Eric's Beijing Diary

Amazing story last night about the blind lawyer from Shandong who has escaped from his house arrest. I first became acquainted with his story six years ago, when his lawyers published an open letter in the Asia Wall street Journal. He spent four years in prison, and was then placed under house arrest in his village after his release. But now he has engineered a dramatic escape that has placed him at the center of US China relations. This story has had many twists and turns, but most have them have been predictable to anyone who knew something about how China treats these cases. But this is a new turn of events that no one could have predicted. He's blind. How did he elude his captors, and actually end up in the US embassy? Can't say for sure how this thing is going to end, but one thing is for sure: There's going to be a movie. Americans love this kind of story.