Kaohsiung Incident
Born in Dadaocheng, Taipei, in 1946, Hsieh was a gymnast in high school and worked as a food vendor before college. He received a Bachelor of Laws degree from National Taiwan University. Hsieh then obtained a master's degree and later completed doctoral coursework (all but dissertation) in jurisprudence at Kyoto University in Japan. He was a practicing attorney from 1969 to 1981, serving as a defense attorney in the martial courts following the Kaohsiung Incident of 1980.