I'm not sure if the fact that we developed a lot of connections in the remaining days, with students' families, leaders in the community and other people that we met, made a difference or not. Certainly, we became more confident after meeting more people that were welcoming us to return to the region in the future. We never mentioned our concerns to any of these people but we had accumulated enough contacts to cause a problem if something did go down.
It definitely wasn't a pleasant experience as it was a game of 'cat and mouse' the whole time as we tried to cover our behinds in case of the worst.
We were made to wait and given a lecture that we should be more trusting of Chinese people, but we were finally paid.