Looking for Tank Man

by Ha Jin

A Harvard student from China discovers the fraught, hidden history of the Tiananmen Square massacre in this powerful novel of protest and suppression from the National Book Award–winning author.

When the Chinese premier visits Harvard, international student Pei Lulu encounters a lone woman protesting who will drastically change her understanding of the People's Republic and her own place in the world. For the first time, Lulu learns of the 1989 protest movement and the government’s violent response. Determined to find out more, she seeks answers from her family, who share surprising stories of their involvement, and from a formative university course based on powerful firsthand accounts.

At once a compelling coming-of-age tale and a poignant tribute to the courage of activists, Looking for Tank Man keeps this tragedy alive in the public memory and warns against the dangers of authoritarian regimes.

Genres: Fiction, China, Historical Fiction, Asian Literature, Literary Fiction, Asia

368 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Ha Jin is the pen name of Jin Xuefei, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University.Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.

Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.

Reviews

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book, the story, the writing and the historical information. This unusual coming-of age story tells the tale of Pei Lulu as she navigates her life as a female Chinese student in the U.S. in 2008. She first learns of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre and Tank Man while attending Harvard and is shocked that the Chinese government actively suppresses information about this event. When she discovers her parents were involved in the protest movement resulting in the Massacre she becomes intrigued and decides to pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia with this as her thesis topic.

Like Lulu and the students at the start of the book, I knew nothing about the Massacre of hundreds to thousands of peaceful protesters (accounts vary, Chinese government says hundreds, other say up to 10,000). Also did not know about Tank Man, an iconic photo of a man standing in front of a column of tanks. Even today the identity of this man remains unknown. Recommend this for both the well-written story and the light it shines on a tragic event to prevent its erasure.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

For over thirty years Ha Jin has been using his voice through literature to expose the inhumanity of the Chinese Communist Party. His most recent novel Looking for Tank Man (2025) is a memorable academic thriller that confronts China’s systematic attempts to erase the Tiananmen Square massacre from public consciousness.

Similar to how Ha Jin himself studied abroad in America and later defected from China and became a US citizen, his protagonist Pei Lulu is an international student studying history at Harvard in 2008. Soon thereafter she learns for the first time of the violence carried out by the People’s Liberation Army against students protesting for reform in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Such a shocking revelation leads Lulu on a mission to investigate the tragedy and pursue a PhD focused on the iconic “Tank Man” who dared to sacrifice his life and halt a line of tanks headed to Beijing to suppress what the Communist Party leaders falsely declared was a violent insurrection trying to overthrow the government.

Lulu’s research uncovers secrets about the involvement of her own parents in the Tiananmen protests while she also tries piecing together a conclusion about Tank Man. Was he a student protestor whose act of defiance was accidently caught on camera? Or did the Communist Party leaders stage the event to propagandize their narrative that no violence was used to end the student protests? Ultimately, whatever happened to Tank Man? Was he punished, or is he still alive and forced by the government to keep his identity concealed?

The fact is that Tank Man remains a mystery, even as his iconic image took on a life of its own, and he continues to resonate decades later as a universal symbol of resistance and freedom. Through the awakening of Lulu and her research, Ha Jin offers glimpses into the maniacal policies implemented by the People’s Republic to erase Tank Man and the Tiananmen Square massacre from the memory of China’s citizenry.

Lulu’s story blends her own personal struggles as an immigrant in America with the high stakes challenges of academic rigor to uncover new truths about history. Ha Jin’s smooth and engaging prose flies off the page with its clarity to tackle big ideas, and in scenes of grave tension he shows how the function of totalitarian regimes is almost comical if their practices weren’t so terrorizing.

Looking for Tank Man kept me riveted to Lulu’s search for truth and to the courage of so many Chinese dissidents and activists resisting the tyranny of their motherland. Even though the novel’s ending comes off somewhat anticlimactic, its totality makes obvious the parallels Ha Jin paints between what the Chinese Communist Party has tried to do with rewriting the history of the Tiananmen massacre and what Trump has done to sanitize his fomenting of violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in his attempts to retain unlawful power.

