Contents

Title Page

Today

Sorry for Inconveniencing You! Thank You for a Better Future!

Occupy Tour Guide

Will the Center Hold?

City of Protest

The Laundry and Dust Are Higher Every Day

In Hong Kong, the Last Days of Occupy

Missing Impossible: Hong Kong, China, and the Abducted Booksellers

Notes

Umbrella Blossom

HONG KONG 2014/2019

Erik Wennermark

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© all rights reserved 2019

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Today

It’s been hard watching the recent events in Hong Kong from afar. Five year ago, during the Umbrella Revolution, I was often in the thick of it, from the very first moments rushing out into the highway to the last slowly dwindling days as the protestors’ encampments were taken apart by police. Today to get my information, I must rely on questionable articles from mainstream English language press, YouTube videos, and random tweets. This time too seems much bigger and more intense, more violent and more desperate than five years ago. It’s already lasted as long.

Thinking of the people I encountered back then, I imagine the protestors today as they suit up to battle the police with their hard hats, balaclavas, and gas masks. In my day - crotchety old man voice - we didn’t have no fancy gas mask, we relied on good old standard pollution/sick masks and plastic wrap! Hard hats, pah! Of course, in my day, we only got gassed once or twice, not seemingly every weekend. It was mostly pepper spray back then. There were few rubber bullets and no Molotov cocktails, but I do remember bags of shit - literally human feces. Either way, it’s a tougher road for the protestors now and I’m sorry I can’t be there to share some of that burden or record some of that history in whatever limited way as I did last time.

This exercise, however, is not to reminisce about how much better and more authentic everything was when I was there to see it, but to try to provide some sort of link between what happened five years ago and what is happening now. I certainly believe there is a connection and a clear chain of events leading from there to here.

To briefly recap: the events of five years ago centered around the election of the Hong Kong Chief Executive and the composition of the government. It was largely about the desire for democratic procedures and the laws governing such: who can run for election, who can vote for what, and the process of electing Hong Kong’s leader. A Hong Kong leader who is now, as then, essentially China’s handpicked puppet. This puppet figure then having a major influence on the lives of Hong Kong people as relates to all matters of policy.

In spite of this (lack of) leadership, the goal of many Hong Kong people is to preserve their identity and live life in a free, self-determined way, distinct from mainland Chinese. This is a political, as much as cultural and linguistic, operation. These were the factors that led them into the street last time. To abbreviate the story that followed: they failed. Rather spectacularly. They got nothing: no concessions, no committees, nothing. Two-plus months camped out in the streets and nothing happened (aside from a few of them later spent some time in jail and/or accumulated some political currency that has been used to varying effect).

The reasons for the failure of the Umbrella Revolution are manifold, but have to be, in part, credited to Chinese patience. The Hong Kong police occasionally swung their truncheons and fired off tear gas, rickety encampments were bulldozed, but overall it was a patient policy (no doubt dictated from afar). Offer nothing, the people will get tired of the streets being blocked, the students will get bored (and cold) eventually. And sadly, dishearteningly, it worked. The end was fairly anticlimactic. 

In the years following, perhaps as a result of the possibility unleashed by the Umbrella Revolution, China began to tighten its grip on Hong Kong in myriad ways. This meant, among other things, disappearing dissident Hong Kong booksellers as they vacationed outside of Hong Kong borders, and perhaps even covertly invading Hong Kong and discretely sweeping others away under the cover of night. This meant longer-term efforts of political reeducation (propaganda) directed towards Hong Kong’s older or more suburban populations. Most notably, this meant the extradition treaty, which leads us to where we are today.

The (stated) impetus behind the creation of the extradition law was actually pretty damn reasonable. As I understand it, a Hong Kong man took his girlfriend on vacation to Taiwan, murdered her, and returned home, free and clear of the possibility of being extradited back to Taiwan to pay for his crime, as Hong Kong has no formal extradition treaty with Taiwan, Macau, or Mainland China (among other places). I gather, in most similar cases, the relevant police and government offices in the respective countries would just common-sensibly sort something out to prevent this type of injustice from occurring, but China, seeing the opening, pounced on the opportunity to formalize extradition into Hong Kong law.

With the new law, if one were to be arrested in Hong Kong, one could be swept off to China, no questions asked, likely to inhabit some dark Shenzhen dungeon, in the company of disaffected Uighurs and harmlessly nutty Falun Gong practitioners, subject to waterboarding and whatever other fingernail-pulling horrors. This, of course, would be really bad for people like Joshua Wong, the young Umbrella Revolution hero, who spent some time in jail recently for his role in the 2014 protests.

This summer’s protests began about this law, which has since been retracted by Chief Executive Carrie Lam (deputy in 2014), but the protestors’ list of demands and grievances has grown. They want apologies and investigations into the police brutality that has accompanied the protests, a complete removal of the possibility of the extradition law, and have resurrected many of their desires related to democratic self-determination from the first time around.

Also similarly to 2014, the greatest (physical) threat to the protestors is that China could grow impatient with the ongoing protests and, instead of relying on the Hong Kong police, could send in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), who conveniently have a garrison in the city, to effectively, dramatically end dissent.

This brings us briefly to a discussion of tactics and some small reminiscences of the old days (forgive me): I remember one night in October 2014 standing out front of the PLA barracks, and the protestors were thinking about blocking the major highway that leads to the tunnel to Kowloon from Hong Kong island. This is a major thoroughfare in a highly visible spot. I was standing there with another expat guy and we were watching the young students sort of tease out the idea. A couple of kids would run out in the road, stop a couple of shrilly honking cabs, then chicken out. The guy next to me looked very concerned. I said, “They should totally do it.” He looked at me like I was some bloodthirsty creep, “Can you imagine what would happen?” “Yup,” I replied. “I sure can.”

Had the PLA shock troops come streaming out on the road, I reckon a lot of kids would’ve gotten hurt, and Hong Kong might look very different today. Instead, China kept their cool, waited out the protestors for literal months, and almost exactly nothing changed.

The protestors today seem to have less fear than their 2014 counterparts. They not only will block the highway, but the whole fucking airport! Viewed from afar, and with my cynical lens that everything has to have been better five years ago, it seems that in learning from these old mistakes, the Hong Kong protestors may have overcompensated a bit, turning from civil disobedience to active confrontation. Instead of long-term occupations of public or commercial spaces, it’s weekend marches and forced bursts of violence. Then again, it seems to working: they are getting larger numbers involved, causing more havoc, and generally getting a bigger reaction. One thing I am fairly certain of however, judging by the chilling tweets of Chinese State media, it could end very quickly, and very bloodily.

Even before any of these recent events started, I had toyed with the idea of pulling together the articles I wrote for Guernica, Hong Kong Free Press, and Asian Review of Books, in time for the five-year anniversary of the Umbrella Revolution in late-September and reposting or republishing them in some form. But, as they do, events have moved past that idea and I’ve decided to quickly put together a compilation now.

What follows* is my articles (sometimes in different form), notes, and impressions from those few months of the Umbrella Revolution, and a discrete (related) event afterwards from when I still was living in Hong Kong. Hopefully this added context will be helpful to understand what is happening today.

Most of all, I hope and pray for the safety of the protestors and for the freedom and self-determination of the Hong Kong people. I loved living in Hong Kong and, if it wasn’t for the profound indignity of the NYC-expensive, rabbit-cage apartments, I would love to go back. I often browse Hong Kong job listings and see what’s available (and if they are offering housing). Housing’s a big problem in Hong Kong if you hadn’t noticed, and another root to the young people’s dissatisfaction.

Aside from my shitty apartment, I never felt more connected to Hong Kong and the people than I did during the Umbrella Revolution. By devoting myself to documenting their cause and trying to spread the word, I was not just another self-economically-motivated expat, but was making an investment in the city’s future side-by-side Hong Kong people. They are good people and it is a great world city, filled with it’s own unique history. Depending on what happens, how this all ends, perhaps I’ll be able to return to add another chapter to the story, or what I fear is more likely, a brief, sad coda.

Erik Wennermark
August 12th, 2019, Tokyo, Japan

Sorry for Inconveniencing You! Thank You for a Better Future!

