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This ongoing story is not as romantic as the 2004 movie “The Terminal,” in which Tom Hanks plays a man stranded at an airport. Feng is stuck in the international arrivals area, in front of the immigration counters, and has no access to shops or showers.

He has drawn attention from numerous passengers, airport staff, Japanese and international media and U.N. officials, however, some of whom have contacted him on his cell phone.

Feng, who has a working visa for Japan, has tried eight times to return home since June 7. Four times he was not permitted to board his flight in Tokyo; four other times he was denied entry at the Pudong Airport in Shanghai.

In June he gave a speech at an event to mark the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Democracy Movement, also known as the Tiananmen Square incident, in Tokyo. His optimism concerning the development of democracy in China drew the audience’s attention. But when he flew home on June 7, he was stopped by customs officers in Shanghai and sent back to Japan, as his working visa was still valid.

In fact, he was “advised” by the Shanghai police to go to Japan in early April to avoid the sensitive period surrounding the 20th anniversary of the June 4th incident. Chinese police and national security officers always pay attention to rights and democracy activists during politically sensitive periods like June 4 or the Oct. 1 National Day. In February, Feng was secretly detained by national security officers for 41 days in Beijing.

Feng had been actively engaged in seeking justice for himself and many petitioners in Shanghai. The Shanghai police were aware that he held a visa to Japan. As Chinese authorities had earlier banned Feng from going abroad, he decided to take the “advice” of the Shanghai police and headed for Japan.

Feng was teaching at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and serving as the head of the China Enterprises Development and Research Institute until the 1990s. In 1991 he went to Japan for advanced studies in economics and computer science, returning in 1998 to create an information consulting company in Shanghai serving Japanese enterprises.

However, Feng was jailed for three years in November, 2000 for publishing a book of which the Chinese authorities did not approve. He believes his real “crime” was his criticism of the way the authorities handled the democracy movement in 1989.

Upon his release, Feng sought vindication for what he considered his unfair imprisonment, and also began helping ordinary civilians who sought to petition the government over various injustices. Many local petitioners, who are often from the lower rungs of society, praised him as a member of the elite sent by God to safeguard their rights, according to well-known Chinese rights activist Zeng Jinyan.

Zeng describes Feng as a moderate and wise intellectual. He has stood on the wrong side of the authorities with his civil rights work, however. He created an online network for people whose rights have been abused. He was also among more than 300 intellectuals who signed the “Charter 08” document published last December, which called for political reforms in China but ended up bringing detention for a number of the signers.

Feng could simply go through the immigration counter and stay in Japan, but he doesn’t want to do that. He even rejected an offer to apply for refugee status, made by a U.N. official who visited him on Wednesday.

"I have my own homeland. China is my own country, and returning there is the fundamental human right of a Chinese citizen," he told the U.N. official, according to his own Twitter post.

Last Friday he told a visitor – a volunteer sent by an overseas Chinese rights group from Hong Kong to Narita Airport to bring him instant noodles, cookies and an electric kettle – that his minimum request was for the Japanese All Nippon Airways to take him to the Shanghai airport.

He was on an ANA flight from Tokyo to Shanghai on Nov. 3 when he was stopped at customs and physically forced by Shanghai police, with the collaboration of ANA staff, to board a return flight to Tokyo. He believes this violated his rights as a customer of the airline.

Neither ANA nor Narita Airport has been willing to take responsibility for Feng’s plight. In fact, he has sued two other airlines that earlier refused to let him board flights to Shanghai even though he held tickets. Initial court hearings have been held in both cases.

Feng’s wife is in Shanghai, while his son and siblings are living in Japan. His desire to return to China is not related to his family situation but simply, he says, because China is his motherland and it is his right to return there.

In a video shot by the volunteer, Feng said he would continue to live at the Tokyo airport if the airline keeps declining his request. He doesn’t fear being sent to jail again, although this is likely to occur if he returns home.

“My insistence on returning to China is not to prove my courage,” he said. “It is about my faith in China’s development, in the rule of law and in human rights as universal values.” He called on the Chinese government to overturn the Shanghai authorities’ decision to deny a citizen the right to return home, in clear violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Volunteers have posted the video of Feng on YouTube and helped him set up a Twitter account so he could send updates by cell phone. Since YouTube and Twitter are banned in mainland China, Internet users there need to use unblocking software to access them.

Those who pass by the immigration checkpoint in the south wing of Terminal 1 at Narita Airport are invited to offer Feng food, or even encouragement by way of a nod or a smile. Hopefully the more widely his case is publicized, the shorter will be his ordeal before he is allowed to return home.

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(Feng Zhenghu can be contacted by cell phone at +81-80-3445-7210 or by email at ga7674eed77t8jf@softbank.ne.jp. His Twitter account is http://twitter.com/fzhenghu.

The video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XksW4IGsEXY&feature)