We Stand With Him

An Icon, and Then He's Gone

Just after noon on June 5, 1989, the day after Chinese troops stormed the square to brutally crush a student political uprising here, a solitary protester engaged in a modern-day David versus Goliath showdown: Clutching nothing but two shopping bags, he stood his ground before a column of oncoming tanks on the adjacent Avenue of Eternal Peace.

It's uncanny that this image which is seared onto the American mind as the symbol of the slaughter at Tiananmen is virtually unknown inside China.