The eight-lane stretch of Connaught Road Central running past the Admiralty Center is the area you’ve likely seen in pictures coming out of Hong Kong. It is a major throughway of the city that has turned into a public square. It is where we were all first tear-gassed on Day One and where the more festive (and much larger) Day Two and (larger still) Day Three celebrations took over and continue… for who knows how long. On the pedestrian walkway crossing over the highway, a banner now hangs, reading in Chinese characters, and in true Hong Kong fashion: “Sorry for inconveniencing you! Thank you for a better future!” Their demand for that better future: that Beijing allow democratically chosen candidates in the 2017 elections for the city’s leader, instead of choosing between candidates hand-picked by the government.

Day One:

On Twitter Sunday morning I saw news about the student sit-in that had started Friday at Tamar Center, a government complex in the Admiralty area. There had been some violence over the weekend, but it was unclear what exactly had happened. The tweets left me figuring I would be disappointed—cops were reported to outnumber protestors, etc.—but, why not? I figured I would check it out. Hong Kong can be off-putting in a vapid, well-moneyed, consumer-paradise sort of way, and any actual popular engagement, even if sparsely attended, tends to alleviate that somewhat. But that’s not an entirely fair sentiment—I was incredibly moved by the July 1 pro-democracy march, which numbered in the many tens of thousands—but all too often the city seems most like an endless shopping mall peopled with splendid shoppers. In any event, as a teacher, motivated students make me happy and I would show my solidarity, no matter how small or insignificant it turned out to be.

I headed towards Central (downtown) on the tram and as Admiralty approached was peering about looking for some sign of discord. Nothing special. I got off the tram and started to wander around, trying to make my way to what I thought was the protest site. It was blocked off. Down one street: cops and a barricade. Doubling back down another it was the same story.

About to give up, I finally made my way to Admiralty Centre where there indeed was a large gathering and it was the cops, not the protestors, who were outnumbered. Perhaps a few hundred people filled the sidewalk under a Student Strike banner and were pushed up against a police barricade, chanting and being otherwise exhorted by a young Cantonese-speaking man on a microphone. Another group of maybe a hundred or so sat on the stairs of the Centre. Apparently, many of those attempting to get to the protest had converged here and were being detained en masse. The scene was tense, but not as bad as one might imagine pressed up against police. Slowly though, the energy was amping up. More and more people were arriving, and the faces of the police wavered between anger and dread. The students, at the same time, were wrapping their faces in plastic wrap, handing out face-masks, and passing umbrellas up to those in the front of the line as the speech grew fiercer. The students were communicating somehow with protestors across the roadway and I gather they were calling their colleagues forth.

The young people at the front of the line opened the umbrellas against the police shields, lowered their shoulders and pushed, with other hands pressing on their backs. Like samurais in a Kurosawa film, the police unveiled a fluttering red banner, “Stop Charging or We Use Force.” One, two, push. Umbrellas were snatched from hands by police and thrown back. Faces strained into plastic shields. One, two, push. Shrieks of pain and exertion. One, two, pussshhhhhhh and it happened. The stereotypically genteel, well-mannered, respectful-of-authority young Asian students forced themselves through a wall of riot police with nothing but umbrellas and plastic wrap.

Hands from everywhere madly gesturing: Go, go, go! Come, come, come! Protestors from all directions converged on Connaught Road and I, foolishly perhaps, ran along with them. We scaled the dividers, exhilarated by the mad dash. Traffic halted and drivers frantically tried to back up the overpass they just came off of, car doors were locked, windows rolled up, Buses floundered like dead whales (and one remains, initially used as a rest center on Day One, on Day Two it was converted into a mock mausoleum for Hong Kong Chief Executive Cy Leung), taxis bleated and luxury sedans were gravely inconvenienced.

My tweets and status updates unconsciously shift from first person to first person plural. This is history, and we are on the street!

I am not exactly sure what happened after that. I just know there was a wall of police that could not be crossed and that remained throughout the night, thrumming and straining like the first wall but less malleable and more vicious.

◆◆◆

Getting gassed. Running. Coming back. Getting gassed again. Umbrellas held by protestors at the front of the lines being snatched and torn up by the cops trying to pepper spray around the flimsy barricade. (Then) Umbrellas hanging off the front of the mesh grill of a police transport. (Later) Umbrellas painted with peace signs and messages. (Always) Charming Buddhist monks in Laos and Cambodia carrying umbrellas to protect them from the sun. (Always) Umbrellas useless in the rainy season, better to just wait it out. (Annoying) Umbrellas on a sunny day bumping my face — I’m taller than most. (Now) The Umbrella Revolution.

Stomach growling and grumbling, I decided to go home to eat and shower and change clothes. I had been wearing my prescription sunglasses all day and it was dark out and I couldn’t see, particularly through the goggles and plastic wrap someone handed me as protection from the tear gas. I walked down a side street and saw a mass of storm troopers approaching, boots clomping and looking menacingly fierce. Were these the PLA soldiers we’d feared would eventually arrive? (Apparently not.) Another black sign up: We’re about to shoot gas at you. More gas. Running. Frantic. Tight spaces. Flushing my eyes and face with the bottle of water someone thrusts into my hand. A young man apologizing to me, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry they did this to you,” as if they had not done the same to him. But I was a visitor.

After a gas barrage an irate young man screaming and kicking an abandoned police van. Several others rushed to him, asking him to stop, calming him down. Frequent calls to pick up trash. Free water, fruit, everything. (Who is paying for all this stuff? The CIA?) One day I took a picture of some graffiti: “Dismiss the Government.” Juvenile, but fun in a punk rock way. The next day it had been painted over, I’m certain by other protestors. All other graffiti is done in tape or chalk. Kids drawing red crosses on their arms and rushing around with water and bandages. Kids on megaphones exhorting the crowd to stay strong. Kids spoiling for a fight, arms and legs wrapped in plastic wrap, sporting ponchos and be-goggled.

By 3:00 a.m. I am exhausted and decide to go home and get some sleep. As I approach Causeway Bay the pre-carnal calm recedes and a police van screeches to a halt on Hennesey Road. A phalanx of riot cops machine gun out of the van and onto the road standing in a threatening line facing down… no one. But their appearance draws onlookers and more onlookers and finally screams of, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” I am tired of getting gassed and continue home. I find the next day they had planned to clear Causeway Bay—the protest had spread to my neighborhood—but wisely abandoned the plan. I sleep.

Day Two:

I awake and Causeway Bay is full of protestors. The main street of this incredibly busy shopping district is totally shut down. The students are winning. I spend the early part of the day between Causeway Bay and Admiralty, the police presence is largely gone and the areas we spent yesterday battling for have been won. Many more people are on the street and the atmosphere is even festive. There is music and singing.

At work I get into a reply-all email tiff with a coworker when I ask if anyone would like to join me for a protest picnic on Hennessey Road, the main drag of Causeway Bay, after work. She doesn’t believe white faces belong in the crowd at the protests, or the pro-Chinese element will write it all off as a CIA plot. I think this is a defeatist attitude. I tape a silhouette of an umbrella to my office door. After we work on his TOEFL speaking test (he wants to go to UCLA where his father and brother went), I chide a student that he should go join the protestors on the street, “at least walk around a little.” He demurs; his mom says it is too dangerous. I cancel my upcoming trip to Malaysia (I had planned to go over the National Day holiday). The exasperated words of Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper in Jaws come to mind, something like, “Professor, why do I have to go to Australia when I have a Great White right here?” I go sit on the ground and eat a burrito with the protestors.

Another student tells me her Mom says the protestors are violent and disturbing. “They are inconveniencing us,” she says. She lives in Mid-levels and her commute has been disrupted. “The MTR was closed!” In the trade this is called a teaching moment. I look thoughtful, nod, and say, “Yes, but don’t you think it is for a good reason?” She’s ambivalent. I say, “Do you think the protests would be more or less violent in the US and Europe?” She is German but has lived in Hong Kong for several years and sees my point.

My elderly neighbor (born and raised in Hong Kong) stops me by the elevator as I head back out to the protests and asks me, “You have seen all their supplies. Who is financing this?” I agree; I had wondered the same thing. “The students are puppets. I think the Americans are pulling the strings. It’s like 1967, but at least the Americans won’t give them guns.” I nod, smile, the elevator arrives. He reminds me of my father.

