Star power

On June 4, 1989, Deng Xiaoping's government put an end to the Tiananmen Square protests that had captivated the west for six weeks. A handful of the students who took part in the demonstrations came to America -- three of them to Boston -- and became celebrities.

Wu'er Kaixi

At the height of the demonstrations, Wu'er, still in his hospital pajamas, brazenly scolded hardline premier Li Peng as the world (even China) watched on television. In America, he was much celebrated, but handled his fame badly and dropped out of sight for a while, leaving Harvard for a series of low-paying jobs in California. He is now a talk-show host in Taiwan.

Chai Ling

In Tiananmen Square, Chai shouted rallying cries to the students and exhorted them to stay in the square even after Deng's patience was at an end. After the crackdown, she went to Paris, then Princeton, then ended up in Boston. She appears regularly on television and in newspapers to talk about China. She is now at Harvard Business School and is working on a memoir.

Li Lu

A close ally of Chai Ling's during the protests, Li came to New York after the crackdown and became a celebrity, the subject of a glitzy documentary, Moving the Mountain, produced by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler. He graduated from Columbia with degrees in both business and law. He is a fixture on television, called upon frequently to comment on trade or Tiananmen. He is now an investment banker in Los Angeles.

Shen Tong

A friend of Wu'er Kaixi's, Shen was the first student dissident to arrive in America in 1989; he came to Boston, to study at Brandeis and BU. His ghost-written memoir, Almost a Revolution, was originally to have been about Wu'er as well, but the friends had a falling out. In 1992, Shen went back to China and was detained for seven weeks. He is finishing a PhD in political science at BU, and heads the Democracy for China Fund, based in Wellesley.

-- Yvonne Abraham