[可欣 · Rating 4 out of 5]

a strange book where, in the beginning i was frustrated because there's no real exigence in the traditional sense, that the plot just seems to be a regular chinese student going through an american education. i felt a bit bored, because the prose felt flat and the characters not compelling, but as i stuck with it, i realized that the exigence/urgency in the present is constantly informed by the past, and in this case, efforts to erase the past. there are a lot of important things about china's socio-political landscape, its study in academia, and the people who study it or live it that ha jin doesn't miss: the white boy obsessed with the tank man figure, the rich chinese students who are china's main defenders against the west, the abuse of power a phd advisor has over his student, and at its center, the nuance in origin, dissemination, impact of tank man as a cultural icon. it's strange to see your life, your ideas about your country and the country you have left it for reflected so intimately in a book.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it in a way that was informative. This is my first time reading a Ha Jin book. Because of the nature of the subject, I’ve always had a slight hesitation to learn more about it.

But I found myself googling as I read even though I felt little attachment to the character LuLu despite her role as the protagonist.

I also thought the sex scenes came out of nowhere. Understandable almost…but what?

[Dmitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Before returning to Boston, I asked my mother about her involvement with the student movement. She dodged most of my questions, but I kept asking. She admitted that she, an anthropology major at Beijing University at the time, had been silly and taken part in some demonstrations without knowing their true intentions or the consequences of her participation.’

‘I got impatient and demanded, “Didn’t you take part in the hunger strike?” “Yes, I was with them briefly. Then your grandpa came and dragged me away.”“Did you believe in freedom and equality and democracy?” “Of course I did, but what the students demanded wasn’t feasible at the time.’

“Lulu, please don’t bother looking into this. Concentrate on your schoolwork. It’s not easy to scrape together the money for your education. You must cherish the opportunity of studying abroad.”

************
Chinese expat Ha Jin lives and teaches at Boston University. He was a former soldier in China’s People’s Liberation Army and an American Literature scholarship student at Brandeis when the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre occurred in 1989. He signed a petition for democratic change and has lived in exile in the US ever since. With his passport revoked by China and visa applications rejected he has had no ability to return. I wish him luck here with the US current hysteria over immigration and biases against political asylum.

The novel has parallels in its plot to Ha Jin’s personal life. In 2008 a Harvard student learns of her mother’s involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, rarely taught in China. The death toll is estimated over 1000 by Amnesty International, 2500 by Red Cross. We may soon be seeing a similar abuse of authoritarian power in America. The title is from a famous photograph of an unidentified man who stood before the column of T59 tanks after the massacre, televised live from balconies of international hotels overlooking the square.

This is one of ten Ha Jin novels on China. It is stark in its language and style, stripped of literary ornament and extraneous subplots. Probably his most famous book was ‘Waiting’, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award and National Book Award winner. The protagonist Lulu is from a middle class family who pays for her tuition with a scholarship, part time work and gets help from her divorced parents. She had never heard of the uprising, and questioning its truth she enrolls in an elective course.

Her professor Dr. Hong immigrated to Canada and studied the subject in great depth. There are some echoes of the American born historian Iris Chang, who documented the WWII massacre of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1997’s ‘The Rape of Nanjing’. Many non-fictional characters such as Wang Dan, exiled Tiananmen leaders and victims who were run over by tanks appear in the story. It is debated if the iconic image of the Tank Man was staged to show army restraint by his stopping tanks in their tracks.

It is probable that Ha Jin’s position as a well known author and an exile has given him personal access to many of the Tiananmen protesters and dissidents. It is also easy to suspect he is not impartial observer of the massacre. There is an underlying thread of criticism of the government cover up and its refusal to allow discussion of the events to this day. This is understandable and yet at times the student Lulu, her mother and the professor Dr. Hong seem too simplistic and two dimensional as the leading characters of the novel.

Lulu is a stereotypical Chinese exchange student, startled by the loose morals and lack of discipline in her American peers, while Hong is a caricature of the civil rights ideologue thought to be found on liberal college campuses. A more interesting story would include a conflicted or contradictory protagonist, or at least one that explores what was going on in the minds of the tank commanders and soldiers. I began to lose my patience with these facile historians, unconvinced of their ability to discern fact from political propaganda.

