The Man Who Stopped a Column of Tanks
Just after noon on a Beijing avenue still smoking from the night before, one man carrying shopping bags walked into the path of an army — and the army stopped.
By the morning of June 5, 1989, Tiananmen Square had already fallen silent. The night before, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared six weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations, and hundreds had died in the streets around the square. Now, along the wide expanse of Chang'an Avenue at its northeast edge, a column of Type 59 tanks rumbled eastward, retreating from the cleared square, their engines the only sound left where crowds had roared for weeks.
Stuart Franklin, a photographer on assignment for Time, watched from a balcony at the Beijing Hotel. He later recalled that shots had been fired earlier that morning, and that the tanks carried on down the road away from Tiananmen — until they were blocked by a lone protester.
Just after noon, that protester stepped into the center of the avenue. He wore a plain white shirt and black trousers and carried two shopping bags, as if he had simply been walking home. He stood directly in front of the lead tank. When it slowed and stopped, he lifted one of his bags and gestured at it, as though addressing the machine itself.
The tank tried to steer around him. He shifted his position and blocked it again. It tried once more; he moved again, refusing to let it pass. After several failed attempts, the lead tank simply shut off its engine. The armored vehicles behind it did the same. For a moment, the avenue that had carried an army through a broken city fell completely still, one man and a column of steel locked in a silent standoff.
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