On Day Three, a shy young girl hands me a note and runs away: “To the one who loves Hong Kong, Thank you for supporting us! We do appreciate your support! So please keep supporting! Love and Peace! =)” I put the note above my desk.

On Day Two the organizers decide that black t-shirts will be worn. I believe there is a lack of black t-shirts among the student population—this is not New York—and many have had to dig deep into their elder brother’s band shirt collection: “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Never Mind the Bollocks,” Nirvana, Velvet Underground, Misfits, Guns N’ Roses; along with WrestleMania XXX, Frankenweenie, and Nightmare Before Christmas; I was previously unaware of the popularity of Tim Burton’s films here. My favorite however, which joins the ranks of my top non-sequitur Asian English t-shirt collection, reads “San Francisco Cream Soda.” It’s running neck and neck with “Crackhead International Pervert.”

Night falls on Day Two and it remains calm and often jubilant. There is a DJ and cello players. There are plenty of supplies and no police around. I walk further down into Central away from Occupy HQ. Here it is a little hairier, or there is the appearance of hairiness. Blockades are hastily built, moved, and rebuilt. There are constant reports of approaching police, sending everyone into a tizzy with ponchos and umbrellas handed out. A few clearly are waiting on the confrontation, wanting it, including many expats taking new Facebook profile pics in facemask and goggles (I’ll post mine later). Girls who could not be more than fourteen wearing platforms wrap their arms in plastic wrap. A girl from Australia tells me she is desperate to be tear-gassed. Another tells me she is sweating balls in her poncho. I see several bros chugging Tsing Tao beer while faux-manning the barricades. Is this serious? What happens if the cops come and someone is killed? The only way the police could end this tonight with so many people so unwilling to go would be with death. Is that beyond the HK Police? Probably. Is that beyond the PRC? History says no. Is this serious? Yes, of course it is. What I saw yesterday leaves me no doubt. The man standing against the police will not leave my mind. Umbrellas in clouds of gas. But there is some fun in playing dress up. No police come and the girl from Australia leaves disappointed.

A large Day Three banner in Admiralty reads: “NOT A PARTY IS A PROTEST.”

Day Three:

The day starts hot and finishes wet. Protestors seek shelter under their umbrellas, tents are erected.

Two little girls paint umbrellas in Causeway Bay, one’s t-shirt reads, “I ♥ HONG KONG.” She paints a peace sign, a stick figure of a man with his arms raised. Teenage girls tie yellow ribbons around each willing passersby’s wrist. A boy in a Wu-Tang t-shirt and skinny jeans halfway down his ass hands me a bottle of water.

A young man on the street gives a moving speech (in English!) explaining to onlookers what is happening, why they are out here, suffering the heat and the promise of confrontation. Afterwards, I thank him for his words. He tells me it is my duty to spread the message of what is happening. I post twenty pictures to Facebook, tweet, I take some time out from wandering to start writing.

Later, before my afternoon lesson, I speak with another coworker about it; he believes he should not stand on the front lines, should not hold his umbrella. He is concerned about the resolution and is doubtful anything positive will come of this. I accuse him of being a pragmatist. I wonder about the many native Hong Kongers who are not of Chinese descent. There are whites, mixed-race, and South Asians aplenty who grew up in this city. I, of course, am an expat who has lived in three Asian capitals in the last three years—transient and unmoored.

At 10:00 p.m. Causeway Bay is jammed. All lanes of the road and sidewalks. Narrow paths for visitors to shuffle along, admiring the massed students who munch bananas or play on their phones. I am offered candy, water, facemasks, ribbons, fruit.

Over the next two-and-half hours, I walk from Causeway Bay to Central, never once leaving occupied territory. The only time I see police is outside the Wan Chai Police Headquarters; they look bored of standing around scowling and seem to prefer to join the picnics and celebrations all around. When I reach Admiralty I am blown away. I can scarcely believe how many people are down here. I am amazed, dumbfounded, gobsmacked. This is something I will never see again.

Thirty minutes till midnight and National Day, which celebrates the founding of the PRC. On Sunday afternoon, I gave them little chance of making it this far. Now I don’t see how they can be stopped. There is no way the cops could even touch this. It seems inconceivable to me. The students have achieved critical mass. Perhaps that is naïve, but what could they possibly do without killing thousands. (The answer: kill thousands.) I can only think that is unlikely. Three days ago, right over there, in front of Admiralty Centre the barrier came down behind the shoulders and umbrellas of hundreds of young students, I followed them in a shocked daze. And—excuse the hyperbole or stupid metaphors—freedom, or the great desire for it, gushed forth onto Connaught Road. Regardless of what happens in the days to come, nothing can change that. It cannot be rebottled by Xi Jinping or CY Leung or a squadron of PLA shock troops or anyone.

Sometime on Day Two I was gawking at the wide array of free snacks lined up next to the bottles of water, facemasks, goggles, eyewash, and other sundry and the young guy handing out the goods said to me, “Shift.” I didn’t quite catch the context of what he was talking about and looked at him. Again he said, “Shift. This is shift. We are taking over now.”

The day clicks over and National Day falls. In Admiralty there’s a drum circle. It’s done.

Occupy Tour Guide

In front of the People’s Liberation Army Headquarters in the Admiralty neighborhood of Hong Kong, a jaunty man in his early thirties, wearing black cargo pants held up with suspenders and a multi-pocketed Batman-style utility belt, a blue t-shirt, and a blue trucker hat skipped down the sidewalk. Like a peculiar Pied-Piper, melded with prop-comic Gallagher and Che Guevara, six or seven intent European faces followed behind him. “Occupy Tour?” he asked interested onlookers. “Please join!”

It was just past midnight on the early morning of Day 5 of Occupy Central and in the entranceway of the neighboring Executive Committee Office hundreds of protestors, along with dozens of reporters and cameramen, paced or sat just across a barricade from forty or more well-armed police. The students had given Chief Executive CY Leung a midnight deadline to resign, or they threatened to extend their occupation into government buildings. CY Leung had come in just under the wire by promising a round of consultations between the students and his deputy Carrie Lam—meetings that were later cancelled as a result of reportedly triad-led violence against protestors in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok.

Protestors, however, were uncertain about the concession and the situation remained unresolved; many expected a confrontation. One man in a brown jumpsuit adjusted his facemask, goggles, and black motorcycle helmet. Students wrapped their bare arms and legs in plastic film, preparing to ward off pepper spray. A young girl in a black t-shirt and jean shorts distributed more masks from a cardboard box at her feet and had been at it for hours.

“This building on the right is of course the PLA Headquarters, note the red star on top. It has been recently renovated and the lighting below the star is able to display words. Several months ago, a message read ‘People’s Liberation Army’ in simplified Chinese characters. Here and in Taiwan, we use traditional characters. Needless to say, Hong Kongers were not pleased and the message did not last long.” An older French couple dressed in safari duds for a walking outing nodded their heads appreciatively.

“There is a tunnel going under Lung Wo Wan road,” the guide said, his hand sweeping the length of the street. “Rumored of course,” he added with a wink, “so that underwater vehicles can enter and leave the building from the harbor. There is a large parking garage equipped with tanks. The soldiers housed here are from the mainland and can’t, or should I say don’t, ever leave the compound, though I am told they are allowed one phone call a week home. The PLA building is next to ExCo, the Executive Committee, where CY Leung has his offices. CY Leung who was asked by students to resign tonight, which he didn’t, and almost certainly won’t, do.”

As he continued on in a manic stream about the ExCo and LegCo (the Legislative Committee), his eyes flashed, gloved hands pointing out each detail or dancing at his sides. Breathless, he stopped for a moment to gather his flock. “Ah yes!” he said, struck with an idea. “An Occupy Tour needs an umbrella.” And he took one from his back, held with a rope around his torso, and opened it. The shaft of the umbrella he raised above his head was illuminated like a rainbow glow-stick. “Occupy Tour, anyone?”

The French woman asked when he thought the protests would end. “Ah, that’s the question isn’t it,” he replied with a grin. “I’m afraid no one knows the answer to that.”

“But aren’t they getting smaller?” she continued.

