No one, not you nor anyone you know would come back with such a lame response if they had gone all the way to China and been asked by a relative or friend to obtain some kind of confirmation.
At the very least someone would have gone into the office and picked up a business card. To suggest that a photo would land you in jail is abject nonsense. This is the twenty first century not the middle of the cold war. Tourists and business visitors are all over CHina these days and are made most welcome. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous, (unless one is grasping for excuses and still totally trapped in the sixties.) A phone photo of the building directory in the lobby would have been the simplest of efforts.
It is quite clear that whatever the attempt, (real or imagined) the mission was a complete failure and the lack of a single shred of evidence is being spun into something silly.
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