The Brother Is Watching You From the Farm

From 2011 to 2019, on an animal farm on the outskirts of Beijing, nearly one hundred comic artists lived alongside peacocks and turkeys, creating day and night.

Their lives were organized around a leader known as “the Brother,” under whose authority they underwent a process they called “becoming stronger.” They listened to music described as “upward,” repeated phrases about being “correct in consciousness,” and were encouraged to monitor and inform on one another. In a studio they called the Home, they “voluntarily” worked more than sixteen hours a day, earning less than one-tenth of the industry’s standard pay.

Some of the artists came of age on the farm, fell in love there, and even married and had children. Others, after leaving, lost the ability to speak, were diagnosed with schizophrenia, or attempted to end their lives. Many would never draw again.

This investigation reveals more than a decade of psychological control by a comic studio known as A-SOUL, and the profound consequences of that control for Chinese society. Founded in 2008, A-SOUL produced widely known works such as Tales of Romance and Splitting. Among them, Crazy Neighbours, a coming-of-age comic about a girl pursuing her dreams, which ran for five years beginning in 2011 in Comicguests—often described as China’s premier comics magazine. At its peak, the publication reached a monthly circulation of seven million, touching tens of millions of teenage readers.

The Brother was not only watching them at the Farm. He was also watching the world from there. Using comics as his medium, the Brother’s ideas had long crossed the boundaries of the Home, flowing outward and leaving subtle imprints in the minds of a generation of Chinese readers.

The farm was not merely a physical location. Nor was the youth stolen there limited to a single decade. Within this mental prison built in the name of creation, a broader question of modern society comes into view: when ideals are manipulated and passion absorbed into systems of control, how do people surrender the self in the process of becoming who they wish to be, and how is dignity understood through its very loss?

Introduction

The A-SOUL studio, long beloved by comic fans, had a far more disturbing other side. It was a workplace defined by dehumanization—an animal farm in both name and logic, barely credible in its darkness. Why would a group of educated, gifted comic artists willingly confine themselves to such a place for more than a decade? How could a system resembling forced labor take root on the outskirts of China’s capital, in an age of information abundance?

Countless questions ultimately point to one figure: the studio’s primary authority, known internally as “the Brother.”

01 Entering the Farm

Even after moving into the Farm, the artist A Shuo remained the most frequently subjected to struggle sessions and ideological “reform.”

Sometimes the struggle began with a single question. At the direction of Liu, the studio’s leader, A Shuo was confronted with an ultimate question:

“If your future is to live happily with the people in front of you, drawing comics together forever, then why are you suffering now?”

Liu was the controlling figure of A-SOUL. Inside the studio, he was known by only one title: the Brother. Liu and his assistants believed that A Shuo’s persistent “failure to improve” stemmed from his vague sense of the future. Once this ultimate question was resolved, they believed, everything else would fall into place.

Beyond failing to meet workload quotas, A Shuo was also deemed consistently deficient in “speaking.” At first, he was criticized for speaking too little, accused of harboring an “inward and downward autistic consciousness.” Later, when he began to speak more, chatting casually with other members, he was again reprimanded—this time for being “outward, but still downward.”

In the Brother’s framework, the optimal state of human consciousness was defined as being outward and upward, a condition that produced “the strongest possible being.” A Shuo, by contrast, was labeled its inverse: “the worst possible existence.” 

At times, the discipline became physical. After repeated accusations of exploiting toilet breaks to evade oversight, A Shuo was publicly prohibited from urinating in the restroom. Another comic artist immediately complied, fetching a large empty water dispenser bottle and placing it beside A Shuo’s desk, compelling him to sit at his station and relieve himself there, in full view of others.

Initially, A Shuo believed that this treatment was merely a set of “special measures” adopted during a “special period” at the farm. In the rough early years of a startup, he reasoned, such methods might even benefit both individuals and the collective. Everything, he assumed, would eventually pass. The Brother often reassured everyone that the studio would one day relocate, that weekends and holidays would come. Just endure a little longer, A Shuo told himself.

The reform lasted far longer than A Shuo had anticipated. Years later, other studio members told him they had witnessed the many forms it took. 

“You were always flushed,” one recalled. “ Always silent, extremely introverted.” Others remembered that, from a certain point on, everyone suddenly began assigning him labor: taking out trash, cleaning toilets, feeding dogs. Even at night, while asleep, A Shuo would be woken and ordered to work.

When someone once asked the Brother and those around him why A Shuo was treated this way, the answer was: he lacked a sense of the Home. Home, as defined by Liu, referred to the studio collective.

After a prolonged period of labor-based discipline, one member recalled seeing the Brother approach A Shuo. Those who had been assigning him tasks gathered around. Standing at the center of the group, the Brother fixed his gaze on him and asked only one question: 

“Do you feel the Home now?”

A Shuo was among the earliest members of A-SOUL, having joined the studio in March 2008. After more than a decade of psychological reform and abuse, much of his memory had faded. This was especially true after the move to the Farm, where life unfolded in a sealed environment and the passage of time grew indistinct. To reconstruct his past, A Shuo could only piece together fragments by consulting colleagues who had endured similar experiences.

The Farm was located in Donglu Village, Huoxian Town, beyond Beijing’s Sixth Ring Road. It lay at the center of a square area formed by four expressways, including the Beijing–Tianjin and Beijing–Harbin expressways, 46 kilometers from the Forbidden City. Beginning in 2011, A Shuo and dozens of other young people lived there with the Brother, in a place they called the Home, sharing daily life with peacocks, turkeys, chameleons, turtles, cats, and dogs, drawing comics and taking on external commissions.

Former A-SOUL member Xiao Tang remembered her first arrival at the Farm. Departing from downtown Beijing, she took the Batong Line subway, transferred through dozens of bus stops, and then walked a long stretch before finally reaching a blue iron gate bearing the words Rongrong Animal Farm. 

Upon entering, the first thing she noticed was the peacocks kept in the yard. A main road curved to the right, leading to a single-story building in red and yellow tones. Beneath a sloped red roof, pale yellow walls were punctuated by four large windows, giving the place the look of an Agritainment. This was the artists’ workspace, known as the Big House. Connected to it on both sides were rooms serving as dormitories, bathrooms, and a kitchen.

