And now the waiting game is on. Before leaving Beijing on May 5, visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave positive indications that Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng might be allowed by his homeland to go to the U.S to study. The blind activist, whose dramatic six-day sheltering in the U.S. Embassy captured global headlines, had escaped extralegal house arrest on April 22by scaling over walls and limping on for hours in his native Shandong province. On May 2, Chen emerged from American custody and checked into a Beijing hospital because of an agreement with the Chinese side that would allow him to live life as a normal Chinese citizen and even attend a Chinese university to study law. (As a blind man in China, Chen was unable to formally study law when he was at university.) The deal would have given Chen a life far different from the years of abuse he and his family have endured at the hands of local officials in Shandong.
But the promise of freedom appeared short-lived.
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