On the morning Paulo left behind everything he knew, he kissed his sleeping grandfather on the cheek.

His grandparents in the city of Dongguan in Southern China had taken him in; saved his life, really; rescued him from estrangement from his mom, from abandonment by his father, and from himself.

“So many times I woke up in the middle of the night crying and would go sleep in between them,” he said. “And so many times I told them, through my tears, I wanted to kill myself. And their reaction,” Paulo said through more tears, “meant so much: They smiled lovingly and said, ‘You can’t do that, because then we’d be just as sad as you are.’”

But on the morning Paulo — a pseudonym he uses to protect himself from the Chinese government — left his grandparents and China forever, he had woken up earlier than expected for his flight, his stomach full of nerves, his brain full of thoughts. And he didn’t want to wake up his grandfather. So, he walked into that same bedroom where he had spent so many terror-filled nights, kissed his grandfather on the cheek, and said a silent goodbye.

A Troubled Childhood in China

Born in 2002, Paulo was either fighting with or being ignored by his peers when he was younger.

“The truth is, I hated myself,” he said. “And I think other people could sense that, and so they didn’t want to interact with me.”

One day, after yet another fight at school, Paulo called his grandparents instead of his mom and asked them to pick him up. “They came and took me for a walk and right then, decided to rent a small house by my school, so they could be there to pick me up every afternoon.”

Paulo’s father had been an engineer who found himself in debt and abandoned the family in 2014. His mom, an insurance manager, filed for divorce but, Paulo says, was never exactly emotionally available.

“She doesn’t believe in things like depression or self-esteem or body positivity,” he said. She did, however, disobey the one-child policy and gave birth to Paulo’s younger brother in 2007 in Hong Kong; his Hong Kong passport allows him greater freedom to travel, which gives Paulo hope they can meet again — somewhere, sometime.

But Paulo has no plans to return to China. He defected in 2022, having been accepted through his university to study abroad for a year in Portugal. A lover of language from childhood, he learned English even before Mandarin and also speaks Hakka, Cantonese, and, yes: Portuguese.

Even though it was only a one-year program, Portuguese law declares that people who arrive legally but don’t have residency can work without fear of deportation.

“When I learned that,” he said, “it definitely planted the seed. The Covid lockdowns showed me how dangerous the Chinese government is … and, well, I just don’t think I ever would have felt safe from the Chinese government.”

Before leaving for Portugal, he made up his mind and broke the news to his mom.

“I told her: I’m not coming back. I’m going to be an activist against Communism, against totalitarianism,” Paulo said. “I have to fight for what I believe in, and that’s too dangerous to do here.”

His mother was, as expected, not supportive. But, as expected, his grandparents were; they continue to send some of their meager pension to Paulo, who’s building a language education website and freelancing on other projects.

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell them directly that I wasn’t coming back. I knew how much that would break their hearts,” he said.

The night before he left, after their last dinner together, his grandma brought out a massive durian fruit for dessert — a delicacy reserved for special occasions.

“Deep down, I think they knew I might never see them again in person,” Paulo said. “My grandpa has Type 2 Diabetes; my grandma is scared of flying; so they can’t leave, and I won’t go back.”

And yet, despite their love for their grandchild, “When my grandpa turned 80, I asked him on the phone what he wished for. It was for me to get permanent residency in Portugal so I can be happy here,” he said.

A New Life in Lisbon

Slowly but surely, Paulo is working toward a happy life in Lisbon, studying, writing, and organizing webinars to tell people far and wide about the horrors of Communism and the brutal Chinese regime. He had never heard of Students For Liberty before arriving in Portugal, but he immediately sensed a kinship with its members.

“I just found them interesting, and they were so welcoming in treating me as an individual — not necessarily Chinese or Cantonese or Hong Kongese or Dongguanese … just me.”

Paulo became an active volunteer; he joined SFL Portugal and participated in its Run for Liberty, where students jogged along the Tagus River in Lisbon, wearing signs protesting various government actions. He joined SFL for a protest against a tax on beer and for Liberty Next, where speakers from all around the world met at a conference center to talk about the liberty movements in their countries. 

In November of 2024, he hosted a webinar with two Taiwanese residents as his guests. Paulo fielded questions from the audience and posed some himself, such as: Is there any chance the Chinese and Taiwanese governments will reach a diplomatic understanding in the near future?

The project Paulo is proudest of? Hosting and promoting a digital screening of Invisible Nation, a documentary about Tsai Ing-wen, the pro-democracy president of Taiwan from 2016 to 2024. Paulo, with help from other SFLers in Portugal, helped negotiate for their screening to be free.

But perhaps more important than any protest, more important than any “activism,” per se, Paulo got to attend an SFL Portugal retreat in the summer of 2024, where 20 liberty-leaning young people like him gathered to plan future events and, ultimately, to bond.

For someone almost 7,000 miles from home, who can’t return there — for someone who is sure of very little in life, other than the fact that Communism causes suffering and governments destroy lives — that might be the most important thing of all: friends.

Friends who understand the ideas of liberty. Friends who will help him find his voice in his new language, in his new country. Friends who will help him spread a message he learned early in life and that still gets him out of bed in the morning: That people are not defined by the groups that others box them into, but by the individual identities they forge.