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♪ from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." this day, the 25th anniversary of the events on june 4, 1989 in beijing, china. soldiers crushed into tiananmen studento stop a protest. many hundreds died. the chinese government has since tried to erase the events of that day from history. there is a report from seth joan of cbs news today from beijing. >> at dawn, china's flag was raised over tiananmen square as it is everyday, but on this anniversary, extra security forces, some with machine guns, were stationed. >> why are you stopping me? >> while trying to report, we found citizens serving as plain clothed informants. china reveals its authoritarian side. 25 years ago, tanks rolled into beijing's tiananmen square to suppress a weeklong student uprising that had spread across china. the communist government's crackdown turned bloody. it is still not known how many died. estimates range from 200 to more than 1000. as a student in china, do you learn about tiananmen square in the history books? >> not much. >> not mentioned at all. wethese college students who won't name because they took the risk just to talk with us acknowledged it is difficult to find information about what the government calls "the june 4 incident." >> we still don't know what happened. i think that is not cool, i think. >> yeah, that's not cool. everyone in china, we have a right to know the truth. after so many years past, and we still don't know what happened. >> china is a very different place today than it was 25 years ago. it is wealthier, more powerful, and more confident on the world stage treated its growth has come at the cost of colette -- of corruption and political repression could join me to talk about tiananmen square, from washington, d.c., evan osnos of "the new yorker" magazine. he is the author of the new book "age of ambition: chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new china." here, orville schell. since 1970red china and written more than 10 books. a columnist and former correspondent for "the new york times." in 1990, he shared a pulitzer prize with his wife for their reporting from tiananmen square. founder ands the editor-in-chief of "the china digital times." his site focuses on censorship and political crimes in chinese cyberspace. from boston, chai ling. she was one of the student 1989.s back in 1899 -- i'm pleased to have all of them here. let me go back. and whatbout that day led up to it, and beginning, i assume, with how the students began to congregate. >> it really was an extraordinary sort of episode and not just chinese history but any history. to be in the square during the weeks leading up to june 4 was like being at some incredible festival almost to read a as ifg of elation something had lifted. the press for the first time was absolutely free. people all across china weren't watching what was happening. feeling ofmazing sudden lack of repression. everybody, i think, believed that this was an inflection point. they would never get this genie back in the bottle, but of course, that was a very naïve presumption. doand the death had what to -- >> he had been pushed out of power a couple of years earlier. hard-liners thought he hadn't cracked down hard enough on them. he was no great champion of liberalization, but given what had happened to him and the unfairness of that, the students did try to mourn his death when he died. beijing university protesters put up small sides -- signs. that gradually grew into a call to actually honor him and to protest, and on top of that, there were calls for an end to corruption, greater economic justice. the government complicated it by calling for repression, and the students protested against it. this snowballed in a way nobody could have imagined when it began. >> where were you? >> i was there every day at beijing university and the protests, and then at night, i was there when the troops opened fire. >> did you believe it was going to end badly? >> after martial law was 20, thenon may increasingly, we began -- we became nervous that that was one possible outcome. i would say the students were overwhelmingly -- they couldn't imagine this could end with bloodshed. there were some older folks that warned that this was precisely what would happen if the party got pushed into a corner. it was hard to imagine, especially when the soldiers initially came in on armed and .elaxed there was always that nervousness that it would unfold exactly as it ended up doing. >> what did students want? had slogans and posters and leaflets. there were loudspeakers. talking to hundreds of foreign journalists everyday. werenk the basic commands more political freedom or more political expression and democratic reform. it was clear and obvious. differentso many streams of emotions. at this rare moment, it all exploded. that came out from different walks of life and even beyond tiananmen square. if i have to put one word to it, don't make things to come budgeted -- too complicated. that was a rare moment that the chinese people experience a sense of freedom, and we want freedom. that is also a very cruel, cruel conflict with the reality. truth. moment of who is ruling china, and how do they rule it? >> i want to pronounce it correctly or have you help me. you were a protége of his, a student of his. >> i was at university. he was my president. >> you were out of the country? >> i was out of the country. i left china in 1986, came to here at university of notre dame studying astrophysics. when students were in tiananmen square, i was here doing my phd thesis. when i watched everyone on the square, i knew i could be one of them if i was in china. happened on june 4, i actually went back to china. that, for ant entire generation, for