The mayor and his colleagues cut her off. But Liu took the microphone twice more, tearing apart their arguments. Unlike other cabbies, who spoke with thick Sichuanese accents, Liu commanded attention with her smooth Mandarin, and after each of her statements, the drivers broke into loud applause.
After the hearing, the cabbies decided to take their case to Beijing and made Liu one of their representatives. Their support gave her courage when police detained her on the first train and the resolve to get on the second. During the 30-hour ride, she spoke to no one, worried that she was surrounded by undercover police. "I felt as if I could be arrested at any time," she recalled. But as the train hurtled north and the air turned cooler, her spirits began to rise.
Liu Yu and her husband, Liu Feng, spent their life savings to buy a taxi permit in Dazhou, China. When the city decided to revoke all permits and require cabbies to buy new ones, they were among the hundreds who fought back.
(Philip P. Pan -- The Washington Post)
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It was her first time in Beijing, and Liu was excited as the train pulled in at dawn. Nearly 100 other cabbies, including Yuan, had already arrived. Liu joined them outside the Letters and Visits office of the government's cabinet, the State Council. Finally, she thought, they were on the verge of obtaining justice.
But then the cabbies ushered Liu inside, and a plump, middle-aged official looked up from her paperwork and glared at her. "We already know your situation. Go back," Liu recalled the woman saying. "We will communicate with your local government."
Liu tried to object, but the woman cut her off and snarled: "What use is it for you to be here?"
A String of Rebuffs
Almost every morning, a throng of petitioners fills the courtyard of the State Council's Letters and Visits office and spills through a gate onto the street. They come from across China, clutching crumpled papers detailing complaints about all manner of official abuse. At night, many camp on the street or under a nearby bridge. Some have been seeking redress for years.
The scene is repeated at the Letters and Visits offices of many state ministries, all of them in out-of-the-way locations. Because the party uses Letters and Visits statistics to evaluate local officials, many provinces assign security officers to prowl outside and intercept petitioners from home. Sometimes, they persuade people to go back. Often, they just grab them off the street.
Liu and the Dazhou cabbies sought to evade these agents by renting rooms far from the office. To save money, they stayed eight to a room and two to a bed. Every morning, they trudged back to the office, lining up before dawn. Every day, they took a number, filled out a form and sent representatives inside when they were called.
And every time, the officials' answer was the same: Go back to Dazhou.
The sessions usually lasted just a few minutes. But as the days passed, more cabbies and relatives arrived, until there were 169 of them in Beijing. As the group got bigger, the officials grew anxious. One cold night, the drivers refused to leave and sat chanting slogans and singing songs of defiance in the office courtyard.
The cabbies also tried taking their case to the Transportation Ministry and other agencies, but the officials they met were all unresponsive. Then, a Letters and Visits official gave the cabbies a sealed letter he said would solve their problem and told them to return home and give it to provincial authorities.
But it was a fleeting glimmer of hope. The cabbies who delivered it said provincial officials just tossed it in a wastebasket. It was only a letter of introduction, they reported back to their colleagues in Beijing.
Down, but Not Out
By January, the cabbies were running out of money and getting desperate. They spent two subfreezing nights camped on the street. Many had not come prepared for the cold and huddled with those who had winter coats to keep warm. Some slipped into unconsciousness and were taken to hospitals. Liu broke down and wept.
One afternoon, while walking from one office to another, members of the bedraggled group found themselves on a narrow street adjacent to the Zhongnanhai compound, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party. Suddenly, police surrounded them. Soon, they were loaded onto three large buses. Some cabbies resisted, kicking or smashing their heads against the windows, but there were too many police.