There were mumbles of ascension from the crowd and he seemed slightly chagrinned. “No, no, I think they’re just spreading out some. There is Admiralty of course, and Causeway Bay and Mong Kok. I hear there are people in TST.” Tsim Sha Tsui, a popular shopping and entertainment district in Kowloon. “Tomorrow’s a holiday, then Friday, then the weekend. We’ll see what happens. Questions, questions, any other questions?”

“What’s the tape for?” a young German tourist asked, referring to the masking tape hanging from his belt.

“Oh, this?” the tour guide answered, pleased with the question. “This goes around my gloves. If you get pepper spray on your hands and arms, it’s very difficult to get off. I pepper-sprayed myself to test it and my friends were like ‘What?’ I was screaming!”

The German man seemed pleased with the tour and offered a bag of chocolate in payment. The tour guide gingerly took one and when the German insisted he take more, rubbed his belly and said, “No, no thank you, I’ve got plenty here.”

As the satisfied crowd drifted off, having exhausted their questions, he patted my shoulder, “Man, it was just a couple French tourists and I was like, alright, why not? Occupy Tour! I gotta go meet up with my friends. Look me up on Twitter, alright?” And Bastien, the Occupy tour guide, sheathed his umbrella and danced away into the heaving crowd. 

Will the Center Hold?

My arm is pulled, phones shoved in my face to see their photos. Look at this, please! Just the fact that I am writing stuff down, that there is some record of what they’re experiencing outside the innards of their smart phones seems keenly important to them. The ink on my notebook pages smears in the rain and I switch to a new pen.

The full story is thirty guys in black masks charged from the Causeway Bay MTR station into the crowd of protestors, hitting, spitting, and destroying barricades. I arrived shortly after. Their appearance perversely rallies those less enthused about the occupation who have lingered on the periphery for the past day or so. The assumption was that the masked men were invaders paid off by pro-Beijing forces to inflame the situation and to give the police an excuse to clear the streets. The main conflict is done but the shouting and pushing lingers.

Police half-heartedly try to separate the pro- and anti-Occupy forces. A young policewoman on a megaphone calls for calm; she turns to one of her colleagues and gives him a Cheshire-cat grin. This is happening two blocks from my apartment building; I can’t even get to Hennessey Road, the stretch of Causeway Bay where protestors have been gathered for six days. There is much talk of Mandarin speakers with Beijing accents (Hong Kongers speak Cantonese) and signs written in simplified Chinese characters normally only seen on the Mainland.

Finally, on Hennessey, I see some girls no older than fourteen sitting on the ground. I ask them if anyone was hurt. They look sad, but shake their heads no. I ask, “Will you move to Admiralty? It will be safer for you.” Again they shake their heads, saying that they have plenty of water to sustain them.

I ask the same question of a guy in his early twenties with dreads and long cargo shorts. “We will defend here,” he says firmly.

The students pass supplies down the street, a stretch of people almost the length of an American football field. They will stay, but will consolidate their position.

Lightning splits the sky and it begins to rain. Standing back under the awning of a traditional Chinese pharmacy selling roots, remedies, and powders of all descriptions, Rod Stewart croons through the muggy air, “You fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness, ease my troubles that’s what you do…”

I go into a packed McDonald’s and eat a Big Mac; with the Golden Arches open twenty-four hours in all protest zones, McDonald’s is doing well from Occupy Central. When I enter the restroom, a cop holds the door and smiles.

◆◆◆

The situation is far, far worse in Mong Kok, a neighborhood across the harbor in Kowloon. Reporters are attacked and young girls threatened with sexual abuse. The instigator’s quote getting play on Twitter is something like, “If you are a protestor you should expect to be abused.” All told, over a hundred are injured.

Mong Kok is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and far grittier than Hong Kong Island. As anyone who’s seen the wonderful nineties Hong Kong cop/gangster films such as A Better Tomorrow can attest, it is a haven for triad activity. Mong Kok is filled with traditional street markets selling knock-off goods and massage parlors alongside the Western and Japanese megastores, which have popped up in recent years with yet unfulfilled hopes of gentrifying the area. Many of these businesses are triad-run. It’s also a much more working-class crowd than you find on the streets of Causeway Bay or Central.

Other divisions in Hong Kong society appear to be cracking through the surface of Occupy — student and shopkeeper, Kowloon and the Island, new era and status quo, money today or freedom tomorrow. Some opponents of the protests have taken to wearing blue ribbons, as opposed to the protestors’ optimistic yellow. Undoubtedly some of this is authentic anti-Occupy sentiment, but one can’t escape the growing circumstantial evidence of coordination by “outside forces.”

Photos and screenshots of several primary documents are floating around online: a Facebook post offering bounties, 200 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) for Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, 300HKD for Admiralty, bonuses of HKD 500 for destroying a supply station, HKD 1,000 for “causing chaos;” a check apparently dropped by one the fleeing shit-stirrers for HKD 7,000 (almost one thousand US); a memo instructing “patriots” to “attack traitors and lap dogs of the West.”

I leave Causeway Bay and begin the walk down to Admiralty. For the first time ever in Hong Kong I feel uncomfortable walking the streets and even unwelcome. In a dripping poncho, given to me the other day outside of CY Leung’s office in preparation for pepper spray, I feel I am easily identified as part of the pro-student crowd. The threat of gangs of marauding mobsters has me ill at ease. Cantonese speakers on Twitter are posting about chants of “Fuck the USA!” and “Fuck American People!” A Canadian man I spoke to was accosted and told to, “Go back to your own country.” He’s lived in Hong Kong for five years. Those around him said if he’d spoken Cantonese and heard the rest he would be very, very angry. His lip quivered as he told the story.

The police give a press conference later to deny that they have colluded with the anti-Occupy violence in any way. They say they have made multiple arrests in Mong Kok, and that yes, half of those people have triad ties. They deny accusations of selective enforcement (Occupy activists claim they are arrested and assaulted for non-violence while anti-Occupy violence is ignored). The police say they are doing their best.

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The situation in Admiralty has intensified. New barricades have been erected and the rain comes and goes; it’s hot and humid as the jungle. Everyone is on edge. Minor disturbances flare up causing hundreds in the vicinity to scream and pass their fear onward like a surging wave. Someone appears to be trying to throw something — it looks like camera equipment or a media satellite — from the overpass onto the crowd below. Young men with megaphones sweep in to clear the people from danger and the crisis is averted.

The police I see behind the barricades at the Executive Building — Chief Executive CY Leung’s office — now have riot helmets swinging from their belts, but perhaps it’s protection from the intermittent rain. A large group of cops congregate fifty yards back from the barricade in the empty square.

Something’s happening. People leap up all around; I see a boy struggle to put on his shoes. It’s fucking bedlam and the crowd is shrieking. I see a group of perhaps twenty or thirty men dressed in black hauling ass over the Connaught Road overpass. Later I learn they were off-duty cops trying to get back into Headquarters. I can’t get up there through the masses but I see dozens of protestors with their arms raised in the Hands Up Don’t Shoot pose that’s become an international symbol for peaceful resistance. A Hong Konger and his girlfriend translate some of the goings on for me; he earnestly tells me to be careful.

My phone starts buzzing and I see an unfamiliar number on the caller ID. I answer. “Hello, this is the little guy,” says the voice in halting English. “Send me WhatsApp and I send video.” It’s Brian, the twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy I spoke to earlier in Causeway Bay. My phone beeps continuously for the next five minutes as the rush of Brian’s photos and videos comes through. He wants me to see “the bad guys.”

It’s 2:00 a.m. in Admiralty and despite the day’s violence, which continues across the harbor, protestors are singing “Under a Vast Sky,” a ’90s tune by the Hong Kong Canto-Pop band Beyond. The translated lyrics read, “Forgive me for embracing freedom in my life, But also fear of falling down some day, To give up one’s hope, it isn’t for hard for anyone, It would be fine if there’s only you and me,” and it’s become the movement’s unofficial anthem. At its conclusion huge cheers erupt and round two of singing commences.

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The unfathomably popular Japanese ice cream shop, Via Tokyo, on the ground floor of my building still has a line around the block. It’s filled with happy couples and groups of friends, as it is almost every night, before, during and likely after Occupy. Shirtless guys are still pushing carts stacked with boxes, cigarettes dangling from their lips; the dough man in the bun shop is still kneading dough while the radio blares. A lady runs a squeegee over the window of a chain drugstore. A well-built guy in a tank top carries a rugby ball.