the entire country, we never thought siveere living in such deci but also tragic moments. what is freedom? what is the real truth we are living in? >> how much progress have you made towards freedom since tiananmen square? >> china has changed a lot. in many ways, people's lives are freer, but not in terms of political freedom. as you mentioned in the beginning, it is a wealthier country. i have not been back to china since 1989. that was my last trip because of my political activities, but everyone has been there. of course, the high-rises, the stock market, the rising economy, everything. this also is the price of 1989. they've closed the door to political liberalization. ever since, the authority was so afraid to revisit that question again. the legitimacy of the regime after the massacre is entirely dependent on economic performance, and that is becoming more and more fragile. today, i'm watching china on the internet everyday. keywordsr of banned that you cannot even type into chinese social media about tiananmen square and june 4 is mind-boggling. you cannot type tiananmen square . you cannot type june 4. until yesterday, you cannot search the word "today tiana nmen." if you search that come it shows up all the memorial discussions. therefore, the authority has to ban the word "today." that is how sensitive this topic is 25 years later. >> does the government have reason -- are they right in believing that if they don't maintain this tight political repression, that their hold is so fragile that they will be overthrown and the party will lose control? >> that is their fear. >> is the fear well-founded? founded after the massacre. after that point, there is no to retreatieve -- from what they have done to the people. >> you just wrote a book, and we talked about it here on the program. reflect on how the government anded tiananmen square, with this economic liberalization, why aren't they more confident? >> the government is acutely self-conscious about what happened in 1989. officially what it says was that this was, in its own way, a tragic but necessary step on the path of china's economic rise. he saw the government put out a statement the other day saying, we have always been perfecting rule of law in our political and social institutions. they have trained young people in china today, people who have grown up in the last 25 years, to believe that, had the demonstrations in tiananmen putre, had they not been down, china's economic rise would have been impossible. that is the story. at the same time, what you see is that they are not interested or willing to put that argument up for an open debate. that is why on the internet, for instance, instead of saying, we stand by our decisions and the political choices we made, they say, we don't want to have this conversation. the judgment that was made after the turmoil, as it is described in chinese, the turmoil of 1989, that is the judgment that stands today. therefore, it is almost entirely undiscussed in china. >> chai ling joins us now. thank you for coming. take us back to 1989 and where you are and what you were doing and what you're thinking and how you are able to escape. thiss, 25 years ago, at hour, i was with our last 5000 students who stood peacefully at tiananmen square. we were shocked in disbelief to discover that instead of forening to our cry out freedom, the government sent tanks and troops to silence our dream. all sorts of emotions came in. we had to confront something called death and to give up everything we ever hoped for in our lives for ourselves, for our families, for our nation. i told a story about a group of ants on the hill. the hill caught on fire, and they had to go down the hill to survive. the outside ants would burn to death, but the inside would survive. i told the students we were like the ants on the frontier of our nation's freedom, and through our sacrifice, a new trend would be born. as i said that, i saw everybody's spirit lift up. everybody was depressed and sad and sorrowful and in pain. in that moment, i turned back to look into this darkness of the northern part of tiananmen city where forbidden the chinese government gave the order to massacre. warmth ins flood of my heart that floated towards them. great wishes and love for the leaders of china, even though they just declared a massacre on us. though the soldiers and tanks were moving toward us with their machine guns, we have nothing but love for them. through theg darkness, all the generations coming up, those who will never know us -- we wished the best for them. there isoking back love from god to china, and china has been proved as a result of that great prayer and wish. >> i appreciate your own religious beliefs. let me just ask once again. how did you escape? >> i was put on the most wanted list and had to escape, hide out in china for 10 months until i come to to finally freedom. i was rescued by a group of courageous buddhist believers. it was their faith to save my and preserve hope for china. they were just so courageous. they started with a couple people, and eventually, they expanded into a network of 200 families. intensehat time of terror, persecution, every day, my friends and colleagues who were put on the most wanted list were discovered, a great prize over my head, and even under that high-pressure, these people never betrayed us. my last journey was to be put into a cargo box inside a boat for four nights and five days. we were finally able to come kong,- to come to hong then to paris, and eventually to america. >> i'm going to review now the decision by them to do this. what do we know about the factors that were at work and how he reached his decision to order the army to do this? >> he and many of the senior leaders had this fear, having grown up in a