Emily Lent moves to Tennessee and falls in love with a cowboy hat: Mark Lent
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The wife of a photographer from Tuscaloosa, Alabama has been arrested in China and disappeared on the night of Wednesday, Dec. 27 — two days after Christmas — from the airport in Nanjing, not far from Shanghai.
Her husband Mark Lent, formerly a photographer with the Tuscaloosa News, is now stuck there with frozen bank accounts in the U.S., Qatar and China and taking care of a physically disabled son with mental health issues as well. He has setup a GoFundMe account and is asking for help, saying he needs at least $200,000 just to pay for lawyers in China to handle the case.
Mark and Emily Lent: Selfie
“I flew back to Nanjing mid-November and Emily was to join us for New Years on the 27th,” Lent said in an interview on Facebook Messenger. “We waited anxiously and she sent a message ‘just landed’ at 10:30 (p.m.), and at midnight we called the airport police and were told she had been arrested.”
Several days passed and he was hearing nothing, he said, so he retained a lawyer. He contacted the U.S. Embassy in China and the State Department, but was told they could not help because his wife is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China.
Four days after her disappearance, he said, he finally received a notice of her arrest and that she was being held for “suspicion of giving secret information to a foreign national.”
The couple met in China when Mark worked there teaching digital photography. They lived together in Tennessee for a short time, where he taught photojournalism and videography in a high school, until she got a call from a former employer, a French company that has offices in Shanghai, China. (He is reluctant to name the company).
The company had hired her for help in the personnel department to fulfill a contract to build a natural gas project in Siberia. But when the Russians attacked Ukraine, the French were forced to abandon the project because of European Union sanctions against Russia.
An American company hired her for a temporary job in China to find office space and an apartment as well as office furniture, Lent said, “which she did and the woman who hired her was really pleased.”
“But Emily wanted to be with me in America,” he said.
So she moved briefly to Tennessee.
Three days after Emily arrived in Tennessee, she got a call from the same French company and was offered a new job in Qatar to work on a “massive 5 year project for a liquid petroleum facility in the Persian Gulf,” Lent said. “She interviewed and got the job.”
When school let out in Tennessee for the summer, Lent got a 30 day Visa and joined Emily in Qatar, where he became a “home husband,” he said, taking care of the cooking, cleaning and laundry while Emily worked the new job.
It was “a really great life and we absolutely loved Qatar,” he said “A real melting pot of people from all over the world, 300,000 Qatari citizens and 2.5 million foreigners from all over the globe.”
Emily was headed to Nanjing to celebrate the New Year’s holiday with Mark and her son on Dec. 27, when she was arrested at the airport two days after Christmas.
A view from Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest observation deck in the world: Mark Lent
It is not clear that Emily’s arrest has anything to do with this, but a web search reveals a number of stories about China cracking down in recent months for security reasons, cyber security concerns and dissent from a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Here’s one story from Reuters.
Hong Kong activists arrested in city’s ‘birdcage’ election
Lent is reluctant to name the companies involved or have anything said negative about China due to the sensitive nature of the situation.
“I want the investigation to be unblemished because I am convinced it will conclude with her innocence,” he said.
A view of the relevant parts of China from Google maps: NAJ screen shot
Lent started the “Help Emily!” GoFundMe account to assist in raising the $200,00 required to defend her in court in China. So far he’s raised close to $5,000 in five days.
“There will be other expenses as well,” he said. “We realize this is the worst time to ask for money, directly after Christmas with holiday bills coming, but any help is appreciated. If you cannot, we understand but ask you share this post and click on my Facebook page, which is public now, and read more (about) why we have this need.”
His daughter created a TikTok video appealing for help.
@w.aterrrr PLEASE HELP EMILY #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #HELP #helpmeplease #HELPEMILY
♬ everything works out in the end (best part looped) – ciaffa & fedo DJ
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