After yesterday and today’s violence things are calm at 10:00 p.m. in Causeway Bay; there are good numbers, and people, including the police, seemed relaxed and at ease. A makeshift screen has been erected and the students and other onlookers are watching a live stream of the events down in Admiralty, where the largest crowd in several days is taking part in a nonviolence rally.

In Admiralty the A/V is much improved too. The speeches are being broadcast on a large wall of the Admiralty Centre. A scroll of supportive Facebook messages sprawls thirty-feet high on the wall of the Government Building. The speeches break into English, playing to the worldwide audience, “We are here to get democratic rights that should be enjoyed by Hong Kong people.”

Around midnight, lots of folks leave to catch the last train home and the crowd thins somewhat, but it’s still the largest in days. Will this give the police the chance they need? CY Leung has promised that schools will be reopened on Monday—they have been closed the last few days in Occupy areas, including the public holidays—and it will be business as usual. Green-shirted students roam the crowd with placards with a number and instructions should you get arrested. Many take pictures of the information. “Legal aid,” a man tells me. The rumor online is that police will attack at 3:00 a.m.

Three soused financial bros walk arm in arm, the two on either side supporting their friend in the middle who has a large wet patch creeping down his khakis. Red-faced dudes with watery eyes and bemused expressions roam. It’s a regular Saturday night over here. I’m sitting on a bench in Wan Chai around the corner from the Wanch, a popular dive bar and music venue that reminds me of home. I’ve stepped away from the protests for a minute to have a coffee and relax. The band at the Wanch is playing classic rock covers in a loose, punkish way. At 1:00 a.m., according to Twitter, tensions are still high in Mong Kok and police have unfurled the red banner. It’s mellowing here in Admiralty and quiet in Causeway Bay.

It’s 3:00 a.m. and the rumors, like so many before, proved unfounded. There is no attack on Admiralty. I make a last round before heading home. After a depressing morning and fearing the worst tonight I am slightly buoyed. I see the glimmer of peaceful resolution—despite the fact that Mong Kok still seethes. The students and government are creeping towards negotiations. I mention my optimism to a man wearing a yellow windbreaker with a yellow bandana tied around his head manning the first aid tent in front of the barricaded Executive Offices. “Yes,” he agrees with me, the night has gone better than all anticipated, “but things change very fast.”

City of Protest

Martin, a chubby young guy wearing a Google Android t-shirt and keeping a solitary overnight vigil by the barricades in front of the Hysan Place mall in Causeway Bay, seems about to cry. He is angry and wants to tell me about it.

“There are not enough people here. We are at the mercy of the police,” he says. He is right; the police could have cleared the area with minimal fuss many nights this week, but have chosen not to, presumably to maintain order elsewhere. So far, whenever violence or force appears, the protesters’ strength redoubles; somewhat surprisingly, the police and government are now content to let protester fatigue take its course. Martin, however, is fed up. He will no longer sacrifice his university marks to the dictates of “timid” leaders in Admiralty. He tells me he will return to school, or perhaps go to Mong Kok. Mong Kok is now seen as the true front of the struggle, where the serious tough guys go to make their bones in the revolution. It is the battleground that keeps the “Blue-Ribbons”—anti-Occupy protesters—engaged and away from Admiralty, which has become a sacred space, an untouchable symbol.

Admiralty is where the struggle began, where the tear gas plumed, and is closest to the offices of those Occupy seeks to depose; it is home of the largest crowds, the smartest banners, and is the main image on the news; this accounts for its importance, along with some resentment from the other, less conspicuous neighborhoods where the struggle carries on. The differing character of the different protest sites is one of the more interesting anthropological side-notes of Occupy—they seem to take their respective vibes through osmosis, mirroring their surroundings: officious, yet pleasant, Admiralty, home of Hong Kong’s government buildings; edgy Mong Kok, with its knock-off sneaker stalls and one-hour love motels; customer-friendly Causeway Bay, all well-heeled food courts, brunch spots, and frigidly air-conditioned shopping malls.

“Last night there were not even a hundred people and half were girls!” Martin says, pawing at his glasses. He is searching for the English words and his irritation mounts. “If the Umbrella Revolution succeeds it will be the brave men of Mong Kok. If the Blue-Ribbons come here…” He shakes his head again and shuffles his feet like an angry bull.

One of the difficulties in arranging negotiations is the many divergent voices of Occupy. There is Occupy Central With Love and Peace (OCLP), a generally middle-aged crew; the Hong Kong Federation of Students; and Scholarism, another student group, along with many unaffiliated protesters. Calls by one group are not heeded by the others. Cooperation is pledged and forgotten. Some of this accounts for the mysticism surrounding Mong Kok, a place many feel was abandoned during last Friday’s violence (which some have dubbed “The Siege of Mong Kok”), when OCLP leader Benny Tai called for protesters to retreat from Mong Kok and Causeway Bay and marshal forces in Admiralty. His plea was ignored. Occupy seems increasingly rudderless. Despite many figureheads, Occupy pledges it has no leaders; events show it to be reactive and unable to sustain its hard-won momentum.

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The barricades of Mong Kok, set up to slow oncoming police or Blue-Ribbons, are far more severe than those elsewhere in the city. Protesters have gathered whatever they could and thrown it into the street: garbage cans, recycling bins, stray scraps of wood, street signs, carpets, boxes. Nathan Road, a major street through Kowloon, is blocked from the Mong Kok to Yau Ma Tei MTR stations—a distance of about a kilometer. This stretch is filled with jewelry stores and high-end cosmetics shops catering to nouveau-riche Mainland tourists. Many of these stores have displaced local family-run businesses, accounting for the Hong Konger populism, and even xenophobia, most prevalent in Mong Kok’s protests but increasingly exhibited elsewhere.

Protestors here, along with seeking self-determination, are tired of outrageous rents and a crowded, shrinking job pool—major areas of contention in Hong Kong that are often laid at the doorstep of Mainland real-estate developers and prospective workers from the Southern Chinese boomtowns of Shenzhen and Shanghai. While Mainland Chinese have brought much prosperity to Hong Kong, they have also increased the competition.

The home of Hong Kong’s triad-run Red Light District, the side streets of Mong Kok are where things get interesting. A disturbance kicks up and armed police move in to separate the clashing parties—the police have been more diligent about maintaining order since the triad-led attacks of a few days prior. The underworld, too, doesn’t like seeing business disrupted by closed streets and wary tourists. An old man with thinning white hair wearing a polo shirt and dirty shorts glares at the protesters and takes a swig of his beer; a bald guy in his late-fifties with a beer gut, peers over the railing near the MTR station while his buddies stand back and watch, laughing. Some of these guys remind me of my late grandfather, an eminently hard-assed man and veteran of several wars, while others look like China’s Archie Bunker. Protestors sing “Happy Birthday” in English and Chinese to any Blue-Ribbon who wants to mix it up, generally confusing the interloper until the situation fades or police arrive. Young kids run and play in the open street. There are plenty of female protesters, too. One, standing stock still and expressionless, holds a crude cardboard sign that reads, “I don’t need sex becoz the gov fuck me everyday.”

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I arrive in Admiralty on the MTR from Mong Kok just as Scholarism leader Joshua Wong is speaking to the crowd. Joshua is the seventeen-year-old superstar of Occupy who has been profiled in magazines and newspapers across the world. He is a passionate speaker; a woman standing nearby roughly interprets his words: “Celebrities and others ask us to leave [Admiralty], but only the government can allow us to leave [through negotiations].” Later, news comes that the students and government have agreed to a format and timetable for talks to begin Friday, October 9. With the number of protesters dwindling more each day, I can’t say what concessions the students will be able to pry from Beijing’s intransigent grasp. I have my doubts the hardcores in Mong Kok will pay much heed either way.