time when china was chaotic, of chaos. >> the cultural revolution, as well. >> so, i think that was in the back of their minds, and of course, they historically have not been shy of shedding blood. they had earlier tried to send in -- tried to use the police. that failed. then they tried to send in troops who were unarmed, and that failed. by the night of june 3, deng xiaoping wanted to shed blood. he wanted to scare people. i don't think it was just a matter of this was the only way to get to tiananmen square. >> where there are strong voices inside the council government not to shed blood? >> there were voices, but not strong ones. the communist party leader at the time -- >> the party leader? >> he refused to implement the order and offered to resign. his aid, the same thing. another politburo member was kind of wavering. china wasn't really ruled by the politburo. it was ruled by these older octogenarian hardliners. they prevailed. >> they have been there since the revolution. >> that's right. at the end of the day, it wasn't as if it was really close. there was some army resistance, but not a lot. afterward, there was passive resistance. within the party leadership, within the military, when they gave the order to open fire, people opened fire. >> tell me more about this. what was the reaction in the united states and other governments around the world? was one of the enormous shock, particularly when people saw the drama that was being played out as the armies marched down for the second time towards tiananmen square. at that point, they were using live fire. deng xiaoping interestingly enough said a few days afterwards, he said, this was a storm that was bound to come. i think what he meant by that was he could sense building within this structure of a one-party state that there were forces that were going to sooner or later erupt. i think, as nick suggests, in the leninist scheme of things, a one-party orthodoxy, there really is no other possible response except repression. overthrowingu risk the party, exactly what happened in russia and the soviet union. -- in russia, it hadn't happened at that point, but there was a deep and abiding sense that the party, if it yielded on this important question of a split within its own ranks and didn't repress those people in the streets, it would lead to its downfall. i think you could say maybe deng xiaoping was right. >> i would pushback at that. it seems to me the party, if it had gone the other direction, actually, if the octogenarians , something down would have happened more like taiwan where you would've had the communist party have free speech, have elections that were manipulated, that it might actually win. >> except, i think, had that happened, i agree, but i don't think that could have happened given the fact that it wasn't simply deng xiaoping. he had a whole coterie of elder revolutionaries who would never have allowed that. orville.e with i want to ask something. partytioned the leninist has this -- i would put this tragic event in the long history of chinese political history, that china never tolerates dissent. opinions dissenting are the most crushed, always killed. not only family. all relatives. there is never a political --erance to the political not even mentioning the rebellions, so when the students and particularly citizens stopped the troops, that is a rebellion. that cannot be tolerated. it has to be absolutely crushed in order to rule china. that is in every china rulers head. ruler's >> what do you think most governments would have done if in fact there were -- there was this kind of rebellion in the center of their capital? >> most governments would have used riot control equipment. they might have detained some people. there would have been free speech. there might have been political repercussions. you know, they would not have sent in an army. wars, buted lots of i've never seen an army of 200,000 people move into a capital and just mow people down like that. indeed, there were other countries that face very similar decisions. mongolia inin 1987, 1990, east germany in 1990, and there were -- indonesia in the 1998, and in each case, it could have gone either way. repression or easing. in each of those cases, it went the other way. >> china is the worst example of the time it went the other way. looking back, is this the most extreme example of a government crushing its people? >> i think it is a tremendous source of humiliation for the government to have endured this moment. it is something that i think they will never recover from. it's a bit like germany. until there is an adequate reflection and revisiting of it. that is hard to do. >> i just wanted to say, i do agree with the panelists about the assessment of china at the time, and we did hear rumors at the time that deng xiaoping wanted killed 200,000 people and to buy 20 years of stability. analysise with the that it didn't need to use troops and tanks to clear the square, but he needed to kill the chickens to scare the monkeys's. that was his rationale. when he decided to use that, he was able to use his influence to convince other people to agree with that. that is not best for the nation. that is not what is best for china. at the time, the reformer leader whose death enabled the beginning of the movement, he wanted china to have three reforms. economic reform, political reform, and spiritual reform. others only wanted to reforms, political and economic. with only one, and that was economic reform. china today has the worst form of economic dictatorship with no political reforms. >> let me talk to evan. he has been sometime reporting from there. what is the conversation today about tiananmen square, and what is the conversation today about political reform? amazing, what is striking is how young