As in the US Kent State protests of 1968, the Korean Gwangju Uprising in 1980, and Trump/ICE demonstrations in 2026, soldiers began to fire at civilians with live ammunition, on orders of officers and ultimately their political leaders. So much for singing The Internationale or We Shall Overcome; when rifles rain bullets the only thing left to do is run. The book names army commanders who didn’t follow orders to use live rounds. Some lingered in the rear, some fired in the air, but there were enough willing to use deadly force.

Although this book takes place in 2008 it is grounded in 1989 when Ha Jin was exiled. Current events enter the story only in passing, such as the development of video surveillance which spread rapidly after 2010 under president Xi. It treats the uprising as unheard of by students, which may have been true in the 80’s but certainly isn’t with post millennial youth. Internet and social media, while diligently censored, ended the low information age. There, like here, state made disinformation significantly influences public opinion.

Lulu’s parents are presented as authentic Chinese voices, her mother mainly concerned with finding her a husband and her return to China, her father a free thinking artist who is remarried, with a second wife and young twins. Ha Jin’s decision to tell the story from a female perspective is more problematic. Lulu appears oddly sexless and stilted as a character. One wonders why this gender defying leap was attempted. Through all of this Ha Jin retains a resentment of the homeland which expelled him for merely criticizing it.

Lulu returns home for the summer between graduation and beginning a history PhD at Columbia. She finds out more about her parents role in the demonstrations from a diary her mother kept during the hunger strike. Her father helped design and build the Goddess of Democracy sculpture at the center of the square. The strike coincided with a Gorbachev visit, which further provoked the Communist Party, and in particular Deng Xiaoping. Both leaders had been hailed by Ronald Reagan for opening up their countries to capitalism.

Turmoil in Tiananmen spread to other cities and happened during the collapse of the Soviet Union, a world changing upheaval that the CCP intended to avoid. Martial law was declared, the square was cordoned off, radio and television stations secured. As the army closed in more than a million workers converged to join the students. Beijing ground to a standstill. Protests began worldwide, particularly in Hong Kong and Tapei where millions turned out. Lulu’s mother and Beijing students started to leave before the final rout.

A scapegoat needed, Zhao Ziyang was dismissed as party secretary, placed under house arrest and replaced by Jiang Zemin. Li Peng was put in charge of mop up operations. As Tsinghua students thinned out, protesters continued to pour in from the provinces. Fang Lizhi, China’s answer to Andrei Sakharov, was a astrophysicist and professor who developed China's atomic bomb. He gave speeches to students in 1989 and was given asylum at the US embassy in Beijing. Sadly the fictional characters aren’t the equals of the actual ones.

During her summer stay in China Lulu decides to do research with eyewitnesses of the uprising. She gets in touch with a former soldier who shares his experience. After the meeting she is picked up by State Security and questioned about her motives. She is let go but is aware they are monitoring her movements and communications. In NYC Lulu encounters a similar network of spies and agents as she is connected with a group of dissidents through her studies. The final third of the book only partly redeems its earlier lack of excitement.

A subplot in this novel is Lulu���s PhD adviser Bailey who tries to get her into bed, first with charm and then by threatening the final outcome of her dissertation. It’s a widely known affliction at institutes of higher education, sometimes with willing participants but more often by tacit coercion. Lulu is nevertheless published by a dissident owned printer in New York City. When she returns to China during her summer break carrying copies of the book she is barred from re-entering her homeland, as Ha Jin had been before her.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The peaceful student protests at Tiananmen Square and the Chinese government's violent reaction, is indelible in my brain. And, the erasure of history and the general Chinese population's lack of knowledge is a portent to what is currently happening in the US. Lulu is a Chinese student at Harvard and has no idea what happened before she was born. She soon decides to educate herself, sending her on a course of subtle activism about Tiananmen Square. And she becomes fascinated with Tank Man, which may or may not have been a staged event. This coming of age isn't just her going through college but about interrogating history and ignorance as well as learning about her parents' past and involvement with the student movement.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Richard Hessney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with Andrew Taylor's 3-star review. As a novel it's so-so and the ending is a dud. The possibility of the tank man photo being staged as Chinese propaganda is intriguing. On a personal level I could relate to the main character's Ph.D. studies at Columbia, since I got a Ph.D. there in the late '70s. No doubt Ha Jin is right about China being a vast "pig farm."

