Two children of Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai visited their father on Friday morning following his first night in custody, as temperatures dropped to the lowest since the beginning of winter.

Lai is remanded in Lai Chi Kok Reception Center in Kowloon until he returns to court next April to face a charge of fraud concerning land use. The protracted detention came about after a magistrate appointed under Hong Kong’s national security laws rejected Lai’s bail application on Thursday.

It is understood that Lai is staying in a cell on his own. He was in a good mental state and exercised in the morning, while his family has approached social welfare officers to discuss meal arrangements for him.

Some of his visitors for the day later passed a message from Lai to his Apple Daily colleagues and readers, saying: “No fear, we have to fight on.”

The media entrepreneur received visits from his children and lawyers on Friday. At about 8 a.m., a morning that the Observatory said was below 14 degrees Celsius, the children turned up at the center and, because of the visitor queue, waited for around an hour before they could go in.

Ian Lai, who came with his sister, had brought along the day’s edition of Apple Daily, four books, some daily necessities, clothes, cookies and chocolates, hoping to support their father in detention and help him pass the time.

Correctional officers on duty accepted almost all the items, save for the Apple Daily paper, some underclothes, which they said Jimmy Lai had to apply for, and the cookies, which were deemed excessive.

Apple Daily is checking with the authorities their reason for returning the newspaper. According to the Correctional Services Department website, a person in custody can apply to receive “daily newspapers paid by relatives or friends on his/her behalf by placing an order with the publisher or a registered agent.”

Two of the four books for Jimmy Lai were about democracy. The Gulag Archipelago: an Experiment in Literary Investigation was written by Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, while The Case for Democracy: the Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror was penned by Natan Sharansky, formerly a Soviet human rights activist and an Israeli deputy prime minister.

There was also a religious title for Jimmy Lai, a Catholic, and a book that talked about intellectuals and society.

Ian Lai spoke to reporters after the visit, saying: “He is doing okay, staying positive.”

Besides the siblings, Cardinal Joseph Zen appeared at noon. He said he was at the center to call on more than one person and that Lai was included in his visitations.

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