The next evening, while sitting on a traffic divider under the Connaught Road overpass watching the goings-on, it occurs to me that all that I see will be gone soon: the picnicking couples; the supply and first aid tent volunteers; the little girls handing out fruit; the group of guys who charge phones with an industrial-size USB port and a power strip; the public restrooms freely stocked with toothpaste, soap, and shampoo; the clever, creative, funny art and signage; the shared spirit of camaraderie and kindness; the sense of hope. My fear is that the loss will account for nothing, and what a terrible message that would be for the world—that by being so nice, so charitable, so very themselves, the students have missed an opportunity to force real change. The “world’s politest protesters” win little respect from Beijing.

Emily, a coworker, is twenty-six and has a Master’s in Cultural Studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong. She’s from Beijing, but has lived in Hong Kong for eight years. I find her to be a thoughtful and funny person and I somewhat warily ask her for her impressions of Occupy Central over Gchat. She first expresses her neutrality, then, when I push the question to Hong Konger’s impressions of Mainlanders, she writes, “I moved to Hong Kong in 2006; at that time there weren’t many Chinese people living here, so the Hong Kong people were very nice to us, and the international environment and freedom of speech also attracted me. But in the past two or three years, too many Chinese travelers have come to Hong Kong and have affected local people’s lives, so I can understand their anger. On the other hand, I understand China’s government and politicians better than Hong Kong people; they treasure the stability of their power more than anything else, so I don’t think the Umbrella Revolution will have any real progress this time.” After a moment, another message comes through, “But I don’t like people being angry with each other just because of their disagreement about this event. If you want real democracy, you have to listen and respect different voices first.”

A June poll by Hong Kong University showed that substantially more residents of Hong Kong self-identify as “Hong Kong people” than as “Chinese.” The numbers were up from similar surveys in previous years and will likely continue to rise. Further anecdotal evidence is available in virtually every street and classroom of Hong Kong.

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On the eve of negotiations between the government and the students, Deputy Carrie Lam abruptly calls off the talks. Hong Kong, and the world, is losing interest in the protesters, and perhaps government officials think they no longer need to negotiate. The massive front-page headline of the complimentary English-language newspaper in my office building reads, “MORE TRAFFIC MAYHEM AHEAD.” Proper news of the protest is relegated to the inside pages. Lam is perhaps also trying to further splinter the groups, which have been making a show of visible cooperation in recent days: she says that OCLP is partially responsible for the cancellation; that she intended negotiations to be limited to student groups. She says the government’s “trust is shaken;” a somewhat laughable prospect given the events—triad attacks, stalling tactics, new reports of CY Leung’s prodigious graft—of the past two weeks.

In Causeway Bay, Franz (“like Kafka or Schubert,” he says), a graduate student in his late-twenties, gives a lecture on Critical Thinking, or at least he’s trying to. His “indignation,” he says, made it a bit more political than he originally intended. In keeping with Causeway Bay’s youthful, more earnest character during Occupy Central, the closed street space is now used for lectures and classes on spoken English, Literature, Math, and a variety of other topics. A whiteboard with a class schedule stands on the side of the street nearby a book borrowing and donation library. After his class I ask him if he has heard the news about the talks. “Yes,” he says, “I don’t want to say anything discouraging, but everyone’s disappointed. The truth is they have the power.” Franz feels it may be hard to continue the protests, but “the students are not asking for anyone’s sympathy. This is a long-term movement.”

Others I talk to are unsurprised by the cancellation. They have little faith in their governance, which they feel lacks legitimacy. In fact, they seem surprised at my surprise over the government’s actions—it’s clear I don’t fully understand conditions to which they’re totally accustomed. In Admiralty, where blocks have been erected to cross over the highway dividers on Connaught and Harcourt Road, each dirty, boot-marked step reads “689,” the number of votes CY Leung received from the Beijing nominating committee (composed of 1,200 members) to take his post as Chief Executive—this in a city of over seven million.

The student and OCLP leaders call for a huge crowd in Admiralty Friday night to express their displeasure with the government’s refusal to negotiate. They ask protesters to bring tents and mattresses and prepare to occupy “every inch of the streets.” By 9 p.m. the crowd numbers well over ten thousand: the biggest turnout in several days by a good margin, yet it’s surprisingly sedate. Most in attendance are sitting on Connaught Road listening quietly to a series of volunteers, protest leaders, local pop and movie stars, academics, and supportive politicians share their memories of the past two weeks, rally present spirits, and plan for a way forward. Along with “long term occupation” and continued disobedience, the prospect of a 2017 “shadow election,”—the next time the Chief Executive post is open—open to all Hong Kongers, has been floated.

Yet again, the government’s plan to diffuse the protests has backfired. Further, their perplexing decisions put the police—men and women who have been working double shifts for two weeks—in the terrible situation of dealing with the continued fallout and frustration of the disruptions to Hong Kong life. The tension at the protest sites, particularly Mong Kok, is still high. The tram still doesn’t run—talks between students and transportation officials are ongoing to resume service (limited routes are expected soon, yet the Executive Committee can’t find the negotiation table)—and traffic’s a mess; exhausted police and angry Blue-Ribbons patrol the streets. The impression is that the capricious decision-making reflects the uncertainty and disagreement both within the local government and further to Beijing. It’s possible, given the unfeasibility of a brutal crackdown on such a visible, networked population, they simply don’t know what to do.

Late Friday night, the government press office announces CY Leung and his deputy Carrie Lam will be visiting an agricultural conference in Guangzhou until the middle of the following week. The Chinese city is a mere eighty miles away, which brings the necessity of a multi-night trip for the city’s two top leaders into question. That same night in Causeway Bay, a young man with an emo haircut and Nikes gives a late-night street Chemistry class to a few interested pupils.

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Sunday afternoon in Causeway Bay a group of twenty or thirty pro-China protesters meet across a barricade against two or three times that number of their Occupy counterparts. Likely a hundred more Occupy protesters are spread around the rest of their site, sitting under tarps, chatting or playing on their phones, unconcerned with the confrontation. Dozens of tents have been erected in the last couple of days and Hennessey Road looks like an urban campground. Most in the pro-China crowd are men over fifty, though there are a few similarly aged women and younger people. Several wear Chinese flag t-shirts and blue baseball hats. They carry nicely printed yellow and red signs in Chinese along with a banner with the Chinese flag hovering over, and partially obscuring, a Hong Kong flag. “Respect your elders,” I am told they shout in Chinese. “We are Chinese and we should love China!”

Both sides of protesters and the police are well outnumbered by Sunday shoppers and curious onlookers snapping pictures of the signs and artwork, strung origami birds and umbrellas, or taking selfies with a police/Blue-Ribbon backdrop. There are multiple megaphones, an ever-shifting chorus of chants—all of it is in Chinese, but I gather it is quite ridiculous. Apparently one of the Blue-Ribbons is a 9/11-truther. Many onlookers, after listening for a while, walk away shaking their heads or giggling. The generation gap has never seemed so wide.

Twenty feet behind the gaggle of Blue-Ribbons, a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals charity booth, set off by puppy- and kitty-printed umbrellas, is taking donations and selling t-shirts and dog toys, along with the cutesy umbrellas. Not thirty feet to the left, Falun Gong—a quasi-religious group that has been furiously persecuted in China for over twenty years with many adherents now living in Hong Kong—is performing a mock-dissection. An old man in scrubs, facemask, and a hair-cover stands over a woman lying prone on a table, surgical tools raised in his hands. (Falun Gong and others are convinced their practitioners are kidnapped and tortured by Chinese authorities and their vital organs harvested.) Hong Kong-born movie star Jackie Chan spoke out against Occupy in recent days, and was roundly mocked for it, but I am reminded of something else he once said, also pejoratively. The sixty-year-old called Hong Kong, a “city of protest.” In many ways, this cacophony of thought, activity and opinion, this particularly free-speaking Hong Kong blend of massive-Asian-metropolis vitality and craziness, this city of protest, is exactly what the Occupiers are fighting for.

The Laundry and Dust Are Higher Every Day

The scene on Queensway near Lippo Centre on the afternoon of Monday, October 13th is like the strata of the earth. In the shadow of Ruth’s Chris steakhouse, a layer of Blue-Ribbons—anti-Occupy protesters—are mashed against a layer of police; there follows a layer of flashing photographers and camera operators, the flounce of an umbrella, a thin strip of steel, and finally, the Occupiers. Many hundreds watch from a nearby overpass, a parking garage, or the windows of their office buildings. The odd geology is the result of an earlier confrontation between Occupiers and marching Blue-Ribbons following the removal of several barricades that morning. There is more talk of conspiracy, of police-triad-Blue-Ribbon collusion. Whenever police dismantle Occupy-built barricades, Blue-Ribbons inevitably follow in an attempt to permanently reclaim the street. This is a pattern that will repeat itself many times over the next few days.