The real value of the book is its depiction of how the Chinese Communist government has whitewashed the Tienanmen Massacre and oppressed the population.

A few quotes I liked:
"To remember is the most efficient way to fight the authoritarian power that makes people forget. A historian's business is to remember." (Tiananmen activist character Loana)
"...we felt we were living in a tight net, as if there were an invisible wall around us all the time. I had heard that ultimately the government intended to turn the country into a wall-less prison, since most things can be handled electronically, and that we were heading toward a cashless society. If you are identified as an unacceptable citizen, the state can invalidate your ID and close your bank account. And then you will be impounded and even earning a living will be out of the question, since you can't buy groceries or travel anywhere. Whenever you went out, the police would be alerted and follow you. This electronic imprisonment will become the common condition for most Chinese in the future. In some netizens' words, 'Even if you grew wings, you couldn't fly anywhere. You'll be grounded in this immense pig farm.'" (Lulu, after a run-in with State Security)

[Emily Pink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking For Tank Man

It’s taken me a few days to compose my thoughts on Looking For Tank Man, mainly because the subject matter loomed large over me. The novel follows Lulu, a Chinese academic completing her studies at Harvard and, later, Colombia. Her interests lie in the controversy of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, particularly in Tank Man – an icon of the socio-political moment and a hugely contested figure. Looking for Tank Man articulates the power and danger of protest, especially in a space of surveillance and censorship.

I really enjoyed the academic perspective of the novel, particularly in how Lulu reckoned with her personal connections to Tiananmen and her understanding of her US citizenship. That being said, I think too often the story shifted into an essay, too closely mimicking the academic prose of a dissertation and disregarding plot and pacing.

I was particularly interested in how Ha Jin presented the Chinese government – providing subtle interjections and close calls with them, without explicitly providing us with an inside perspective. Lulu has numerous interactions with the regime without being allowed in to the inner workings of government – mirroring Tank Man’s ambiguity and leaving her and her fellow students to piece together what was real and what was smoke and mirrors.

A huge thank you to the Other Press team for sending me a proof in exchange for an honest review.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

A young Chinese woman studying at Harvard learns for the first time of the existence of the Tiananmen Square massacre, as all information about the student demonstration for democracy is brutally suppressed, even criminalized, by the authoritarian Chinese government. She’s especially captivated by photos of “tank man,” the young man who stationed himself in front of a line of tanks, preventing their forward progress. The more she learns about the events of that time, the more fascinated she becomes and the more determined to keep digging for the truth. Her interest changes the direction her life takes, as she decides to continue her studies in the States beyond an undergraduate degree, spending summers in China with her single mother. Her growing knowledge changes her sense of her country, and as she tries to continue her research during visits home, she is menaced by the police, and monitored when she’s in the States.

[Posey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. 'Looking for Tank Man' is a novel with the spirits of a memoir and academic nonfiction. The academic research was impressive, and the various characters' discourse on China's socio-political landscape, Taiwan's sovereignty, and toggling one's life and effects between China and the US gave clear perspectives, drawn from both the real-life and theoretical.

On a personal note, 'Looking for Tank Man' made references to subjects and figures I recognized from my academic studies. From Chai Ling to Leftover Women, 'Looking for Tank Man' was intellectually stimulating while also viscerally touching, bringing me back to a specific time in my life and making me think about a life in China I could have lived.

[David Yamane · Rating 4 out of 5]

In June of 1989, I was visiting a friend at UC-Santa Cruz when I was confronted by a video of a solitary man blocking a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. The tanks were headed to Tiananmen Square to put down a student uprising there. As a 20-year-old student myself, the image touched me more than anything else in my memory.

Ha Jin revisits the events at Tiananmen Square from the perspective of Pei Lulu, a Chinese undergrad at Harvard when she first learns about the massacre. Lulu makes the massacre the subject of her doctoral dissertation in history at Columbia and the story follows her trying to learn about an event that Chinese authority want to forget. Along the way we get some political, family, academic, and personal drama to animate the plot.