Inside the Big House, one first encountered rows of rabbit cages. Only after that did the computers and the people come into view. The room was cramped and cluttered. Workstations were packed tightly together. Every desk overflowed with belongings, half-unpacked cardboard boxes lay scattered across the floor. The white tile was stained gray-black with grime and dust. The dormitory adjoined the left side of the Big House. Inside were more than a dozen bunk beds, the room perpetually dark. Someone explained that because people slept there at all hours, the curtains were never opened.

Only later did Xiao Tang understand another reason.

Inside the five-hundred-square-meter Big House, the lights were on around the clock. Drawing comics there resembled an endlessly broadcast serial drama. There were no weekends, no clear boundary between work and rest. Apart from eating, sleeping, and using the restroom, members spent nearly all their time at their computers, drawing or performing assigned labor.

Everyone addressed the studio’s primary authority, Liu, as the Brother. He told Xiao Tang that the conventional distinctions of the comics industry—titles like lead artist and assistant—didn't exist here, because they symbolized inequality. In the Home, everyone was equal. There were no divisions of labor, no hierarchy, only brothers and sisters.

Centered on the Farm’s Big House, the Home later appeared repeatedly in former members’ comic diaries and public accusations as the shared origin of both dreams and nightmares. Beginning in September 2024, the comic artist @True-Liubao published a series of online essays accusing A-SOUL, where he had worked since 2008, of operating as a long-term sweatshop. Nearly twenty other former artists subsequently joined the denunciation.

Many A-SOUL members once sincerely believed that life spent struggling at the Farm represented the true essence of existence, and that the world outside workplaces and human nature was dangerous and corrupt. “This is where genuine dreamers help one another,” some said. Within the Home, countless individuals resolved to become great comic artists.

More often, however, what members experienced was an inexpressible sense of strangeness. During the Farm’s eleven years on the outskirts of Beijing, the studio was never registered as a company. Members received no social insurance, no medical coverage, and no fixed salary—only an annual “dividend.” Most earned between 10,000 and 50,000 yuan a year, less than one-tenth of the industry’s standard income.

The Brother explained that no one needed to calculate money, or save it, because the Home would provide everything.

Through lectures and disciplinary talks, the Brother instituted more than thirty internal regulations. One of them forbade the pursuit of personal space and what he called “small happiness.” Clothing, phones, bedding, slippers—all necessities—were issued uniformly by the studio. Expressing  a desire for a preferred style was deemed a sign of “flawed consciousness.” Reading was discouraged as well. “Everything worth knowing is already known by the Brother,” members were told. “Asking him is best, reading on your own risks going astray.”

Members were also required to listen only to music approved by the Brother and to watch films he authorized. Rock and folk music were labeled “degenerate” and “toxic.” One member was reprimanded,  “You are confused and weak. Listening to this will only make you weaker.” Songs such as Young For You by GALA and the theme song from The Lion King were explicitly banned. Art films like Amélie were criticized as “excessively affective” and “inward and downward.”

In the Big House, music intended to “guide proper consciousness” and promote being “outward and upward” played continuously, twenty-four hours a day.

Before going to sleep, every member was required to greet the Brother. If someone used a phone in bed and light leaked from beneath the covers, the Brother would know the next day. Members were encouraged to monitor and inform on one another. After repeated cycles of working for thirty hours without sleep, followed by only four hours of rest before being summoned back to draw, Xiao Tang began to cry as she worked––quietly. She did not dare to cry aloud. The Brother had declared that crying signified being “bad, unhappy, weak, and cowardly.”

Three months after joining, following a conversation, Xiao Tang was told she was not working hard enough. “You’re always chatting on QQ,” she was told. “When you’re chatting, others are drawing. Those who draw better than you are also working harder. How could you possibly surpass them?” She deleted all family members and friends from QQ contacts. Only studio members remained.

Overwhelmed by the workload, she once went to the Brother and asked, “Why is it that I love comics, I love drawing, and yet I still feel exhausted?”

One rule troubled A Shuo more than any other: silence was forbidden during work . In the early years, members were required to talk continuously while drawing. Liu explained that this prevented “inward and downward” thinking and was part of the training required to become top comic artist. “You must learn to multitask,” he said. “Drawing is merely a means. It should be as natural as eating. ”

In moments of extreme pain brought on by repeated “reform,” A Shuo often recalled a scene from 2008, before the move to the Farm. In a two-bedroom apartment in Beijing’s Taiyu Park residential complex, he and eight other members gathered in a bedroom to listen to the Brother speak. At the time, A Shuo was preoccupied with a question: The Brother lived and ate alongside everyone, stayed up late to meet deadlines, and endured a hard life. What, he wondered, was the Brother doing all this for?

Bathed in warm light, the Brother said that what he wanted was very simple: “I just want to see, when I die, how many people will stand by my grave and genuinely shed tears for me.”

The words deeply shook the twenty-four-year-old A Shuo, who had achieved little in either work or love. He concluded that the Brother was not without purpose. What he sought, A Shuo believed, was the most precious thing a person could possess. Thereafter, when others voiced doubts about the Brother, A Shuo defended him, attributing his actions to “helplessness and tragic inevitability.”

A Shuo believed the Brother to be a good person. He told himself that all the reform was meant to help him become “stronger” or “better.” Before joining A-SOUL, he had graduated from a university in Suzhou and moved to Beijing, drifting through three clerical jobs, none of which lasted. His two-year cohabiting relationship with his girlfriend was also near collapse. Liu took him in when he had nowhere else to turn.

His girlfriend repeatedly warned him that the Brother, for all his grand speeches, was a fraud. Once, she noticed that Liu had sent other studio members away so that he could keep for himself the crabs she had brought to share. Still, her doubts failed to shake A Shuo’s faith. He pushed himself ever closer to the Brother's demands, striving to change himself.

When A Shuo finally left A-SOUL in February 2024, he was still regarded as a “loser” and “archetypal bottom-ranker.”

By then, he had undergone nearly sixteen years of reform.

02 The Brother and the Home

No one could clearly explain who the Brother was or where he came from. Even longtime members who had worked at A-SOUL for more than a decade knew remarkably little about Liu’s past. 

