Love, Justice & the American Way
- Source: Global Times
- [22:52 November 22 2009]
- Comments
Liu Shiliang helped her carry and mail materials, then even saw her off to the train station from where she was leaving.
Sat in Tokyo Nikita Airport, on transit back to the US, Harms decided to thank Liu and sent him a postcard. When she finally got back to her home via stops in the US, she found Liu too had sent her a letter.
"I don't know whether you could call it love at first sight," Harms said. "But it was a warmhearted moment."
Nine years of regular letters and occasional meetings followed and the most unlikely of romantic relationships was blossoming when a village dispute escalated into violence on May 15, 2007.
"My fiancé was hit on the back of the head by a wooden club on his way home. He fell unconscious and started vomiting blood on the way to the hospital," Harms said, "and so our marriage was postponed because of that."
Liu was knocked unconscious on the road to his home at least 10-90 meters from his assailant's home, according to The Jianghuai Morning News, a daily newspaper based in Hefei, capital city of Anhui Province.
The man who hit Harms' fiancé was arrested and went to jail. Liu was discharged from hospital two weeks later and they went to start a new life in Shenzhen at the beginning of 2008, with much talk of future wedding plans.
Then on June 17 this year, the Shenzhen police were conducting a routine identity check when they noticed a warrant issued for Liu for illegal entry and trespass of a neighbor's home: Liu had been wanted online since February 2008, the same time when they had arrived in Shenzhen.
"They claimed that they had issued a circular order for the arrest of Liu Shiliang, but both his relatives and he himself were not informed. This is not what is stipulated by law," Harms told the Global Times in fluent Chinese.
"They should not have accepted the case at the very beginning. He was beaten and knocked to the ground.
"How could he have disturbed the order of other's normal lives and thus satisfy what was regulated by the law as 'illegal intrusion into another's private house'?" she quoted the exact legal terminology in explaining the case to the reporter.