[Darby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read! There were times when it dragged and that's why I knocked a star off but it was very informative. The writing style was easy to digest and made the history being thrown at you easy to understand and created a vivid picture. I enjoyed reading about Lulu's academic journey and her coming-of-age story while she discovers the truth about the Tiananmen Massacre as well as her own personal involvement! I wish I could have continued her journey with her and to me, that signals a great book! I've been inspired to consider continuing my educational journey and I will definitely be reading this again when I make a decision.

[Dave Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have vague memories of hearing about the Tiananmen Square incident when it happened, but in the years since, the solitary image of the “tank man” has become my only touchstone to this atrocity. This fictional view of a young Chinese ex-pat searching for meaning in this person (hero? plant? normal person?) was a brisk read that educated me beyond that single moment that was captured on film. It also shows the fear the Chinese government instills in its populace, as her research moves her further away from the party line and her life becomes monitored.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had such high hopes for this book as an avid reader of Ha Jin’s previous works, but this one fell a little flat. It was educational to learn about all the perspectives on Tiananmen Square-just needed more emotion and even elaboration. Still, these lines were highlights for me:

“The world is improved by impractical people” (p.101).

“We do something that can sustain our humanity and sanity” (p.123).

[Eve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - this was super interesting and it was cool to learn about something in history that I had little to no knowledge of. I enjoyed LuLu’s story and the coming of age aspects. It’s also super interesting to read the discussions on government surveillance especially with the state of the US right now. The writing was a little bland and the chapters always ended super abruptly. The ending was a little unsatisfying but overall I enjoyed it.

[Andrew Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

At its best, it examines the events at Tiananmen Square in a resoundingly holistic way meant to interest the reader, just like Lulu’s dissertation. At its worst (most of the book) it is a flat coming of age story with poor resolution. The ending fell to a thud and the book was just not the most fun to read.

[Lauren M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I didn't fully understand the synopsis, but this book really didn't focus on the Tank Man as much as I would have been led to believe.

If I would have known that this was going to be another college girl figuring her schooling shit out, I would have passed.

The bits about the differences in freedoms between America and China were interesting, but that was about it.

[Linda Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so enjoyed this book. I was fascinated by the long reach of the Chinese government into dissidents living around the world. I really didn’t know that some people did not believe what happened at Tiananmen Square. A girlfriend of mine‘s mother was there at the time and was witnessed to some of it. I was also intrigued by the whole set up of advanced academia. I recommend this book

[Justin Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I regret for the loss of originality and insights of Ha Jin. Books he wrote before are moving and insightful, yet now the book he presented to us is simply a stitch-up of déjà vu, médiocre plots and prose. What a shame.

[BAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read! I learned significantly about Tiananmen Square, both related recent events and historical occurrences. However, I did feel that the narrator’s voice did not like a female voice always. I loved all the food descriptions.

[Saudea Bisgaard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it pretty quickly because the subject matter was interesting but the dialogue felt hammy to me. Also it really dragged toward the end. I could just barely finish it. And there were a lot of coming of age college cliches here.

[Linda Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a difficult read based on the too detailed description of the individuals involved with the protest of Tiananmen Square. I found it very difficult to follow. Definitely, a subject that needs to be written and remembered.

[Saizo Taniguchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt a little short at the end of the day--I think I will have to think more about what it means to have found Tank Man, and whether or not Lulu ended up finding him within herself, as she says.

[Michael Machlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got my hands on a prerelease copy, neat. Don’t read a ton of historical fiction, this was a good one

[Becky Gallego · Rating 1 out of 5]

It wasn't a bad book but the subject matter did not draw me in.

[Pershing48 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler alert; they don't find Tank Man.

[casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat campy campus novel; very flat — in dialogue, characterization, and plot.

[Tai · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the story and the concept but the writing was buns de la buns. Had so much potential but flopped

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book paints a bleak, harsh picture of present-day China.

[booksrcool · Rating 3 out of 5]

the main character’s naivety takes away from the story instead of adding to it.