In the Big House on the Farm, the Brother voiced opinions at any moment, occasionally alluding to fragments of his earlier life. From the fragments members overheard, a rough portrait of his life emerged: born in 1980, not originally from the comics industry. He had worked as a laborer, spent time among street toughs, and claimed he could bend steel pipes with his bare hands on construction sites easily. He said he had connections in the underworld. He had a dent in his skull, which he said came from being hit by a car, leaving him with what he called an “idiot’s disease”––a condition in which, as he put it, “killing someone wouldn’t count.” He appeared not to have finished high school, yet claimed that through sheer effort he had developed exceptional drawing skills and had even taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

No one had ever seen the Brother’s artwork. He said he never kept any. “I draw one, tear one,” he explained. “That’s the only way to keep becoming stronger.”

Seated on the sofa in the Big House, the Brother's hair was long and unkempt, loosely tied behind his head. He held a cigarette between his fingers, wore slippers, and revealed a row of large, yellowed teeth when he spoke. To Sha Sha, a former member who joined in 2012, the Brother looked nothing like a comic artist, but rather like a hustler from the hutongs in a Hawaiian shirt. Whenever he spoke of his past, older members around him laughed and echoed his stories, praising his toughness and experience.

By 2009, a little over a year after its founding, A-SOUL had grown to more than twenty members. The studio moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Taiyu Park residential complex, Tongzhou District, to a self-built two-story house in Huangjiaxincun. After the move, the Brother announced that he would give everyone “the best thing possible”: a compulsory lecture series attended by all members, held every evening for fifty consecutive days. Internally, it later became known as the “Fifty-Day Course.”

Beginning on April 11 that year, all members gathered on the first floor each night at 7 p.m. The Brother sat in an executive chair. More than twenty “family members” turned their office chairs toward him. Zhang, the studio’s second-in-command, served as stenographer, producing a transcript totaling more than 140,000 words. Each member received a copy.

In one lecture titled “The Core,” the Brother introduced the concept of the Home. He began by posing a question.

“What reason could possibly make you leave me?”

He then answered it himself. “We are a real family. No one will ever leave anyone else. I help you because it is only right, and you help me for the same reason, because we are one. For this family, I have completely given up my other families. Going back there feels like visiting relatives. I’ve become independent. I don’t even remember what my room looked like.”

“We are all pitiful people––people without a home. To protect a home like this, we have every reason to be brave and strong in the face of anything. This is what is real. Today I’m tearing this wound open. There is no question more real than this one.”

“I can give up everything for you. What can you give up for me? That is a harsh question, isn’t it? Do you dare answer it?... I’m saying it clearly today. I’m holding nothing back. I’ve pushed myself to the edge of a cliff. I’ve created enormous trouble for myself.”

Since joining the studio, A Shuo had often heard the Brother speak in this register. In these narratives, the Brother portrayed himself as a martyr who had sacrificed the self entirely for the Home and its family members. On several occasions, people in the audience wept openly.

A Shuo was an exception.

When the Brother spoke, A Shuo found himself unable to feel what others seemed to feel. More often, he felt numb. During the Fifty-Day Course, he fell asleep in nearly every session, pinching himself to stay awake. He wanted to listen earnestly, but as soon as The Brother began speaking, dizziness set in.

The Brother began summoning A Shuo for private conversations. These marked the beginning of A Shuo’s reform. Each time, A Shuo tried to present himself as solemn and attentive. The Brother expressed dissatisfaction. Being singled out for guidance, he said, was an honor. A Shuo should feel happy. Once A Shuo understood this, he forced himself to smile. The Brother then criticized him for being fake.

A Shuo believed the Brother to be selfless and great. His own inability to feel moved, he concluded, meant that he himself was an irreparable error. He felt ashamed of his numbness. He wanted to cooperate, but he could never produce the intense emotional response the Brother demanded.

His failures were not limited to his reactions during lectures. He also struggled to meet the Home’s expectations of what a “family member” should be. During the Fifty-Day Course, the Brother assigned him a reform task aimed at correcting his “inward and downward” tendencies: each day, he was to approach every person and speak with them. Standing in front of his “family members,” A Shuo did not know what to say. When he forced himself to speak, it came out as idle chatter. The Brother grew increasingly dissatisfied, redefining A Shuo’s reform status as “outward but downward,” and judging him disobedience.

On May 6, 2009, the Brother convened a special struggle session devoted entirely to A Shuo.

“We’ve always staged serious dramas,” he announced. “Today we’re putting on a tragedy. Why must you force me to kill someone? A Shuo, are you afraid of what might come out of my mouth?” 

It was the twenty-fourth day of the Course. As soon as the Brother finished his opening line, A Shuo knew something was wrong.

As if seeing straight through him, The Brother relentlessly pressed on. “Do you feel everything crushing down on you now? That immense inner pressure? I’ve already given you more than ten chances. Every time I said it was the last, because I hadn’t pushed myself hard enough. This time, I’m forcing myself...I’ll give you ten more days. If you can’t change, you won’t leave––I will. I’ll stake the entire Home on this. Succeed, and everyone is happy. Fail, and the Home is gone.”

A Shuo was given an ultimatum. That day, in front of everyone, the Brother declared that he was gambling against A Shuo. If A Shuo failed to “change” within ten days, the Brother would leave the Home, burying all their so-called “beautiful memories” together with A Shuo’s failure.

“You said you couldn’t change yourself. Fine. I’ll put this Home on the line. You, A Shuo, are destroying it. Everyone’s hopes, everyone’s dreams, all because you gave up. Everything will become nothing but memories. Do you understand?”

“A Shuo, remember this feeling well. Now you know that regret is a kind of power. To truly obtain it, I’ll make you truly regretful.”

“Now you see, there are two kinds of people I can be. I can kill you for everyone. Or I can kill everyone for you.”

As the Brother delivered this mounting-emotion speech, someone in the room began to sob. It was Jile Niao, one of A-SOUL’s most well-known comic artists.

The Brother praised the tears. “A man should have real feeling. Niao, don’t suppress your crying. Don’t adjust it. For this alone, you’ve surpassed ninety-five percent of others. You’ve grown up. Go and feel it. Your life has entered a new path.”