people in china today, many of them really do know very little about what happened in 1989 because it has been so systematically removed from the world of information that they have access to. many of them can go online, jump the firewall, as it is known, and look at foreign websites, but there are technical steps you have to take to do that. for some of them, the obstacles are just large enough. what is really striking is that among those who are aware of it, i think it is worth pointing out that there are young people who are aware of it -- sometimes, we overstate the idea that they are completely unaware of what happened 25 years ago, but the truth is, even among those who went through it, among people who live in beijing, who were onlookers, who participated, there is a sense in china today that some of the same issues that animated those protests are present in the country today. for instance, corruption, which is so much on the minds of chinese leaders to rid it was very much an ingredient in those protests. a sense that the government was not responding to people's complaints -- that was in the foreground in 1989. in some ways, what you see is that even though there is not a conversation about 1989, and there really isn't in any public way, there is a sense that china right now is facing a man's clinical pressure internally. they are trying to figure out how to go about it without losing the support of this new middle class. >> absolutely. the truth is the chinese government has actually done a pretty good job allowing living standards to rise, education standards to write, creating more connections with the outside world. in that respect, it is very different from a lot of traditional repressive countries, the soviet union, for example. when you create a middle class, when you educate people, then you create aspirations for political participation. so, if i were the chinese leaders, i would be kind of nervous about what they have created. i think that increase is ultimately the demand for redressing what happened on june 4 and for creating a freer, more democratic country. >> there is a paradox. i think the shock of this moment that we now have the 25th played it is and played a very significant role in building deng xiaoping to think he had to do something monumental to kickstart china back into gear. it was his unwavering commitment to economic reform, which he started up again in 1992 against much opposition, which really is the catalytic moment of the whole reform protests we have seen since. without 1989, i'm not sure you would have gotten such a high velocity, rather aggressive form of economic reform. >> what is the political debate at the highest level in china about? itit about corruption, is about pollution, is it about sustaining the economy? sense,know, in a certain i think one big fracture point is how to treat the outside world. how should china deport itself in relationship to its neighbors and particularly the united states? as it gets stronger, of course, there is a temptation for china to act in a more grandiose way both within its neighborhood, which you see in the south china sea, but also, in regard to america. i think this is the really radical change that we are just now beginning to have to confront. some sense of muscularity in terms of china's role in the world? >> after 1989, i think they needed a new national glue to hold the country together. nationalism can help do that. one of the problems that vietnam and japan are suffering with today, the consequences of failing to make the national glue. i think maybe the fundamental debate among chinese leaders now has to do with a long-term vision. there is the reformist group that thinks that the way you deal with the pressure cooker is gradually to create some escape mechanisms. elections,illage township elections, county elections, maybe later provincial elections with manipulated control, candidates a certain amount of local press freedom as a way to root out corruption. you can control the process. the alternative view, which xi jinping has represented is, no, you can't yield. if you start the process, you lose control. >> there is a saying -- without vision, the people perish. the chinese leader is currently sick is a vision on how to govern this current china. xi jinping has been promoting a concept called "china during," in comparison to the american dream. as i've done more research into what he's talking about, i realize that he's no different from what the communist dream was all about. it is about building a national dream, a cultural dream on the basis of sacrificing individual rights. he cannot succeed with that message. the 1989 massacre already declared bankruptcy. >> what ought to be the american response to china today? what ought to be the elements of our foreign policy? need -- i think the pivot to asia as a way of engaging china in every way, including the maritime issues, i think that's important. i think we got a little too close to japan and the islands issue. i think paying a great deal of attention to those maritime disputes is a big issue. we need to continue the economic engagement, the conversation. there was a push to get 100,000 americans studying in china. i think that would be so important. >> how many chinese are studying in america? >> far more, by a huge ratio. i think also human rights are a part of that. they can be part of our conversation. right now, the nobel peace prize winner is in prison when his wife is under house arrest because she's his wife, just as a way of tormenting him? these are things that we can raise, and we shouldn't feel intimidated. >> do you think the president is intimidated? office,ly after he took he tried to improve relations with china, and it was perceived as beijing -- in beijing as