17 years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre -
This photo shows me with a few other members of the Jinan delegation from the United States standing in Tiananmen Square with Mao looking over my shoulder from the massive Gate of Heavenly Peace which is the entrance to the Forbidden City of Chinese emperors. Carma Hinton's insightful film The Gate of Heavenly Peace and the companion website gives a very good modern overview of the political shifts in China up to the mid-1990's when the film was done.

What happened to some of the Tiananmen Student Leaders?
On June 30th I also visited Beijing Normal University, one of the hot spots for student activism of the late 1980's. But the many students I talked with had no consciousness of Tiananmen, they just served as cheerful guides for our US delegation.
For info on the student leaders of 1989 -
The website for Hinton's film even gives some background on what happended to Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Chai Ling, the main student leaders from Beijing Normal University and Beijing University in 1989.
Unlike his colleagues Wang stayed in China after the Tiananmen Massacre and was jailed beginning on July 2, 1989, and then again from 1991 to 1993. He was released on parole in February 2003, but soon afterwards detained again in May 2003 for participating in petitions calling for the release of all prisoners arrested in connection with the June 4th movement. In 1996 he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion.
Luckily he was released on medical parole in 1998 and went into exile in the United States. He has probably completed his Ph.D. now in history at Harvard.
Wuer hosts a radio talk show in Taiwan.
Chai, the student who had reportedly advocated bloodshed and had denounced many other student leaders who were seeking to negotiate with the Chinese government officials for the students to peacefully leave the square before the violent crackdown on June 4, 1989, now owns Jenzabar, an internet company with her husband and has had numerous conflicts with folks from the Harvard Business School to former executives from her own company.