A Shuo confessed publicly. Afterward, Jile Niao––now held up as a model member––was given a task: to fight A Shuo.

That day, in the courtyard outside the studio, the Brother stood before the two of them and said to Jile Niao, “If you’re a man, if you really care about your brother, you should dare to be the villain and hit him.” He then provoked A Shuo: “Are you a real man? If you are, don’t be a coward. Toughen up.”

A Shuo was slammed to the ground by Jile Niao.

What followed, A Shuo no longer remembered. A member named Min Min, who had been drawing in the workplace, witnessed the scene through a window. He later said that when that punch landed on A Shuo, it struck his own heart just as hard.

“So this is what brotherhood is. So this is what real feeling is. You taught the confused me of that time my first lesson about emotion.”

When Min Min later left the studio, he wrote a deeply heartfelt message to Jile Niao because of this.

During that period, A Shuo felt that everyone was striving tirelessly for his transformation, while he himself remained unmoved. He had become the greatest obstacle holding back the collective’s progress. He believed he owed everyone.

He sank into profound pain. Yet, in a moment of reflection, he came to see this pain as a blessing.

Long before, when he had first joined the studio, the Brother had told him: the greater the suffering, the more it proves you are growing, the more it proves you can become strong.

03 Fervor Indoctrination

Many former members who eventually left A-SOUL believe that over more than a decade, the studio selected its members according to an unspoken standard, drawing in young people who loved comics and yearned to “become stronger.”

For years, those who were drawn to A-SOUL and who stayed for extended periods were often what members described as “people with nothing.” Most were in their early twenties. They lacked stable family relationships––parents divorced, or long-standing conflicts with caregivers. They lacked intimate relationships that could support them, many joined shortly after breakups. And they lacked stable employment, or had not yet entered the working life at all. This absence of belonging bore no relation to education. Alongside middle-school dropouts and vocational-school graduates were alumni of elite universities.

In early diaries, some members described themselves as having been “taken in” or “saved” by the studio, finally given a real home.

One emblematic figure was the comic artist Jile Niao. In his publicly released autobiographical comic Year-End Summary of the Zoo, he revealed that his parents had divorced early. After his father remarried and had another child, he left home. In 2007, his stepfather was diagnosed with cancer. That same year, the grandmother who loved him most was hospitalized with cancer and his relationship with his girlfriend was also nearing collapse.

At twenty-one, Jile Niao was working as a contracted comic artist at a publishing company, where he met Liu––the company’ s manager, later known within A-SOUL as the Brother. Liu told him that if he had nowhere to go, he could stay at the editorial office.

In his comic diary from that period, Jile Niao recorded words Liu said to him:

“At the time, I was facing my dreams with extreme negativity, until someone asked me: Do you want to change? Do you want to become better?...Can you really say you’ve done your best? Have you ever pushed yourself to the limit? Do you even know where your limit is?”

Jile Niao wrote that the question stirred memories long buried.

“When I saw my own reflection in the window, I remembered the dreams I once had.”

“I cried hard. And for the first time, my path changed. Fervor was infused into my body.”

Liu’ s words became the turning point of Jile Niao’s life. In his diaries from that period, he wrote of his hunger to grow stronger through comics:

“Those days were more fervent than ever. I couldn’t wait to bring Single Cell into the world. Of course, I was still crying behind my hands on the way to sleep or to the hospital. But I kept telling myself: as long as I endure this, I will become incredibly strong.”

He set himself what he called an “impossible plan”: to draw one thousand pages in 2008. His sleep shrank from more than twelve hours a day to fewer than six.

Later, in Zoo, a comic based on the studio’s daily life, Jile Niao became the lead artist, helping establish A-SOUL’ s outward image of passion and friendliness. One of its most iconic panels depicted a boy modeled on Jile Niao himself, pointing beyond the frame, accompanied by blazing red text:

“Were you fervent today?”

Zoo was updated in rotation, one member per issue. A Shuo contributed only one installment, submitting it three days late. His artistic style differed sharply from Jile Niao’s. Where Jile Niao favored vivid, aggressive reds, A Shuo gravitated toward muted yellows and deep blues.

In depictions by other members, the contrast also sharpened. Jile Niao often appeared dressed in red, embodying passion for comics and tireless devotion to work. A Shuo appeared in blue, positioned at the edges of group scenes––slacking off, working out, flexing his chest muscles, or suddenly presenting birthday cards to members, leaving them special memories.

Years later, looking back at Jile Niao’s comics from that period, A Shuo noticed how the character modeled on Liu steadily evolved.

In Single Cell (2007), Liu appeared as a comic figure with drooping brows and oversized buck teeth. By 2009, after A-SOUL’s founding, the image hardened into a “hot-blooded buck-toothed man.” In 2010, Liu transformed again, becoming a sharp-eyed leader with flowing hair. By 2011, when Crazy Neighbours began serialization in Comicguests, he emerged as a red-haired, handsome “mysterious man,” described as someone who was able to see through a person entirely at a glance––his depth unfathomable.

Meanwhile, Jile Niao’s workload intensified toward the limits of endurance. In a 2012 issue of Comicguests, he wrote in his New Year’s resolution:

“2012 was the year with the most intense deadlines I’ve ever faced. I finally learned that my capacity for staying up late could be pushed even further...In the coming year, I want to make myself even busier.”

One studio member was reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, specifically the horse Boxer, whose two maxims were: “Napoleon is always right,” and “I will work harder.”

As Jile Niao’s opposite, A Shuo remained unable to summon such enthusiasm. But he tried to “grow.”

In December 2009, the Brother declared that the entire studio must embody the atmosphere he envisioned. A Shuo was assigned to design a “Spiritual Vocabulary Board”, a 124-by-243-centimeter KT board summarizing dozens of key phrases distilled from the Brother’ s daily speeches.

As he worked, A Shuo filled his notebook with two columns: “Feelings the words should evoke,” and “Feelings they must avoid.” Under “avoid,” he wrote: pyramid schemes, cults, brainwashing, crazy English, fanaticism, violence, incitement, worship, obsession, religion.

