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Ｚｈａｏ　Ｚｈｅｎｇ，ｏｕｒ　ｓｔａｆｆ　ｒｅｐｏｒｔｅｒ

Lu Siyuan is a lawyer of Zhejiang Siyuan Kunlun Law Firm based in Hangzhou, the capital of coastal Zhejiang Province in eastern China. He was one of the top ten most influential people of 2008 for building harmony in China. He attended the awarding ceremony at the CPPCC auditorium in Beijing on January 11th, 2009. The next morning, he spoke to students at Beijing University. The audience responded warm-heartedly to his talk.

Lu Siyuan is a lawyer dedicated to justice. He is most warm hearted toward the underprivileged people. He has handled quite a few pro-bono cases for ordinary people.

A Fishermens Case

On the morning of May 22nd, 2008, a group of fishermen arrived at his law firm, carrying a 2-meter-tall bronze bust of Lu Siyuan. They were representatives of fishermen of Xiaosanpan Village, Beiao Township, Dongtou County in southern Zhejiang. They came to express their gratitude to the lawyer for his winning the case for them and saving their tideland from the local government which had bid to turn it into a tourism development. The villagers had chipped in and commissioned artists of the China Academy of Art to create this bust.

The villagers have lived on the tideland for generations. They have farms on the tideland to cultivate seafood. A regulation issued in 1983 by the provincial government recognizes their rights and interests and declares that the long-term use of the tideland on the part of the villagers is under the protection of law. Now the local government launched a tourism development project on the tideland. The villagers protested. They complained to the government at a higher level. They complained to the media. They trooped into the construction site and sat down to protect. All came to no avail. Then they decided to sue the local government.

Then they heard about Lu Siyuan. A representative was sent to the law firm in Hanghzou. Lu decided to take the case. For Lu Siyuan, the tideland case is not an exception. He likes to stand up for underprivileged people and favor small cases even though they do not make money. When he has to choose between the rich and the poor, he chooses to represent the poor. And Lu Siyuan is famed for difficult and tough cases.

It was a difficult and tough case. The court took a few months to have the case filed, which was not normal. Another fifteen months passed before the court heard the case for the first time, which sounded quite ominous. Three months more elapsed before a decision was made. Someone had pulled strings and some departments concerned asked the lawyer to take himself off the case. Lu refused to back out. The villagers lost the case in the first instance. They appealed to the Provincial Supreme Court. Lu Siyuan helped them win the case at the Supreme Court. The tideland was saved.

When Lu Siyuan visited Xiaosanpan Village, fishermen gave him VIP reception. A percussion band staged a thundering performance when the lawyer arrived. Some villagers chanted slogans. Some wept. Some even knelt to the lawyer. Lu Siyuan knelt to the fishermen too, saying that they were his heroes because they dared to protect their rights and interests in a rational way.

A Widows Case

Zhu Hanlian, a rural widow who first lost her husband in a car accident and then lost her husbands factory in a lawsuit, stumbled into Lu Siyuans office one day. She had lost almost everything in the five-year lawsuit. She had walked and even begged all her way to the lawyers office.

She explained her situation: in the past five years, she walked so much in order to win the case that she had worn out 16 pairs of shoes. She had engaged nine lawyers. And she had run into a debt of more than 100,000 yuan. She begrudged some lawyers who were unwilling to go all out for her simply because she couldnt pay them well.

Through the arrangement of the Zhejiang Legal Assistance Center, the law firm took the case. Lu made arrangements for Zhu Hanlian to have shelter and food at his expenses. Lu Siyuan studied all the evidences and found that the partnership agreement for starting a garment business had been falsified. He concluded that the signature date and the seal meant the defendant had presented falsified evidence. Lu Siyuan ran into difficulty when trying t get more evidence from the local real estate administration. He wrote a letter to the chief of the CPC Huzhou committee. Soon he put his hands on the evidence. Zhu Hanlian won the case and got back the garment business.

Zhu Hanlian and her two daughters came to the law firm with a big silk banner, a traditional thank-you symbol in China. They knelt to Lu Siyuan and wept, saying “thank you”. The case was also widely covered in the media as the first pro-bono case in Zhejiang.

In recent years, Lu Siyuan and his law firm have taken many cases for underprivileged people. He not only fights for underprivileged people but also for underprivileged Chinese businesses when they are wrongly sued by foreign businesses.

Hengdian CEOs Case

Hengdian Group is a business conglomerate in central Zhejiang. Hengdian World Studios, part and parcel of the Hengdian Group, is known as Chinas Hollywood. The group also has other business operations. One day, Xu Wenrong, the president of Hengdian Group, came to Lu Siyuan for help.

It turned out that an American company had alleged that a software product manufactured by Hengdian Group violated its trademark rights. The group had received a lot of facsimiles from the American company, which threatened to sue Hengdian Group for an astronomical amount for damage. The American consulate had issued a diplomatic note to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Xu Wenrong had a group of 10 lawyers working on the case. They studied the volumes of facsimiles but failed to find a way out. In despair, Xu Wenrong suddenly thought of Lu Siyuan. So he came to Hangzhou immediately. Lu agreed to look into the case.

In Hengdian, Lu met the management and the team of lawyers for countermeasures. Volumes of facsimiles were handed over to Lu. While going through these faxes, Lu reasoned that since it was no good to follow the beaten path, he needed a sleight of hand in handling the case. Was there a hole somewhere? Thus thinking, he pushed aside the volumes and asked to see the American and Hengdian packs. He studied the packs. Then he requested Xu Wenrong to sing a song with him. Xu Wenrong was in no mood to oblige the request. But he humored the lawyer. While the lawyer sang in a loud voice “Our flag is fluttering in the east wind, our battle drums are sounding. Lets ask who fears whom in this world”, Xu Wenrong suddenly slapped the thigh of the lawyer and shouted in excitement, “You know what to do!”

Lu Siyuan pointed out the difference between the two packs and explained in legal terms that the difference meant that Hengdian Group did not violate the American companys trademark rights. Xu Wenrong was excited. He instructed his people to jot down Lus remarks and send a fax immediately to the American company. It was a long time ago and they havent heard from the American company yet. □