She's a 23-year old Chinese woman whose internet postings led the Chinese government to arrest her.
She was imprisoned for a year before an international outcry by human rights groups resulted in her release.
She continues to be under surveillance.
Even so, she has resumed her internet writing.
Asked why she takes such risks given her history, she says, "It's the right thing for me to do, so I'm going to keep doing it."
This brave young woman shows once again "The Power of One" - when it is amplified by the great equalizer of our time, the internet.
People like Liu Di will bring democracy to China.
What an honor it would be if Blogcritics could somehow add this brave voice to its roster.
She would make us all better people, just by her presence.
Anyone? Bueller? Olsen?
Read Jim Yardley's story about her, which appears in today's New York Times:
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A Chinese Bookworm Raises Her Voice in Cyberspace
The restaurant in the fashionable Qianhai district is almost empty, courtesy of the afternoon rains, though a small young woman is sitting on an upstairs sofa, slightly uncomfortable in her chic surroundings.
With her oval glasses, shy demeanor and slightly hunched posture, the woman, Liu Di, looks like a bookworm.
What she does not look like is a threat to anything, certainly not China's government.
Yet the government has already imprisoned her for a year.
In recent months, during significant dates on the political calendar, officials have posted security officers outside the Beijing apartment she shares with her grandmother.
"They think I'm a dangerous figure," said Ms. Liu, 23, giggling slightly at the thought as she picked at a Thai rice dish.
It is Ms. Liu's other identity that has made her a target of the Communist Party.
Known on the Internet as Stainless Steel Mouse, she is a dissident whose incarceration over her writings attracted international attention from human rights groups that demanded, and eventually helped win, her release.
Even now, roughly eight months after she was freed, Ms. Liu must live a watchful life.
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