Finishing the list in one breath, Ashuo felt an intense sense of release. Then he told himself these reactions were incorrect––things to be resisted and avoided. When he looked up, the studio wall was covered with Jile Niao’s drawings: the Brother in countless forms, bathed in blazing red, staring down at everyone.

As Liu’s image in comics grew ever more refined, and as Jile Niao’s devotion intensified, the Brother’s authority reached its peak. After moving from the Taiyu Park apartment to the self-built house in Huangjiaxincun, and later to a railway freight yard, the entire studio relocated in 2011 to Rongrong Animal Farm in Donglu Village, Tongzhou District, beginning a life shared with animals.

A Shuo, too, began receiving recognition. The “Pyramid Theory” he hand-copied was posted on the wall. A massive logo he designed became the studio’s symbolic totem. His Spiritual Vocabulary Board pleased the Brother.

Under the Brother’s ardent gaze, A Shuo was promoted to one of A-SOUL’s Nine Elders.

04 The Newly Remade

The comic series Crazy Neighbours, which follows a young girl’s pursuit of her dream of becoming a comic artist, began serialization in the well-known magazine Comicguests in 2011. The work quickly brought A-SOUL into the public spotlight.

At the time, many who joined A-SOUL were readers of Crazy Neighbours and fans of its creator, Jile Niao. It was only years later that many readers learn that the comic’s omniscient, godlike “mysterious figure” had been modeled directly on Liu.

Through Jile Niao’s drawings as medium, the Brother’s ideas had long crossed the boundaries of the Home, flowing outward and leaving subtle imprints in the minds of a generation of readers. Increasing numbers began to aspire to join A-soul.

Xiao Yuan, a former member who worked at the studio from 2014 to 2022, once created an illustration to explain how A-SOUL attracted newcomers during that period. In her image, a group of small fish––young students and newcomers––swim through a pitch-black, bottomless ocean representing the personal predicaments of marginalized youth. They move toward a single source of light––celebrity authors and comic dreams––unaware that what awaits them is a gaping mouth lined with sharp teeth, ready to devour them: the Farm.

Xiao Tang officially joined A-SOUL at the age of seventeen. In February 2015, while in her second year of high school, she dropped out, purchased a train ticket from Inner Mongolia, and came to Beijing.

She arrived alone. After her parents divorced, she had lived with her father. That year, her father remarried and planned to send her to live with her aunt. Around the same time, she had another fierce argument with her mother. After repeated upheavals, Xiao Tang told her father, “You don’t need to worry about me anymore. I’ll figure it out myself.”

A long-time admirer of Crazy Neighbours, she had learned online that Jile Niao worked at A-SOUL and applied to join. Standing in front of the Farm’s blue iron gate, she was overwhelmed with excitement. Knowing that many comic artists she admired were inside, she felt the same nervous thrill as chasing idols.

What Xiao Tang later remembered most were countless nights of being jolted awake. Whenever someone entered the dormitory and lightly patted her blanket to summon her to work, she had to scramble down from the top bunk and rush to the Big House next door.

Old K, who joined the studio in 2018, retained vivid memories of escalating workload. On his very first day, he drew eleven or twelve pages and was quickly “put to use.” Soon, his daily output kept increasing. For a period, he was required to produce twenty to twenty-five pages a day, while the standard pace in ordinary comic studios was four to eight pages per person.

Old K began pulling repeated forty-eight-hour stretches without sleep. Under the crushing pressure of deadlines, he started developing gray hair in his early twenties.

Xiao Tang gradually realized that the studio bore little resemblance to what she had seen online. In Zoo, the artists often joked and played around. In the real life of the Farm, there was almost no entertainment. She once asked a team leader when they could rest. The answer was, “Once you finish drawing, you can do whatever you want.” But when she finally submitted her work and opened a video, a senior member dragged her aside for a reprimand: “If you’re resting while others are rushing deadlines, and they see you watching videos, what do you think they’ll think of you?”

Only then did she understand that “finish drawing and do whatever you want” meant that drawing could never truly be finished.

At the Farm, members were expected to worry not only about comics, but also about studying the Brother’s ideology and the rules of the Home. When she first arrived, Sha Sha was confused by many of the regulations. One rule stated that members were not allowed to say “I think.” When explaining this, the Brother said that young people did not yet understand what the self was, so they should not have one. They should focus on drawing. Everything they were meant to have would come.

While cooking for dogs in the kitchen, Sha Sha confided her confusion to another newcomer: “Why can’t we say ‘I think’? Can we say ‘I feel’ instead? If ‘I feel’ is forbidden too, then what about ‘I believe ’or ‘I suppose’...?”

Because she asked “why” whenever she failed to understand a rule, Sha Sha was soon corrected by senior members and dragged into a talk. “Why do you have so many whys?” 

By this stage, after the Brother had finished delivering the Fifty-Day Course, he was no longer always the frontline preacher of his own ideology. Senior members who had taken the course earlier, along with newcomers deemed successfully “remade,” began voluntarily passing the doctrine on to those who arrived later.

Every founding member became a “newly remade person”––except A Shuo. His transformation remained endlessly incomplete.

At the Farm’s peak, A Shuo once again became a negative exemplar. The list of his “problematic behaviors” grew longer: he could not meet the expected workload. When sleeping, afraid his “head” was being monitored, he pulled the blanket over his face. When drawing, he remained silent, continuing to “turn inward and downward.”

The Brother designed an entirely new reform method for A Shuo, one that resembled public humiliation.

A Shuo was assigned to a cramped temporary workstation placed along a main passageway in the Big House. The Brother encouraged everyone to “help reform” him––to monitor him and inform on him. If A Shuo took out his phone or slacked off at his computer, anyone passing by could report it to the Brother.

For a time, under this collective fervor, Liu knew exactly how long A Shuo used his phone before returning to the dormitory to sleep.

Sitting at the temporary workstation, A Shuo felt his body tightening and stiffening into a knot. He began compulsively eating peanuts to relieve the pressure, shells piling up on the floor.

When the fear failed to subside, he hid in the restroom to eat peanuts. The restroom was hard to look at. Cigarette butts, urine, and thick phlegm were everywhere. Trash bins overflowed with paper stained by excrement, forming small mounds. A female member once told A Shuo that every time she squatted there, she feared the paper would fall onto her head. Yet it was only there that A Shuo could relax. He ate peanuts frantically in the restroom.

