Shen Tong, an Entrepreneur, and an Impact Investor was a leading organizer of the Tiananmen Square protests. He was a witness to troops open firing on students. Immediately after the incident that's known as "the Tiananmen Massacre", Mr. Shen fled to the US. In the 1980s, Mr. Shen was a biology student at the prestigious Peking University (Beida) where he was a leading activist. During Tiananmen protest almost 30 years ago, Shen was elected to the Beida student leadership. Mr. Shen also co-chaired the dialogue delegation representing the protestors in negotiation with the Chinese government. In a pivotal moment in May 1989, Shen and a dozen top representatives sat across the negotiation table with 12 ministers of Chinese central government during a nationally televised dialogue.

Shen said that he always expected the eventual government crackdown will be harsh. However, when the situation did take a bad turn, Mr. Shen himself could not believe the level of cruelty exhibited by the govt. Mr. Shen also talked about a person standing next to him at the Changan Avenue who collapsed and died after being shot. Shen mistakenly thought that it's a rubber bullet that hit him.

At that point in time, people were being dragged on to roofs for safety reasons, they were bleeding, and even then, Mr. Shen says 'It somehow felt it were invincible. It took so long for reality to sink in.' After the massacre, Mr. Shen somehow managed to get into the Brandeis University in Massachusetts. He somehow managed to collect his passport in that impossible situation, he was underground for a period of 6 days and only then could he manage to fly to the US.

Once Mr. Shen reached the States, he gave a press conference where he spoke to the masses as the first eye witness of the Tiananmen Square incident. The incident left deep scars with Mr. Shen. However, a couple of months after the massacre, Shen Tong was named as one of its people of the year by Newsweek. Mr. Shen spent the next decade trying to raise awareness of human rights in China.

Mr. Shen under 'the Democracy in China Fund' (Non-profit organization) visited back to his homeland, China in the year 1992 as he wanted to check what Deng Xiaoping said about welcoming the students who had fled the country was true or not. However, 'Sure enough' says Mr. Shen with an ironic smile, 'they put me away.'

Shen Tong was put behind bars for a tenure of 54 days and was only let off the hook after he became the brand ambassador for human rights as a part of Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign. On being asked about his achievements concerning the Tiananmen Square massacre, Shen Tong said 'We're still too close to it to understand what happened.' He further went on to say that 'We're too close to the French Revolution, let alone to Tiananmen.'

Moreover, Mr. Shen says that 'If there is a simple answer, it highlighted the key question of how to keep in step with the rest of the world. Right after 89, the government said: we need to justify the regime. A completely self-righteous totalitarian regime is much worse than a technocrat-run authoritarian regime justifying its legitimacy by some means that's close to human life, such as economic development.'

According to Mr. Shen, on a personal level; he has got mixed feelings. 'Did we make any difference? I'm not sure we did. It's a huge price to pay: my youthful years, all of them. Second, only to my own family, my beliefs remain probably the most important thing to me. However, I don't know what to do with them.'

Shen further tells us that all the people he knew in exile became rigid. Unlike them, Mr. Shen chose a different way of moving on with his life. He got married and has two children living in SoHo. Mr. Shen Tong leads a very normal life but according to him, although this may sound very basic, among the exiles, leading a normal life has never been basic.