The cops are linked together arm-in-arm or holding hands, trying to create a cordon to funnel the Blue-Ribbons away from the protesters. Punches are thrown over police shoulders and wrists: wild, flailing blows hoping to land on an Occupier’s chin or cheek. A fat man in his forties wearing fashionable business casual—Armani Express—is screaming at a young man wearing a septum ring, pony tail, and large-gauge plugs in his earlobes. The younger man says nothing, but returns perhaps the iciest glare I have ever seen.

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At 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, police rip Causeway Bay in half. The art installations and barricades in front of Hysan Place are easily swept away. The mobile democracy classroom and library dismantled and tossed in dumpsters; what protesters manage to save wheeled off in carts. The midnight tutoring sessions have come to an end. There are several hundred police and perhaps fifty protesters. Kept from the scene, I circumnavigate, seeking ingress. In my journey, I count at least thirty police vans and see dozens of motorcycle cops. As the police dismantle the barricades, two young girls wearing hoodies—it is autumn now—and facemasks, sweep up the plastic ties the cops throw to the ground. A young man mechanically sticks flyers to the doomed barricades and lets out a repetitive, anguished keening.

Just hours before the site is raided by police I meet Raymond, a fifty-seven-year-old IT professional and martial artist. “I feel ashamed,” he says, sadness creasing the lines of his face with a shaky timbre to his voice. “It was my responsibility to give them a free and healthy society. I failed to give them something better, and now they are doing it for me.” After the raid, Raymond’s last words to me are somewhat comforting: “These young people have learned a lesson about freedom and democracy. If the police reclaim the street, it doesn’t matter. [The students] will come back the next day, the next week.”

In an article in the New York Times, Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley report that Hong Kong’s leaders make a daily run to the tony Bauhinia Villa Resort in nearby Shenzhen to receive supervision and direction on responding to Occupy from their Chinese Communist Party (CCP) functionaries. While the relative splendor of their accommodations is not surprising, the details of white vans, tennis courts, and swimming pools reinforce the image of Hong Kong’s leadership being completely dependent on Beijing. The CCP’s main dicta—no concessions and no bloodshed—are seemingly contradictory goals, particularly as protesters grow more hardened by the occupation. “We will give you nothing,” the government tells the Occupiers, “and you will do nothing about it.”

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Toward midnight on the 14th, Lung Wo Road, a harborside drag by the Government offices, is reoccupied in great numbers. The police are forced to retreat after failing to regain control of the area. They do not appreciate this embarrassment and when they return a few hours later they are no longer fucking around. The police make forty-five arrests and their batons, fists, and feet fly liberally. There are dozens of pictures and videos online: police ripping off a man’s goggles to pepper-spray his eyes; teenage girls tackled to the ground. Worst, though, is the video of a handcuffed man being carried to a dark corner of Tamar Park, across from the Executive Offices, where he is then punched and kicked for several minutes. As the video spreads, Hong Kong is aghast that any of its police could behave in such a way.

Ken Tsang, a volunteer social worker and Civic Party member is identified as the man in the video. Ironically, unlike other Hong Kong people, Tsang’s élite position on the Chief Executive Nominating Committee gives him the power to vote. In a South China Morning Post article on low morale and fatigue among the police, Joe Chan, a member of the Junior Police Officers’ Association, is quoted saying, “We start to be unable to distinguish right and wrong.” Police contend that the protesters are acting illegally by pitching tents in the middle of the highway and should have been forced off the street immediately. The politicians are simply not letting Hong Kong’s reputedly adept cops do their jobs. Like petulant children they are further irritated when their steel barricades are taken and used against them. For their part, Occupy leaders have promised to turn themselves in to police at the event’s conclusion, whenever that might be.

Wednesday night by 9 p.m., perhaps a thousand fill the street in front of Wan Chai Police Headquarters. Blown up photographs of Ken Tsang’s bruised and scratched body are stuck on placards. Netizens have combed through the footage and found clearer pictures of the officers responsible. Protesters distribute old-fashioned wanted posters identifying the cops in the video.

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A young married couple, Brian and Foie, are sitting on a tarp with a few others making origami umbrellas in Causeway Bay. Foie likes this site better than Mong Kok (too much profanity) or Admiralty (too many people). They are unimpressed with CY Leung’s press conference that afternoon, in which he announced upcoming talks with members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS). “So much bullshit. It made me sick,” says Brian, a computer programmer who watched on the internet from work. “He’s in between. He doesn’t want to upset the people, but he has no power to override the Basic Law.” Brian is pessimistic about the present situation, but hopes for long-term change.

The leaders in Admiralty seem to agree with Brian’s assessment. In their speeches that night, little time is devoted to the talks—perhaps they will wait for them to actually begin, if they ever do. More words are spent on the increasing antagonism towards the police. Joshua Wong, older than his eighteen years, asks the crowd, “Should we see the police as a tool to vent our anger? This is a question each of us here should think about.”

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The Basic Law is essentially Hong Kong’s constitution. It was written in cooperation with authorities in Beijing following the Sino-British Joint Declaration leading up to the British handover of the city to the Chinese in 1997. It provides the legal basis for Hong Kong’s unique “one country, two systems” relationship with the rest of China and is open to seemingly endless interpretation. One of the main areas of contention, election of the Chief Executive, is dealt with in Article 45: “The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.” It continues, “The method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress.”

The students want not only an open election, but an open nomination process. They do not feel a committee of 1,200 elites is “broadly representative,” a fact that should be reflected “in light of the actual situation.” However, with the “ultimate aim” of “gradual and orderly progress” the status quo is easily sustained. According to the initial agreement, Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region of China, is promised fifty years of rights and privileges not seen anywhere on the Mainland: a free press, free speech, and an independent judiciary. Hong Kong people have come to value their rights and are not eager to give them up or have them encroached upon.

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For the third time this week, the police launch a dawn raid to clear barricades, this time in Mong Kok. Within an hour, the most vivacious of the three sites is shrunk to the size of its cohort in Causeway Bay. At the time, there is surprisingly little resistance, but numbers swell throughout the morning and into the afternoon.

At 7 p.m., when I arrive, Anti-Occupy leaflets fall from the windows of the twenty-plus story apartment buildings looming over Nathan Road. Around twenty percent of the original protest site remains and the area is packed to overflowing; the surrounding sidewalk is like the front row of a hard-rock show. The sole mission of the police seems to be to keep a slow stream of public buses moving down one open lane of Nathan Road. The mere whisper of a protester or onlooker impeding that goal results in arrest and a scrum of photographers in the street bringing the crawling buses to a halt. Some passengers on the double-decker buses wave and many take pictures while the crowd cheers. The cops are wearing full helmets and carrying riot shields, many with an I-didn’t-sign-up-for-this-shit look peering through their plastic facemasks. The crowd—people of every age, sex, and description—is growing larger by the minute and every corner of the intersection of Argyle Street and Nathan Road is jammed; it is quite impossible to keep to the sidewalk. When a white policeman walks by—one of the remaining British-holdovers—the crowd enthusiastically chants, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” in English, dozens of middle fingers raised to the sky. “Black Cops! Black Cops!” follows in Chinese. As CY Leung said, Mong Kok “is not exactly the most genteel” part of the city.

It is exceedingly difficult to get any idea of the bigger picture stuck within this mass, but someone is pushed, someone trips, something happens, and the red flags and umbrellas are raised. When I see the first shaving cream-like glob of pepper spray land on a nearby protester I back up quickly but am unable to get far through the throng of terrified people, many hundreds of whom are clearly curious pedestrians out on a Friday night. An old man next to me is flushing a boy’s face with water from one of the five bottles he has stashed about his person. Despite the mayhem, supplies are being passed overhead: gloves, umbrellas, masks, and now hard hats. The police are not being picky about the destination of their batons and many head injuries will come tonight.

