A midnight photographic stroll through heart of Hong Kong’s waning protest
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Version 0 of 1. When I landed in Hong Kong last week, I barely recognized parts of the city. The Hong Kong I knew from childhood was obsessed with efficiency and order (cashiers shaking their heads if you spent more than two seconds digging for change, little packets of tissue paper that were carried at all times just in case). This, however, was utter chaos -- a crazy, exuberant, electric chaos that I never imagined could exist here. And it was all for the sake of democracy, freedom, electoral rights -- subjects that that I had rarely encountered before in conversations with family and friends here. Now, it was all anyone could talk about, from each day's beginning until the very wee hours of the morning. Over the next seven days of reporting, some of my favorite and most meaningful interviews were with this hearty band of student protestors who ran a makeshift supply depot at the easternmost edge of the protest. (See our story on the rise and fall of the Lucky Supply Station here.) I was first was moved by their convictions -- the Luck Supply youths slept in shifts for five consecutive nights on the hard cartons of water bottles and food to prevent authorities from taking back their territory -- and later moved by their fading hopes.
There was ugliness in the protest as well, as mobs of irate, anti-occupation people (attributed by many to Hong Kong's ruthless triad gangs) began attacking protesters in Hong Kong's rougher, working-class (though terrifically eclectic) neighborhood Mong Kok. By Monday, a week after I first arrived, the protest seemed to be moving into its final stages -- as crowds began to dwindle and momentum shift. Near midnight, with a few hours left in Hong Kong, I took a final stroll through the main protest in front of Hong Kong's government headquarters. The streets -- that I had found so chaotic a week earlier, were now surreal for the opposite reason. Roads that were jam-packed just days earlier with a writhing, exuberant sea of humanity, were now almost empty except for two groups of people: A small number of diehard holdout protesters and people like me, with cameras and smartphones in hand, eager to capture one last glimpse of this crazy moment in history before it disappeared. A few photos from that last midnight stroll below: |