Yesterday was a special day for me. I had my first cross country meet in my life.
We left for The Thatcher School for the meet. The whole team went there and most of us were going to run under the fervent sun for 3 miles.
My leg still hurt from last day’s practice and I didn’t really feel nervous until we stood on the starting line, with other girls talking by my side. They cheered, laughed. Five of us – me, Min Ju, Momoe, Emmy and Ally represented our school. I was in Line 6, the number stands for luck in Chinese.
“Take your mark, ready, GO! ” We flew out of the lines like birds finally gained freedom from the cages. “Three miles, just as what we usually run at school. ” I encouraged myself.
It was hard, I admitted. We need to run two times of the course. For the first one, Min Ju and I was running together and we sometimes talked to each other so that we would not feel tired.
As I was working on my second Decades Paper for my history class, the dusty shelves in the memory department of my brain were revisited. My eyes fell upon a small paragraph, containing information that I would have probably just skimmed over had it not sparked something in the murky abyss of my memories. Two words reminded me of the struggles of countless students and even more so of one brave civilian who decided he had enough.
Students, mothers, fathers. Civilians alike banded together in the name of political reform. They had just lost a leader and strong liberalization advocate, Hu Yaobang, and felt it was in their hands to fight for the changes they wanted to see. And fight they did.
Through mainly non-violent protests, more and more people joined the cause for a more liberal government. However, the communist government fought back, mercilessly.
Buildings were on fire. Rubble and debris littered the floor. Many civilian lives were lost. However, throughout this fear for the government and citizen lives, one man refused to back down. One ordinary man who did an extraordinary act.
This is a video of the man who courageously stopped a row of tanks.
It’s quite breathtaking. To have the strength to go alone in front of tanks that can crush the human body in a matter of seconds.
Silently, I scolded myself for having let the dust collect over such a power event in those shelves of mine. So I decided to blog about this single event. This event happened 21 years ago, way before I was even born. I had almost forgotten this important moment as I am sure many other who will read this blog have as well. I am writing this blog to remind people that such bravery exists in today’s society and to inspire those who have never heard of this man-whose name I don’t even know-that stood against the row of tanks.
To learn more about this event watch the following video:
OVS Journalism Blog 
