Selected from interviews with People’s Daily, Liangzi Interviews, Fahejia and podcast programs. Translations are unofficial.
Every criminal case concerns a person’s liberty, even their life. What you handle is not a case — it is someone’s life. Once you take it on, you owe it your whole heart, to the very end. Liberty is priceless; life is priceless.
As a criminal defense lawyer she must defy so-called moral judgment to defend those facing death — and over time she came to understand the mottled complexity of human nature.
I used to think of society as flat — people differ, but not by much. Working these cases taught me the world is deeply three-dimensional, layered. That was a great gain for me.
Behind every person lies a deep story. No one can be framed by the simple binary of good or bad.
Was I once a black-and-white person? Absolutely. After all these years of death penalty cases, if you speak to me of black or white, I will assume you have an agenda. The real world is not like that. The humanity I have seen is mottled — no absolute black or white. Mottled is not grey; mottled is every color present at once.
True understanding is not projecting yourself into another, but accepting a fact: they are exactly as they appear. Behind who a person has become there may be a hundred million reasons — yet we habitually pick one or two to explain it. All that self-consistency may only exist to make ourselves feel better.
A human life is a cycle. Since we live only once, we should live this life with all our strength, and honor the life we are given.
When memory does not continue, reincarnation is meaningless. Do you remember what you did in a past life? What meaning does it hold for you now — beyond self-consolation?
You come to feel that only while a person lives does anything hold meaning.
People say death is terrifying. What is truly terrifying is waiting for it. Prison is not so fearsome either — what is fearsome is the waiting to enter it.
We often say don’t be hard on yourself — which can mean surrendering agency. Be undemanding about outcomes, but demanding about action: demand of yourself that you act upon the world, that you express — and let the results be.
To live is to flow, to move, to act. How else would you live?
The meaning of life lies not in how much you remember, but in how much you feel. You have felt love, hatred, pain, joy — these feelings settle into you and become part of your life.
The bars of the detention house truly seal away freedom itself. But many who never enter carry such bars within. Those outside believe themselves free, yet may never dare to exercise their own agency.
Swallowing grievance is no solution — it wounds you more than whatever caused it. One may fail, but one must not cower.
When women face violence, assault or other harm, they must dare to resist and defend their rights.
In law school I fell in love with criminal law, and the seed of defending fairness and justice, safeguarding human rights and the rule of law was planted in me.
I was fortunate to find a great mentor, who through philosophical reasoning lifted me to another plane of understanding — seeing problems more deeply, my casework growing rapidly stronger.