Farmer-Turned-Activist Plants Seeds of Reform

Edward Cody

BEIJING -- Back in 1998, Lu Banglie remembered, he was just another farmer trying to get compensation for the pumpkins and cabbages ruined by floods that engulfed his little field in central China.
But one thing led to another, and then another. In the decade since the flooding, Lu, 36, has been transformed into a man with a mission. The wiry, plain-talking peasant from Hubei province is now a thorn in the side of the Communist Party, a self-taught activist using the law to protect China's farmers from the pressures of development encroaching on their land.

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