The road to petition: Journey for justice

How an American used China's traditional petition process in the hope of overturning her fiance's 'unfair' convinction. Lara Farrar, Qian Yanfeng and Xu Fan report

When Julie Harms and Liu Shiliang met in 1998, they were from very different worlds: she was a Harvard graduate, he was a post office security guard in a poor village in Anhui province.

Yet romance blossomed, and when Harms returned to the United States, Liu continued to court her with letters. She moved to China a decade later and agreed to become his wife.