Even this small relief was eventually discovered. The Brother mentioned it publicly at a meeting, as a joke, drawing laughter.

After that, A Shuo no longer dared to use the restroom. He held his urine for long periods at his desk and eventually developed chronic prostatitis, which still plagues him today.

Perhaps out of a crude sense of justice, one newcomer who had joined not long before would raise his hand and smack A Shuo on the back of the head every time he passed behind him.

In 2017, after prolonged failure to “reform” him, the Brother handed A Shuo over to his partner, the Sister, placing him under even stricter control.

His restroom time and frequency were precisely regulated. If he spent more than ten minutes inside, someone would be sent to check on him. The phone issued by the Home was confiscated. Fortunately, A Shuo had a backup phone, a Smartisan he had bought himself. One evening, while in the work area, its light accidentally leaked out.

The Sister flew into a rage. She snatched the phone from A Shuo and smashed it on the floor in front of him. A Shuo’ s friend Shaozi stood up to intervene but was too late. A nearby female member cried out in fright, only to be scolded by another member: “If you cry now, aren’t you making the Sister look like a bad person?”

During that period, A Shuo began having nightmares. For two consecutive months, he suffered episodes of sleep paralysis.

One day, he felt his body lift vertically from his bed, floating in midair, then suddenly sliding away. He went to the Brother and said he wanted to go to a hospital.

Liu told him there was no need. “Let the Sister call your soul back,” he said. The Sister knew how to do that. Dogs at the Farm, he explained, had had their souls called back when they developed fevers.

When recalling this, former member Sha Sha inexplicably thought of a wolfdog the Brother had adopted from outside. Poorly trained, it once bit someone while chewing a bone. The Brother struck it, then held the bone up to its nose for it to smell, and struck it twice more. He said this way the dog would remember.

Once, core studio member Han Chao accidentally poisoned a batch of dogs while laying rat poison. Some members who had bonded with the animals wept quietly in the Big House.

“These animals’ lives don’t matter at all.” 

The Brother said as he entered the room, again lecturing that crying was a sign of misfortune, weakness, and cowardice. He forbade anyone from mourning the dogs. “This matter is not to be mentioned again. By anyone.”

One artist once kept a clingy kitten in the workspace because he loved it. Later, for unknown reasons, the cat was moved to the Farm’s communal cat house and locked in an iron cage. The building––red roof, yellow walls––closely resembled the members’ living quarters. Inside, three or four green iron cages, each about 1.5 meters tall and 60 centimeters wide, held more than a dozen cats.

Once, an external comic artist Xiao Chai visited the cat house. The moment the door opened, her lungs burned, as if she were inhaling chili fumes. In several open plastic boxes used as litter trays, dried feces had become a new layer of litter, topped with fresh waste. Layer upon layer compacted into cement-like slabs, emitting a suffocating stench.

Having rarely seen people, all the cats became frantic, pacing, leaping, and crashing against the cages with loud clangs. The guide warned Xiao Chai not to touch one particular cat: the kitten that had been brought in from outside. After years of confinement, it attacked anyone it saw. One author had once been bitten until blood streamed down. Everyone said the cat had gone mad.

A Shuo said some “fortunate cats” had lived in the cat house since birth and had never seen the outside world. Their entertainment consisted of attacking one another––or playing with their own feces.

05 No Way Out

The liveliest moments in the Home were birthdays.

In her first year after entering the studio, Xiao Tang was hinted at: “You’re new––we won’t mess with you. We only do it those who've been here longer.” She therefore witnessed, from beginning to end, another male member’s birthday ritual.

That evening, once everyone had gathered, the Brother shouted, “Someone has a birthday today!” The “family” sprang into action.

The person whose birthday it was would be dragged to the left side of the Big House, tied up with rope, pushed down onto a sofa, and stuffed with a lollipop. Everyone surrounded them and began tickling. After the first round came a second. Once the ritual ended, the person who had just been “handled” became one of the handlers––and the next target was often someone who had not been enthusiastic enough in the previous round.

After the females dispersed, some male members would have their pants pulled down. The remaining men would masturbate them collectively and record videos. During Xiao Tang’s four years at the Farm, women were not spared either––only the perpetrators changed, becoming all women.

After witnessing this, Xiao Tang never dared to tell anyone her birthday.

On her eighteenth birthday, she did not dare celebrate. She slipped out of the studio, bought herself a small cake in the village, and ate it furtively, like a thief. It was the kind wrapped in plastic.

Later, “celebrating a birthday” gradually evolved into an internal code. If the Brother deemed someone to be “in a bad state lately,” he would issue an order inside the house: “Go give him a birthday!”

The birthday A Shuo remembered most vividly lasted dozens of minutes. Under the Brother’s direction, many people pinned him down and tickled him relentlessly. Some bent their knuckles and drilled them into his ribs––a technique the Brother had once demonstrated in person, saying it would really hurt.

Pinned to the sofa, A Shuo went from laughter to tears, then back to laughter. The room filled with the laughter of the “family.” No matter how he begged, it would not stop. He nearly suffocated. For one brief moment, he felt strangely released—because he could finally scream at the top of his lungs without needing a reason.

When it ended, his body was red and swollen. The soreness lingered for days.

Only later did A Shuo realize that this was a form of obedience training. By pushing the body beyond its limits, the mind itself became something the collective could trample at will. The constant rotation between perpetrator and victim disrupted people’s understanding of their own actions.

The rotation of “doing” and “being done to” during birthdays was a microcosm of relationships inside the Farm.

Because members were required to monitor one another and assist in ideological “guidance,” former friends no longer stood as equals, but became superiors and subordinates. Shaozi, a friend A Shuo had known even before the studio was founded, was later appointed by Liu to be his mentor.

One day, overwhelmed, A Shuo broke down in the studio and cried as he asked Shaozi, “Why has our relationship become like this?”

