Don’t wait for him, find a good person and get married, Chinese legal activist Xu Zhiyong relayed the message to his girlfriend Li Qiaochu through his lawyer after he was detained in February last year over “inciting subversion of state power.”

Li vows to stand by him. Less than a year later, she is also taken into custody and may potentially face the same charge.

“I am a timid and weak person. I don’t think my personality is strong,” said Li, in an interview with Apple Daily late last month. “I held fear in my heart whenever I was called in for questioning or had to face each unexpected incident. I cry while I march on.”

The 29-year-old was a human rights activist even before she started dating Xu in 2019. Back in the winter of 2017, when Beijing demolished migrant worker villages in a bid to evict the capital’s low-end residents, Li and other volunteers stepped in and arranged resettlement for the displaced. Also a vocal advocate of China’s #MeToo movement, Li joined the 2018 protests against Peking University’s attempt to cover up the sexual assault allegations made against a former professor.

Now Li persevered with her advocacy work and life in the absence of Xu. She took wedding photos in a bridal dress by herself. She spoke out when human rights lawyer Chang Weiping was arrested. She published a three-page letter on how the authorities undermined her rights when she was kept in residential surveillance.

“Every time you defend your rights, it shows them that someone will hold them accountable if they don’t comply with legislation and rules. Placing every step of law enforcement in public view helps the law enforcement agencies act according to the law,” she said.

Xu met his lawyer for the first time last month. Desperate to find out how Xu is doing, Li admitted the meeting kept her up all night. “I hope he knows there is someone who constantly thinks about him,” she said.

It pained her to know he was tortured in detention, but she was glad to hear he is in good spirits. Every now and then, she watches the video he sent her on Valentine’s Day last year, right before his arrest. “To me, the only thing I can do is to walk with him on this journey, doing my best every step of the way,” she said.

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