weakness. they walked all over us. that was addressed after about 18 months, and then things worked out better. beinghink that initially accommodating was perceived as weakness. >> let me close with this. you've studied china, written books about china for a long time. what is it about china? >> i mean, the dilemma is that china, over the last century, has been reinventing itself in arial form, trying to find new ideology, a new way to see in the world. it is still in process. it is little bit difficult exactly to know what it is that is there when you think about china and how to relate to it. have ahey think they longer view of history than we do or everybody else? >> i think they do believe that, and i think one of the things we are seeing now is acting out of of china being sovereign, in a way, within the asian neighborhood. >> china being strong. >> and to rejuvenate itself and to reinstall itself as central in the proposition. >> should we were about -- should we worry about an aggressive china? >> i think we should. i think there is some risk of military conflict in the south china sea or the east china sea. i think it is unlikely. i don't think either china or japan, for example, once a conflict over the islands, but i think it is possible that one would arrive by accident. i think that it is a good thing to worry about. >> thank you all. back in a moment. stay with us. >> jeff widener is here. he is no award-winning photojournalist who has worked in more than 100 countries. stood on the89, he balcony in beijing, and he took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. it is a picture of a lone man facing down the column of tanks near tiananmen square. the photograph captured the bravery and the tragedy that the chinese democracy movement -- of the chinese democracy movement in one image. this year marks the 25th anniversary of that moment. i'm very pleased to have jeff widener here. welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> when you see that, what do you first think? >> i think how close i came to losing that photograph because i kind of botched the exposure on it. it haunts me to this day. i don't even have it on my wall in my apartment. >> really? >> no. >> because of how close you came to not having it? >> it would be like the kid in the basketball championship game, and you got to get the winning point. if he had missed that point and lost the game, he would have been scarred for life. when i look at that -- >> only you would have known. >> i think everybody would have known because they knew i was up there, and that was my job. they paid me to get that picture. >> how did the planning, about -- planning come about? >> i had been in beijing for about a week or so, and i had covered the events of june 4. that night, i was hit in the face by a rock. the camera saved my life. i lifted it to my face, and boom, my head goes back, blood all over me, and the top of the camera is ripped off. the rock went through the mirror, bent the titanium shutter, and i started asking people around me who were running around if anyone had a flash. i have no camera to put a flash on. i went through this really true medic situation. i got back to the ap office, got the film. they ran my images, and then i went back to the hotel. mark avery, the photo editor then, said, they are killing people. don't go back out. he was crying because one of his friends had been killed. was one of, and it the most difficult decisions i've ever had to make in my life. as a journalist, you have a very big story, but i was too scared, too sick, and two injured. i remember being back in the hotel, and i ordered room service. i'm looking at all of this footage and fire and everything on cnn. i'm thinking, something isn't right. i'm sitting having room service while this is going on down the street. the next day, i came back to the office, and when i walked in, there was a message from ap in new york. it said, we don't want anyone to make any unnecessary risks, but if somebody could please photograph the occupied tiananmen square, we would appreciate it. i drew the short end of the straw the night i had to go out when i got injured, and again, i got the short end of the stick to go back to the beijing hotel. i was scared to death. i knew what i went through, and i didn't want to go through it again. but i realized i had to do it. i got there, and i was concerned about getting into the beijing hotel because journalists were being stunned by cattle prods, by secret police. i had to figure out a way to get in, and i had my camera's inside my jacket. i had a small camera behind my back pocket sewn into my underwear. i walked through the door, and the security on the left -- there was this young american kid, shorts, sandals, a rainbow t-shirt on. i said, joe, where have you been? i'm from the ap. can you let me in your room? he said, sure. he said, you're really lucky. a truckload of soldiers just shot a bunch of tourists. i hid behind a taxi. i get to the room, and i go to sleep. i'm wiped out. i got to the balcony, and there is a bullet hole right above me. it was a reminder that obviously it is easy pickings, so i had to be really careful. i documented many of the tanks going by and occasionally you would hear a tinkle of the bell if there was a dead body on the back of the cart. then suddenly, we heard a noise down the street, and it was the familiar sound of tanks. i went to the balcony. i thought, this is a nice composition, a compressed shot of the tanks, and then a man walks out carrying shopping bags. i told him, this guy is one to screw up my composition. he said, they are going to kill that guy. i'm just waiting, and i'm looking out at the balcony. he is going to get shot. i'm waiting and waiting. nothing happens. i'm thinking, this