The Farm even regulated how relationships were formed. In a public interview in 2013, Zhang, the second-in-command, described the Farm’s approach to romance as “absorbing small families into the big family”: “When team members start families, we usually integrate them into the collective. If someone gets a girlfriend, the ideal situation is to bring her into the team. That is also a test of love, I suppose. We’re even willing to integrate everyone’s parents.”

A Shuo noticed that neither Zhang nor Liu explicitly forbade members from dating outsiders. Yet in practice, over sixteen years, every intimate relationship that did not develop internally––or failed to incorporate the partner––all collapsed without exception.

Liu appeared encouraging on the surface. But once someone entered a relationship, he would initiate a soul-crushing interrogation: Were you good enough now? With who you are, did you deserve them? Could you truly make someone happy?

Even if members endured this round of questioning, they soon discovered that with the extreme work hours and restrictions on personal freedom, meeting lovers outside the farm was nearly impossible.

Even internal relationships required Liu’s approval. San San, a former member who joined the studio for six months during the latter half of 2013, witnessed an absurd scene. One evening, during a meeting on the Big House sofa, Liu announced that Jile Niao and his girlfriend, behind his back, had had sex for the first time––without his permission.

San San was stunned. She had followed A-SOUL since 2008 and was a devoted fan. These artists had been her motivation to draw. Joining the studio had once been her dream. She never imagined that the comic artists she admired needed organizational approval even for sex. After being criticized, Jile Niao and his girlfriend grinned and hugged Liu’s leg. Everyone else laughed too.

Six months later, San San left A-SOUL. She never wanted to draw again.

Many members harbored negative views of Liu, yet did not leave. A major reason was their trust in the second-in-command, Zhang. Within the comic industry, Zhang was widely seen as a veteran editor who had worked on comic magazines since the 1990s—a seasoned professional, experienced and genuinely kind.

Many studio members had seen Zhang’s fervent declarations about comics. On an early forum that no longer exists, Zhang, under the username “Attila,” had been posting industry commentary since 2001, rallying for ideals:

“We must persist in this pathological refusal to flatter the vulgar world...only then can we be qualified comic artists, only then can we remain impulsive for our dreams!!!!!! Comics give so much back to those who fight for them––we are fuller, nobler than many of our peers!!!!!!”

Zhang favored six exclamation marks. Many former members who had doubted Liu expressed the same thought: Liu might be a fraud, but Zhang was clearly someone who understood. If Zhang worshiped Liu, then Liu must possess genuine talent.

Only later did A Shuo learn that nearly all first-generation elders had approached Liu because they believed in Zhang. The second generation, and later “newcomers,” were mostly fans or friends of the first.

“I felt miserable staying there, but he was smarter and more experienced. If he thought it was fine, then the problem must be me.” This was how A Shuo initially rationalized things when he saw an admired artist gathered around the Brother.

Once, overwhelmed by pressure, A Shuo fled the studio and stayed at a friend’s place for two days. Liu tracked him down and brought him back. “I understand you’re not in a good state right now,” he said. “Brother will never give up on you.”

Many former members said that leaving was difficult, while returning was easy. For young people whose first job was at the Farm, especially minors, it was hard to believe they could survive independently outside the Home.

When someone formally resigned, the Brother would hold extended “retention talks.”  The longest lasted nine hours. He would then relentlessly describe the miserable lives of those who left, emphasizing the dangers of the outside world. Some departed members were required to write IOUs for tens of thousands of yuan, to cover expenses incurred at the Home.

Xiao Tang recalled that the Brother stood almost daily at the entrance to the main building, the only connection to the outside world, spreading rumors about the “outside.”

If an industry artist was doing well, he would say the person was insane, ideologically broken, already on the verge of ruin. If a studio was exposed for contract fraud, he would say how fortunate they were––the contracts were with Zhang, the Home would handle everything, there was nothing to worry about.

At such moments, Zhang always nodded in agreement, actively reinforcing the Brother’ s authority, mediating between leadership and ordinary members.

Old K once returned to the studio after leaving. He found himself still lost outside the Home. He spent a year “lying flat,” then took a self-driving trip, unsure what else to do. His habits of life, work, and socializing had all been formed inside the Farm. Compared with the uncertainty of the outside world, life there was at least predictable. Someone made the arrangements.

Another member said he enjoyed placing his “self” into the Brother’s hands.

Day after day, the Farm’s routines wove an immense, dreamlike web. Those living within it became part of the web without realizing it––their blood and minds flowing through it. When the Home and the “family” were no longer distinct, each consumed self became part of a whole, forming a warmer Home and weaving an even more nourishing web.

Many comic artists thus lived in this Home for over a decade. During that time, seven internal couples married; three had children. Liu officiated two collective weddings. The Farm gradually allocated several private rooms for members with families.

06 When the Dream Ends

Just wait a little longer. Carrying guilt and pain, A Shuo realized he had waited ten years. At the farm, time seemed to vanish. He failed to notice himself aging from a twenty-four-year-old youth to a forty-year-old middle-aged man, unshaven, skin slackening, life edging toward a dangerous threshold.

In 2019, the studio finally moved to Wuhan, registered as a company, began paying social insurance, and issued monthly salaries. The new office occupied an industrial park. Members moved out of collective dormitories into small shared rooms. After acquiring a private office, Liu often shut himself inside and stopped speaking as much.

A Shuo noticed that in Wuhan, studio members began communicating freely. In the sealed environment of the farm, every word could be overheard––not only by the Brother, but by members who would report to him.

After leaving the outskirts of Beijing, information long obscured began to circulate, much of it concerning money. Over the scattered three years between 2018 and 2022, Old K drew more than twenty thousand pages. Calculated by later market rates, the steps he handled would have paid between 90 and 140 yuan per page. By that standard, he should have earned around 2.3 million yuan. What he ultimately received from Liu, label as “dividends,” totaled roughly 150,000 yuan.

As a top-tier studio during the bubble years, A-SOUL’s budgets far exceeded the industry average. Most authors held no copyrights. Before 2019, when the studio had not yet been formally registered as a company and many works were adaptations of online novels, actual control over the works and platform channels rested personally with Liu and Zhang.

As belief loosened, among different members, a shared question nevertheless surfaced: where did the money go?

