Liu Xia has paid a dear price for love.

In the 1980s, the Chinese poet, painter, and photographer met her future husband, Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and university lecturer in Beijing. They married in 1996 in a labour camp where her groom was serving time for his pro-democracy views.

It wasn’t the last time that her activist husband would be imprisoned. In 2009, he was sentenced to 11 years for co-authoring Charta 08, a manifesto that called for democratic reforms in China.

While in jail, Liu Xiaobo received the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

“He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China,” according to the website LiuXiaobo.net. “Liu is the third person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Liu is also the second person (the first being Ossietzky) to be denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel prize for him.”

The site recalls that after her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize, Ms. Liu said that she would “give him a big hug” when she visits him.

“For all these years, Liu Xiaobo has persevered in telling the truth about China and because of this, for the fourth time, he has lost his personal freedom,” she also said in that account.

But after paying her husband a visit, she was placed under house arrest.

“During these three years her movements have been severely restricted,” the site notes. “She cannot go anywhere without a police escort. No one can visit her home. No one can call her and she cannot call out. Even the letters that she and her husband write to each other every week are confiscated.”

Ms. Liu is also believed to be “suffering from severe depression and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.

On December 26, locals will let Ms. Liu and her family and her friends know that Vancouver knows about her sacrifice.

As hordes head to shopping malls on Boxing Day, the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement will lead a picket demanding freedom for Ms. Liu.

The protest action will be held in front of the Chinese consulate (3380 Granville Street at West 16th Avenue) starting at 11 a.m.