picture is too far away. what do i do? i'm looking back at the bed, and i see a tele-converter, which would double the focal length of my lens. balcony, out to the put the tele-converter on, and i take 1, 2, 3 photos. then i looked at the shutter speed, and it was like one 30th of a second. the problem was, i had run out of film, and i asked kurt to try to get me some more. he went down to the lobby of the hotel and managed to wrangle one roll of film from a tourist. the tourist didn't want to give the film up, but he managed to get it. it was a different film speed. i normally shoot 800. i'm looking at the light, but on the automatic exposure meter, it is actually correct. the shutter speed was too low. i thought, did you get it? i said, i don't think so. but one came out. >> you'll never forget that day. >> no, i didn't. i was so whacked out by the concussion, nothing seemed unusual. i was walking out in front of tanks, and it seemed like the normal routine at the time. >> what do your member about being their overall in terms of this year, in terms of seeing people shot, the whole sense of that moment in which china exploded in front of our eyes? >> i knew it was one of the greatest news story is probably of the 20th century that i was in the middle of. i kept thinking how much i had missed that night that i was hit. i was really upset that i had missed so much. photographing of that event was cut way short. i missed a lot, an incredible amount. the things i saw that night were just unbelievable. there was a guy on fire rolling around. they tried to put him out. it was just insane. after i got hit in the face, the back of an armored car opens up, and a soldier jumps out to surrender. he has his hands up in the air. i can still remember to this day how pristine his uniform was pressed. the mob moved in on him and just started beating on him with pipes, and i think he was killed. then there was another soldier who was already dead and on the ground, and i was trying to photograph him. somebody started grabbing my cameras and ripping them apart, and i thought i was going to be torn to shreds. i lifted my passport in the air screening, american, american! i figured it was going to get me killed or save me. >> what happened to kurt martin? >> he took my film in his underwear and peddled -- he was supposed to go to the ap office, but he got lost on side streets. he was trying to avoid the gunfire. he went to the u.s. embassy and gave them the film. he told them, this is very important, and it needs to get to the associated press office. fortunately, the embassy passed it on to ap. he risked his life to get that film. if it wasn't for kirk, i would have never had that photo. it would have never been seen. i owe him a lot. >> did anybody else photographed the same scene? >> there were initially three other photographers. there was charlie cole, stuart franklin, and arthur song. recently, terrell jones, he found a ground-level image that recently showed up, a different angle that nobody else had. >> was it an interesting angle? >> it was interesting in the seee that you can sort of what was happening on the ground level with the angle and how far away the tanks were. closen't as sharp or as as the other photos, but historically, it was an important image could -- image. >> what do you think it defines for people who see this? >> everything. the other day, i got an e-mail from somebody saying, can you please send me this photograph? my sons got cancer, and i want to give this picture to him to be an inspiration. i get this a lot from people. some people actually look at this as a spiritual thing. it just seems to grow in stature as the years go by. it's amazing to see how this keeps developing. guy who love photography, and i happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. this fell into my lap. it has been amazing and surreal. >> what has it done for you? >> i would like it hasn't done that much to change my life, but i would be lying. i guess i was heard of a charlie brown in school. i was the guy that always dropped the ball. day in high school my senior year, i won the kodak scholastic national photography scholarship, and finally, i realize i could do something. i just kept going. i had something to prove. i wanted attention. i wanted to be in the spotlight always. there is that saying, don't ask for what you want, you just might get it. that is what happened to me. it is been a love-hate relationship with this. he is part of my life now, but also, i've done other work. i would like to be recognized for that, as well. >> who is he? >> well, that is a good question. we all want to know. , andmazing thing about it frankly shocking, after a quarter of a century, nobody has been able to identify him. nobody knows his family. frank way, i'm interested to know, who was the driver of that tank? why did the guy stop? why did he not run him over? this is another big mystery. where are these guys in the tanks? >> do you assume he has seen the photograph? i would. >> i don't assume. i really don't know. we don't know that they are in prison. we don't know if they are dead. it's like they have been erased from the planet earth. >> to the chinese have an interest in not making -- and making sure that the photograph does not have the residence that it does? >> i don't know what these guys are thinking. i think they shot themselves in the foot by making this guy a martyr. they are not full and anybody. i talked to some lady the other day in las vegas, and she was a tour guide. she spoke very good english, and she said that a lot of people in china know about this picture because they've bypassed the sensors. >> you would think somebody would know because he would have told somebody of what happened, and they would say, are you aware