(CNN) -- Long before Chen Guangcheng became internationally known as a human rights crusader, villagers near his home knew him as the man to go to when they had trouble with local authorities.

Despite having little formal legal education, Chen began advocating on behalf of villagers in 1996 at the age of 25, according to China Human Rights Defenders, a China-based human rights group.

Chen has been at the center of a burgeoning international impasse since his dramatic escape last week from the guards who kept him under house arrest in a small village in eastern China. He was confined to his home after serving four years in prison, apparently over his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive practices such as forced abortions by China's family planning officials.

Fellow activists say he made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he remains as the United States and China try to sort out the future for Chen, who has sought to call attention to the practice of forced abortions and sterilizations in China.

Yet he never sought out to be a rabble-rouser, said New York University law professor Jerome Cohen, who first met Chen when the activist traveled to the United States as part of a State Department program in 2004.

"You got the feeling you were in the presence of some Chinese equivalent of Gandhi or something," Cohen said. "He had this gentle but steely moral force."

Chen was born in 1971 in Dongshigu, a small farming village in eastern Shandong province, more than 400 kilometers (248 miles) from Beijing.

Now, provide a numbered list of answers to these questions:

1. Who escaped?
2. From where?
3. What kind of punishment was he serving?
4. Was he guarded?
5. Had he already served prison time?
6. How much?
7. Why was he originally in trouble?
8. Where did he escape to?
9. In what city?
10. What issues is he concerned with?
11. When did he began advocating?
12. How old was he then?
13. Where was he born?
14. In China?
15. In what year?
16. How far is Donshigu from Beijing?
17. Was it a large town?
18. What is Jerome Cohen's profession?
19. At which university?
20. Had he met Chen before?
21. When?
22. Where did they meet?
23. Who did he compare Chen to?

Numbered answers:
1. Chen
2. a small village in eastern China.
3. house arrest
4. yes
5. yes
6. four years
7. legal advocacy
8. the U.S. Embassy
9. Beijing
10. forced abortions and sterilizations
11. 1996
12. 25
13. Dongshigu
14. yes
15. 1971
16. more than 248 miles
17. no
18. law professor
19. New York University
20. yes
21. 2004
22. in the United States
23. Gandhi