I created this site as an assignment for HIS 135 (History of Contemporary World), summer 2012, Professor Charles Evans.

The so-called "Tank Man," or "Unknown Rebel," as he later became known, has been admired around the globe when he was video-taped and photographed during his appearance at the protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on 5 June 5, 1989. That was one day after the Chinese government's violent crackdown on the Tiananmen protests.

The young man wore a white shirt, held a shopping bag in each hand and walked in front of a tank column. Surprisingly, the tank stopped. Everybody who watched the scene, expected that the tank would run the man over, but the huge vehicle tried to drive around him while the man continuously placed himself again and again in front of the tank's way. Finally the tank stopped, and he even walked forward, climbed on top of it and talked to the soldiers inside. We do not know what he said, nor do we know for sure who this man was.  He has vanished again into history.

The incident happened near Tiananmen Square on Chang'an Avenue, which runs east-west along the south end of the "Forbidden City" in Beijing.

What we know for sure that his brave action was not in vain.  It was seen via pictures and videos around the world and has since then become an iconic image. It is also now a part of the photographic record of the massacre on Tiananmen Square which took place in the preceding days in Beijing.

The New York Times wrote: "Unlike so many of the pictures from China in the last few weeks, images crowded from one edge of the frame to the other, with determined demonstrators and ambivalent soldiers, this one was powerful in its simplicity: A single man stopping a column of tanks rumbling toward Tiananmen Square." (James Baron, New York Times, "Crackdown in Beijing" on June 6, 1989)