Lu Decheng

Life Before Tiananmen Lu worked for the bus company in Liuyang, Hunan, China. His family had deep roots in the Communist Party; his grandmother was a martyr's widow. His mother died when he was a young boy. His father remarried shortly after her death. At 19, Lu and his first wife, Qiuping, ran away together because their parents did not approve of their relationship. In 1982 Qiuping found out she was pregnant. As an unmarried 18-year-old, Qiuping's pregnancy was considered illegal. The One Child Policy in China made having children in China difficult for underage and unmarried people. Qiuping was too young to be pregnant; they were unmarried and did not have a childbirth permit. The couple chose to fake an abortion, then got married and prepared to have their child in secret. Their child was healthy at birth but after a week he fell ill and was taken to the hospital where he died.

Conviction and Imprisonment The three men were tried after June 4 and found guilty for counterrevolutionary sabotage. Lu Decheng was sentenced to 16 years, Yu Dongyue 20 years and Yu Zhijian life in prison. The three men were kept in the same prison, No. 2 Prison in Hunan province. In 1990, the three men were separated. The authorities did not feel that they should be held in the same prison and continue to be in contact. On top of the hard physical labour they were expected to do as prisoners, Lu was also tortured psychologically because of his status as a political prisoner. The Thai officials arrested Lu in December 2004, at the insistence of the Chinese government, who wanted to have Lu extradited and returned to China immediately. Lu spent over a year in a Thai prison. Thai authorities release Lu in 2006 and he arrived in Vancouver 11 April 2006, with the help of a private group of people working with the Canadian government sponsoring him as a refugee under a United Nations High Commissioners resettlement program. His family has joined Lu in Calgary. Lu is featured in Denise Chong's book Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship released in 2009.