psychological classes. It's like coping with an exam, I memorize what they say. The future is very beautiful and full of sunshine, I can't wait to return to society, study hard, it is not easy for my parents to raise me so big, I have to repay them well. Just say these words, I don't believe it.

In the online rehabilitation center, there will be psychologists to give lessons to students about the dangers of Internet addiction. After many years, Zhang Mengtai can't remember everyone's faces. (Photo courtesy of interviewee)

I was released within two days of that conversation. I breathed a sigh of relief and was finally able to go. But at the same time, the heart is a little complicated, because the immediate need is solved and released, but other problems in life are actually unsolved. There are many complicated things in my family, complex family conflicts, which cannot be solved properly, perennial quarrels. To say that the intensity and psychological depression are uncomfortable, it is no less than in the base.

Coming out to face your parents, your feelings are complicated, and you don't like them very much for a long time. I became a little polarized. Usually good and polite, but suddenly when it comes to a certain point, I may suddenly erupt and can't suppress my anger.

As a victim, I did not dare to speak out about it

In 2018 I saw the WHO news that gaming addiction was certified as a disease by their manual, and I was shocked because in my experience, it was very unrealistic and.

In 2020, I applied for money for the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival in the Netherlands with my collaborator and composer Lemon Guo, and at the same time applied for the New York local government's arts fund. After taking these two sources, I recruited a team and brought in about two or three people to develop the game.

This experience is something that happened to me in the past, and the difficulty is whether to say it. A few years ago, if I didn't want to talk about this, I would feel humiliated and be said to be mentally ill. Even if these institutions are inhumane, I, as a victim, dare not speak out about it.

Today I want to talk about this matter, I have to explain a lot, and every time I talk about this topic, it will always involve more or less personal level. Am I having low self-control? Why are everyone else normal and studying hard, and I wasn't like that? Is there something wrong with me?

Lemon Guo said he was surprised to meet a living person around him who had experienced this kind of thing. He studied psychology for two years before studying music, and in his experience, he feels that many statements and studies in psychology are actually quite controversial and inadequate.

He became more involved later, and he would find this matter quite complicated. At that time, we looked up Goldberg (American psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg). He is often referred to in China as the first person to propose the concept of "Internet addiction". He mentioned it, but he said that he had never attended any "Internet addiction" related seminars, because he felt that the concept of "Internet addiction" is that people encounter some difficult problems in their lives and have some negative emotions, which may just be a bad catharsis.

For solving Internet addiction, do these experts want to solve the problems that these people cannot solve and digest in their lives, such as stress, exclusion, etc., as Goldberg said, or do they have to solve the superficial problems, that is, they overuse the Internet and overuse computers?

I asked some people to voice the characters in the game, and I can't remember what they looked like, but I had an impression of their accents.

In the game, my dad doesn't speak, and my mom is voiced by herself. I took a moment to talk to her about it, and she felt a little guilty, and I could understand her. At that time, the situation at home was really chaotic, her unit was very busy, and after returning to deal with the relationship between her mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, as well as the relationship with my father, she was very tired, her mental condition was very bad, and she was busy all day. She didn't think it was a good decision.

Everyone in the VR game has a blurred face. On the one hand, I can't really remember what they looked like. On the other hand, these people that we are caught in should be faceless, personalityless, you cannot be yourself, you have to belong to that special "collective", there is no self in it.

Southern Weekend reporter Pan Xuan

Responsible editor: Li Muyan