My Dinner with Chen

An Interesting Episode at Le Cirque over a Decade ago.

I met Chen Guangcheng in December 2012. My friend Mary Beth's* father ran an honor society for trial lawyers. This was the same year Chen was written up by GQ magazine as “Rebel of the Year”

I was invited to a dinner where a LAWYER ORGANZIATION hosted Chen, his wife & their two interpreters at a swanky restaurant in midtown New York—Le Cirque, in Columbus Circle. They were there to give him a ‘Trailblazer award’ and an engraved blue glass vase.

You may wonder where you’ve heard the name "Le Cirque” —it pops up in Bret Easton Eliis’s book “American Psycho” and this story is close.

Here's how it all went down, according to my notes from the event (*Names have been changed)