One answer pointed to the model warehouse at the Farm. In later years, Liu built a storage space the size of a basketball court, lined with shelves stacked with boxed models all the way to the ceiling––“to the point that even a model shop owner would walk in, blurt out ‘holy shit,’ and assume they’d come to restock.”

Xiao Gu, a former member who spent ten years at the studio, consulted industry insiders and estimated Liu’s collection based on old photographs. He identified more than a thousand distinct models, priced from a few hundred yuan to as high as eighty thousand yuan each, with a total value exceeding one million yuan. Most were purchased during the Farm years.

Only then did members realize that the small figurines scattered everywhere were worth at least one thousand yuan; that limited-edition models worth tens of thousands lay toppled in corners, crawling with flies; that the cardboard boxes of “junk” contained the broken remains of expensive collectibles.

Gradually, members began to grasp a dual reality: while they lived in moldy communal dormitories, cooked in kitchens where rats were common, and bathed in shared showers with broken locks––so broken that men sometimes entered while women were showering––the Brother was purchasing luxury cars registered in his own name, spending over a million yuan on models, and making large investments without informing the collective.

Even after hearing all this, A Shuo did not decide to leave. He still believed the Brother to be a good person. Building and maintaining a utopia that satisfied everyone, he thought, was simply too difficult in reality. He felt he should be understanding. That belief held until one incident.

A founding elder, B, once went to Liu’s office to inquire about financial matters. Afterward, he was labeled a “splittist.” The atmosphere of the Home changed. Liu grew visibly agitated and began spreading rumors that B wanted to divide the family and take money. Many people distanced themselves from B as a result.

One day, Liu summoned A Shuo and his girlfriend, A Zhen. “Do you know what’s been happening?” he asked.

Five people sat in the room. Zhang and Liu occupied the central sofa. Three elders—Jile Niao, his wife, and Han Chao—sat on smaller seats nearby. In a conspiratorial whisper, Liu said, “After more than ten years, I finally know who the mole is. It’s B.”

A Shuo was stunned. Years earlier, long before he had even known of the studio, he had known B: a kind, intelligent, diligent artist with ideals. B had been drawing comics since 1998. Beginning in 2006, before the industry’s next growth cycle arrived, he experienced the prolonged trough of original comics. Seeking answers about the future of the medium, he carried his bag and wandered across the country, meeting different artists and editors, and eventually met Zhang and Liu.

To B, Liu was unlike other artists. He believed Liu was dirty—dirty inside and out—while comic artists were too naïve, too clean. Yet B thought that perhaps the hope of comics lay precisely there.

All along, A Shuo knew that B genuinely trusted the Brother. To reject B was to reject everything they had once believed in. It was, in effect, to reject the Brother himself.

Liu claimed that for over a decade, B had been spreading “corrupting ideas.” A Shuo scanned the room, studying the expressions of the three remaining elders. Each person who had once been helped by B now displayed exaggerated agreement. On the Brother’ s face, theatrical in its intensity, A Shuo no longer perceived any truth about life––only the petty villain of a Mark Twain satire. At that moment, he stopped believing in the Brother.

After elders A and B left, Liu announced to those who remained that the two had taken two million yuan, and that as a result the company could not pay salaries that year. He repeated this claim many times afterward, but the figure kept changing: sometimes two million, sometimes three, sometimes five.

In February 2024, A Shuo resigned. During the period when B was labeled an internal mole, A Shuo had been immersed in books and TV dramas. After the studio moved from Wuhan to Hainan, he and A Zhen lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment. For the first time, he had his own bookshelf. That winter, he read From the Soil by Fei Xiaotong, The Internet and China’s Postmodern Murmurings from Mook, and the historical drama The Long River, set in the imperial era.

He was startled by how deeply he resonated with stories of court intrigue, power struggles, and surveillance. In an interview, Zhang Ting, director of The Long River, said something that stayed with him: “All emperors under systems of imperial power, no matter their achievements, are essentially extremely selfish.”

Revisiting Liu’s past words, A Shuo felt the complete opposite of what he once had. The Brother had often said he wanted nothing but two things: one hundred percent trust and one hundred percent understanding.“To ask for those two,” A Shuo realized, “is to ask for everything.”

In the first month after leaving, A Shuo was haunted by the illusion that he was still being monitored. Several former members developed mental illnesses. Some curled up on roads, attempting to end their lives. Some were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Several suffered from bipolar disorder or depression.

Old K, who had twice re-entered the studio, lost all desire to draw after leaving for good. Seeing a drawing tablet reminded him of the Farm, sending acid reflux and nausea churning through his body. In the two years since leaving, he has produced only three or four illustrations. During his two years inside the Home, he had been required to draw more than twenty pages a day and was allowed to shower only once a week. He felt he had drawn away his entire life there.

A Shuo is slowly reclaiming the right to speak and to think. He had once been forced to answer questions like: “What are you thinking? Don’t think. Say whatever comes to mind. Immediately!” Any thought that was not “correct” was suppressed before it could form. After leaving, he began relearning how to speak. At first, his heart constantly clenched, leaving him short of breath. He spoke loudly, stubbornly, even angrily, persisting until the hallucinations gradually began to fade.

In recent days, A Shuo has been relearning how to sense emotion. Over sixteen years in the Home, he rarely broke down. He believed himself indifferent and numb. Had other members not mentioned it, he would have already forgotten many of the days of extreme suffering––including the public trial that once shattered him.

Summoning his courage, he reread the meeting records from that time.

“Day 24. Tuesday, May 6, 2009. Despair.” In the lecture titled Despair, he saw his younger self in dialogue with the Brother.

“Anything you want to say? Today is all about you.”

“I have something to say!...”

“You still hesitate. You still fear.”

“Please believe I can do it. Please believe me.”

The Brother was satisfied with his response. Using A Shuo as an example, the day concluded with a message addressed to everyone:

“From the moment you step through this door, you are no longer ordinary. I await a good outcome. I wait for the sun to rise, for the clouds to part, for the rainbow to appear. That moment will be the most beautiful. It will become eternal.”

Rereading the record now, A Shuo was overwhelmed by an immense sense of grievance, as if those dark days had returned, crashing down upon him once more.

To protect the privacy of interviewees, all names in this article are pseudonyms.