Male, 37, worker at the test factory of the Beijing Home Electric Appliances Research Institute. From: Beijing.
On the night of June 3, 1989, Liu was shot at the intersection of West Chang’an Avenue and the Cultural Palaces of Nationalities. The bullet pierced his abdomen. He was taken to the Beijing Posts and Telecommunications Hospital, where he died.
Liu was described as a reserved and honest person, filial to his parents and loving to his wife and daughter. His wife was devastated by his death. She never remarried and raised their daughter, who as seven when Liu died, alone. Liu’s wife, Zheng Xiucun (郑秀村), is a member of the Tiananmen Mothers.
I didn’t see the body with my own eyes. Out of the blue, they told me he had died. At that time, I really didn’t know what had happened. I just couldn’t deal with it. Everything was handled by my family. That’s why it all seemed very unreal. There were times that I felt that he wasn’t dead and that he would simply come home.
At that time—especially because our daughter, Liu Chen, was still so young—I was devastated. I felt that I would be better off dead. If it weren’t for my daughter, I don’t think I could have toughed it out. Even now, sometimes it feels real, and other times it still feels like a dream. , Yet after a while I always come back to reality. At that time [right after Liu died], I felt that he was coming back a lot. I would be inside the house, and whenever I heard the sound of a car outside, I would have the feeling that he was coming back.
