I first met Liu Xiaobo in Beijing in 1987. I was 23, working as a translator at the Beijing Foreign Languages Press and writing freelance articles for Hong Kong-based Asiaweek magazine. Liu, almost a decade my senior, had just begun a PhD program in comparative literature at Beijing Normal University.
The future Nobel Peace Prize laureate was in the process of taking the literary worlds of Beijing, and of China, by storm. He had just published his groundbreaking first book, "Critique of Choices: Dialogue with Li Zehou."