of a photograph? he would say, that's me. i remember the black hat or whatever. >> they get scared. i showed him the picture, and they get scared. they say, i don't want to talk about it. it is really strange. >> tell me about this photograph. taken, i believe, a few days before the crackdown. we had a very competitive thing. my routine was i would get up at 6:00 in the morning and photograph the events in the square, and he would get up at about 9:00, by the time he got up, i was already filing pictures. >> how old were you at the time? >> i believe i was 33. >> tell me about this one. >> that is the goddess of democracy. you know, i watched them build this thing. i remember the day or so after this crackdown looking on chinese tv, and there was a black-and-white tv footage of an armored car bulldozing the goddess of democracy over. i remember the happiness and joy of all of these protesters, and then to see that, it was so symbolic in my mind of what was going on. >that was on may 3. that was a pretty hairy situation. i held the camera over my head, and i was one of the lucky photographers. i know of several others -- some of these crowds were taking their cameras and smashing them. these guys warned me not to take pictures after this, and i stopped. i was really concerned. that picture has gotten a lot of play in the media. >> this? >> well, things were getting a little heated up. they would have these little events and some people would sing or dance. children would perform. it was kind of like a carnival atmosphere. to try to keep the tension dampen some of the soldiers were given gifts. , theould feel the building tension starting to build, and we knew it wasn't going to last forever. >> edson amazing picture. look at her expression. this one? washat was taken -- that one of the images taken from the balcony before the tank picture. i was photographing the different events. look at these guys. they are cocked and ready to go. you never knew when they were going to fire. i'm literally leaning over this balcony. i'm a prime target. that was on the avenue near the great hall of the people. nothing much was really happening until this old chinese man came up to me, and he was laughing. he opens up a heavy coat. underneath was a big hatchet with blood dripping. i figured, ok, the tempo is changing. i started getting nervous and came around to the side. then i heard a noise, and an armored car came ripping around so fast that sparks were flying off the treads. i dived for cover -- dove for cover in the ivy, and my reporter, he dropped his bicycle. eventually, i had to pick myself up and chase these guys, which i didn't want to do. i photographed that. then i was running out of film, and that is going back to what i said earlier that because i did not have enough battery power in the flash, it actually saved my life. it's that moment that i picked it up to my face, that split second, had it been here, i wouldn't be talking to you. it would have cracked my skull open like a watermelon. the impact was amazing. that's it. right after that. that is when i got nailed. that is the quickest photo i've ever taken in my life. i was so petrified. my nerves were shot. if you said, ok, we need you to take a photograph. nobody was going out. everybody was scared. i went out. there was a crowd. i went over to the crowd. they were going like this. i said, ok. click, click. thank you very much. it must've been taken in about five minutes. i think it ran in "newsweek." this is almost comical. you've got a burned-out bus, the city is a disaster, and you've got this. >> man-made rooms. i think this may -- >> this was right after the crackdown. nobody could get near the square. took a city bus, and i took the bus back and forth. i would click a picture as i went by, and that is the picture. once you knew this film was so iconic, did you live -- do you live the rest of your life thinking, this is so good, so sweet, i'm so proud that i was right there at the moment and got the picture that you are in search of that moment again? >> i just feel very privileged and lucky. sometimes, i like to think, i'm used to it. sometimes, i think about it like, i can't believe it. it is almost like it is somebody else's photo. it's not mine. then i see the media attention that i've had, especially recently. it's just overwhelming, and i really feel so lucky and fortunate that this has happened. you know what? in the beginning, it was kind of an annoyance, but now it is not that way anymore. i have just accepted that this is something that is great that has happened in my life. >> thank you and congratulations. to have you here with us is very important. ♪ >> this is "taking stock" for thursday, june 5. i am pimm fox. today's theme is tricked out. professional skateboarder bob burnquist will discuss the extreme sports business and what tricks he will unveil at this years's event. plus the lamborghini huracan. we'll take a special look at the $237,000 automobile that is tricked out with refinements. also building the ultimate fish tank. we will speak to an executive that is tricking out your home and office with thousand-dollar fish.
VietnamRepublic-ofNew-yorkUnited-statesMongoliaJapanEast-china-seaJapan-general-GermanyBeijingChinaBostonNathan Adam Martin, 29, Dickinson, died on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 unexpectedly at his home. Nathan’s Celebration of Life Service will be at 10:30 a.m., Friday, June 2, 2023 at Ladbury Funeral Service, Dickinson with Pastor Tyler Doohen officiating. Interment will take place at Gladstone Cemetery. There will be an Informal Gathering of Family & Friends on Thursday, June 1, 2023 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Ladbury Funeral Service.
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