Next year I will be moving into a house and lately I have been thinking about how exactly I will decorate my walls. I have come to the conclusion that one wall will be covered in pictures depicting controversial issues of the past. I have decided that occasionally, throughout my blog, I will give a brief history on the moments that I find disputed in one way or another.
Tank Man, as some like to call him, was a brave young civilian who stood up to several tanks making their way to Tiananmen Square in early June 1989. For those of you who aren't aware of these events, let me fill you in. It began as a student revolt; nothing more than a simple protest. But eventually the protest attracted the other civilians of Beijing, and what started as a simple revolt turned into a full fledged attempt at a revolution. Due to the oppressive nature and lack freedom granted by the government, soon 1/10th of the population of Beijing joined in. Eventually, the government called in the Army to keep the peaceful protest in hand (like I said, it was a peaceful movement and therefore, didn't really need such drastic measures to be taken). Once the army was brought in, the people of Beijing were shot at for little than throwing pebbles. This all lead to the brave man who stood up in front of the tanks. The man was eventually taken away by four men, and the whereabouts of him are still disputed today.
Sadly, if one shows this picture to a Chinese person too young to know about the events of 1989, they wouldn't have a clue of what the picture means. 236,000 pictures come up in Google if one types in "Tiananmen Square," but if the same search is made in China then only three pages of pictures come up, each excluding "Tank Man."
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