Summary
Zhang Lin leads an anti-Party protest and comes home to find a security camera placed outside his apartment. Zhang Wei criticizes Zhang Lin for acting "like a little boy" and fears he will no longer be able to find work in Beijing. Zhang Lin encourages his brother to move to America and live with Benny, though Zhang Wei hates Americans, who he feels don't understand the concept of "guanxi" (关系), interpersonal relationships. Zhang Lin insists that Joe will help him. After several months, Joe and Tess meet randomly after Tess leaves an anticapitalist protest, eyes burning from being pepper sprayed. Joe helps her wash her eyes and notices that she is several months pregnant with, as she reveals, his baby. Joe invites Tess to his American Express-sponsored gallery show and admits he is still in love with her, though they are both with other people.
Mel, Benny, and Zhang Wei attend Joe's gallery show, which sells his protest photography. Mel lost an eye while reporting in Syria, and Benny now works for an oil company sponsoring his green card. Zhang Wei gives Joe an iPod containing Zhang Lin's recordings and criticizes Joe for failing Zhang Lin. After Zhang Wei leaves, Benny explains that growing up, his father used to look at the Tank Man photograph and says "that little Dog-face nearly got me killed!" Knowing that "Dog-face" was Zhang Lin's childhood nickname, Joe immediately realizes Zhang Lin was the Tank Man and calls him.
As Joe calls Zhang Lin, a security guard searches his Beijing apartment. The two speak in coded messages, Zhang Lin saying that the man in the photograph was a man who "looked a bit like [him]." Before Joe can ask any questions, Zhang Lin is taken into custody and the phone call ends.
Joe quickly searches the recordings, and when he reaches the part about the tanks, the stage transitions into a flashback scene. In 1989, Zhang Lin, shirtless and covered in blood, approaches a nurse who was tending to Liuli, who is dead. Zhang Lin, clearly in shock, asks about his wife; the nurse responds by giving him a clean shirt and stuffing Liuli's belongings into two grocery bags; amid the chaos, she cannot provide him Liuli's body, which authorities might have taken. Zhang Lin walks home, passing before the tanks. His image syncs with a projection of the actual Tank Man footage. Finally, he looks at Joe, and the play ends.
Analysis
In Act Five, Joe's character "sells out" by selling his protest photographs at a prestigious gallery, visually represented by his using a digital camera. This camera recalls Joe's earlier conversation with Tess, where the two agree that photography is less impactful in the digital age. After his failed attempt to tell the Tank Man story, Joe loses his belief in the power of photography to change hearts and minds and accepts that his role as a photographer is to make money. Indeed, Joe's protest photographs, though they depict emotionally charged and disturbing images, leave no impact on the gallery visitors, who look at them as items to be purchased.
Similarly, earlier in the play, Joe refused to put his photographs on a "credit card," symbolizing consumerism and economic growth that created unsafe pollution levels in China. Joe cites his unwillingness to make money off the suffering of others. Ironically, Joe's gallery show is sponsored by American Express, a massive credit card company. As he says to Tess, Joe agrees to the gallery show because he is "broke" and has no other options. Thus, Joe exhibits the theme of "moral hypocrisy" as he spends the entire play criticizing others for prioritizing money over journalistic integrity, only to do the same thing when his financial situation becomes uncertain.
Joe further demonstrates his "sell-out" career in his interactions with Tess and Mel. Earlier in the play, Tess and Mel both speak callously about the suffering of others and embody a callous, capitalistic attitude. However, Mel attends Joe's gallery opening sporting a missing eye, an injury he sustained while reporting in war-torn Syria. Tess, for her part, also sustains eye-related injuries after she is pepper sprayed during an anticapitalist protest, which Joe photographs. When Tess asks Joe to help her, he offers to wash her eyes with water, demonstrating that he has never been pepper sprayed. The visual contrast between Joe's unharmed figure and Mel and Tess highlights the theme of "heroism." Though Joe believed his work could change the world, he never suffered the same consequences as "real" protestors.
Zhang Wei criticizes Joe for his neglect of Zhang Lin's friendship. As Benny translates, Zhang Wei believes that Joe is "neither East nor West," a "bad insult." By this, Zhang Wei means that Joe understands aspects of American and Chinese culture, which he uses to his advantage without showing loyalty to either country. For example, Zhang Lin taught Joe about the concept of guanxi, or relationships. Joe understands that under this concept, friends do favors for one another to nurture and expand the friendship. However, Joe asks for several favors from Zhang Lin, such as providing information about the Tank Man, yet ignores all of Zhang Lin's requests for help. Joe criticizes American greed yet makes money and secures fame from the Tank Man image, a sensitive picture of Chinese protest. Though Joe believes his work will help Chinese people living under censorship laws, he destroys the lives of Chinese American Wang Pengsi, harasses Feng Meihui, and gets information from Mary Chang without passing on her resume. Thus, Joe is "neither East nor West" because he is entirely self-interested, though not self-aware.
In their final, cryptic conversation, Zhang Lin explains to Joe that, though he is the Tank Man, he does not identify with the person in the image, eloquently stating that the Tank Man "only looked a little bit like me." Zhang Lin recognizes that to the world, the Tank Man represents a brave, rebellious spirit that Zhang Lin cannot live up to. He reveals that his grief over Liuli's death moved him to stand in front of the tanks, possibly as a way to end his own life. Thus, the narrative Joe attached to the image is false, yet he inspired Zhang Lin to take action by criticizing the Party—Zhang Lin's admission comments on the nature of photography as a social force. Though the image is clear and accurate, each viewer understands it in a unique context and projects their biases onto the photograph.
At the end of the play, Zhang Lin leaves the apartment with a shopping bag in each hand. This visual detail confirms Zhang Lin's identity as the Tank Man and has immense symbolic weight. In protesting the false air quality reports, Zhang Lin finally lives up to his Tank Man image, fearlessly standing up for what is right. As Tess and Mel suggest earlier in the play, the shopping bags highlight the Tank Man's ordinariness, demonstrating that any person can radically affect history. Zhang Lin is taken into custody, becoming another anonymous protestor fighting for justice.