The initial fracas settles, but will continue in fits and starts until 3 a.m. Marco, a “working man,” is here to protect the students and is pepper-sprayed for his troubles; his face is red and his eyes run with tears even more than half an hour afterward. “We didn’t push them at all,” he tells me about the beginning. “They pushed us and we fell down and they sprayed us on the ground.” He questions the timing of the police operation, a concern that is repeated many times over the next days: the police were simply asking for trouble to clear this site at the beginning of a weekend. Some think they wanted the violence that ensued. Chris, a twenty-five-year-old translator, tells me he’d much rather be home watching a movie, but the police have forced his hand. His manner of speaking reminds me of any young, brash, big-city American. He had some work translating for the major news organizations the previous week, but that has since dried up, “They [CNN, etc.] left, so now [the police] can kick our ass.”

After a Saturday of more violence and a Sunday of relative calm, Monday sees the release of stunningly audacious CY Leung quotes reported from a conversation with international press in his plush Executive quarters. He believes one-man one-vote would give the city’s relatively poor disproportionate power to their limited influence. “If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation,” Leung says, “then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month, then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies.” Basically, if the “poor” can vote, he and his cronies lose. He has since tried to express regret about those comments. I have never been able to muster the enmity many feel for the man, but my previous grudging respect evaporates at this brazen display. Leung always seemed like he was trying at least; he was doing his best for Hong Kong people in the face of the implacable force of China. Now he seems like just another rapacious Party functionary, looking out for himself and his real constituents.

I see other figures that put the percentage of Hong Kong people who make less than $1,800 a month (around HKD 14,000) at closer to seventy-five percent. A new group of protesters composed of housewives, domestic servants, and transportation workers wearing placards around their necks listing their occupation and salary, marches through Admiralty. Some familiar photos I saw earlier in the week displayed in Causeway Bay of Hong Kong’s caged people, unable to live in anything but a human pet store, take on a new, even grimmer, significance.

Occupy has expanded to reach so many facets of Hong Kong life. This is no longer about just a vote—though the Occupiers think, perhaps naively, that a vote would allow them to address these other, largely economic, concerns. Hong Kong is close to the top of the chart in income-inequality in the developed world (not far from the US); The city is run by billionaire tycoons thriving on favors and monopolies. Hong Kong people have long known this, but all of a sudden, they’re talking about it. Everything they buy, every time they pay the rent or heat the water for a shower, every time they get on the bus, the powerful of the city become richer and more entrenched. New signs and slogans addressing these damning facts are seen across every Occupy battlefield.

◆◆◆

During the talks between five members of HKFS and five counterparts in the government, I am engaged in a reading of The Tempest with a student who is not seeing the humor in the scene in which Trinculo and Caliban, snuggled under the gabardine, are mistaken for a four-legged monster by a plastered Stephano. “It’s funny, really! This was really popular in its day!” I ineffectually plead. By the accounts of Twitter and the live-blogs I quickly peruse afterwards, the students and government, while civil and even admirable to my eyes, have a similar failure in bridging the chasm that has expanded over three-plus weeks across this city. The negotiations are broadcast on the Mainland as well, but only the remarks of government representatives; the students’ voices are shut out.

Student leaders contend that it is within Hong Kong’s power to change the nominating system; the government disagrees. They bring up CY Leung’s offensive commentary about a new “second-class” of Hong Kong people; the government remains silent. In the end, the government agrees to submit a report to Beijing that reflects “new concerns,” but little else of substance is achieved. Nonetheless, I think the talk is a significant step. Many see the dialogue as one between credible equals. Despite the students’ t-shirts and jeans, the side representing Hong Kong’s future is clear. No second round is yet established.

In Causeway Bay, a large screen is still set up where everyone watched the event and the area is now given over to a series of people giving their reactions. Foie and Brian are making origami umbrellas with a group of friends; they are in the same place, doing the same thing as when I last saw them. Brian feels the same way he did when I spoke to him earlier in the week: the government is unable to change the Basic Law, will make no concessions, and will push things down the road indefinitely. The students made “many powerful statements,” he says, but the government wasn’t listening. I ask him how long people will stay in the streets. “I think it depends more on the weather and not the government. For me, one more week. The laundry and dust are higher every day.”

“We know this is illegal,” Carol, a thirty-year old speech pathologist, says of the continuing occupation. “I want it to end tomorrow, but we will keep doing everything [to get the message heard].” As for the debate she says the government simply gave pre-memorized speeches, “Why have talks if [the government] will just be video players? They ignore us and we are like babies crying for conversation.”

The next day in Mong Kok there is an incident of attempted arson on an Occupy supply station by an anti-Occupier. Torrential rain washes the street clean. Whether the Occupiers can withstand the deluge remains to be seen. 

In Hong Kong, the Last Days of Occupy

The eight-lane highway of Admiralty and its sibling tributaries were like a massive urban campground; hundreds of igloo-style tents in a variety of hues—blue, orange, brown, yellow—lined walkways through the protest site. In the ten weeks of Occupy Central starting September 28th, a village had grown within a city. Many tents had numbers and addresses written on cardboard placards: #2 Mount Connaught Rd. (the rechristened hill-shaped overpass), #14 Harcourt Lane. The desks of the study area came with lamps and outlets for computers, powered by solar panels or hooked up to pedal-run generators. There were several recycling stations, composting bins, and an organic garden. Flowers were planted in potholes in the street. A sign read: “Welcome to the Hong Kong Commune.”

The Lennon Wall, so named after the memorial in Prague to the slain Beatle, was transformed into a colorful rainbow snake of post-it notes with pro-democracy messages winding around the government building. Nearby the Umbrella Man, a twelve-foot tall statue holding the ubiquitous symbol of Occupy—defense against not only the sun and rain but police batons and pepper spray—cast a long shadow. On that frantic last night of December 10th, my last of many walks through the site, the thousands of post-its were taken down, and safely stored away. A new sign took their place on the barren wall. Like the Terminator’s slogan, it read: “We’ll be back.” Weeks later, on December 23rd, after the site’s clearance left the wall with just scars of adhesive residue, a young girl was arrested and spent Christmas in juvenile detention for drawing chalk flowers and umbrellas on the ghosts of democracy.

On December 11th bus and taxi company employees were sworn into their duty as bailiffs and empowered to fulfill the court injunctions filed by their employers. They cleared the site with relish, guarded over by hundreds of police tasked with ensuring their disassembling was not hindered. (It has been widely reported that 7,000 cops were on alert for the clearance. Two hundred and fifty or so arrests were made for illegal assembly at Admiralty, over 900 during all the clearances.) In preparation for the enforcement, protesters had refurbished and strengthened some barricades, just to make it a little more of a pain in the ass for the red-hatted men huffing and puffing with large bolt cutters and hammers. Another sign, above a bamboo-crafted raised middle finger told its destroyer: “Just the beginning…”

The same tactics used to kill Mong Kok a couple of weeks prior worked here as well: transportation companies filed lawsuits against the protesters for blocking the roads, injunctions and court orders followed, and, finally, monitored clearance of the site. The governments of Hong Kong and Beijing, unable or merely unwilling to come to any compromise with the protesters, turned the citizens on each other, exacerbating the already glaring divide between young and old, student and cop, shop-owner and teacher. The free market imprisoned, the roads paralyzed, Hong Kong’s much-lauded independent judiciary was used to questionable effect. Where teargas and pepper spray failed, lost profits and barristers succeeded. The idea of dialogue was dead on arrival.

On the morning of December 15th in Causeway Bay, the last protest site standing was for the first time fortunate in its afterthought status to rough and tumble Mong Kok or Admiralty, yet finally fell after holding out for so long. That afternoon, police removed stragglers camped in the Legislative Council courtyard at Admiralty. It is safe to say Occupy Central, then Hong Kong, then Kowloon, is finished. But one hopes that the Umbrella Movements will live on. The most common tactic for the Holiday season was the “Shopping Revolution” or 9wu (a play on the Mandarin word for shopping and Cantonese slang for penis). 9wu involves assembling large groups of “shoppers,” or even umbrella-carrying Christmas carolers singing Occupy-themed parodies of popular tunes, skirting a variety of laws for illegal assembly and jay-walking. They would disappear and reappear in Mong Kok, Causeway Bay, Tsim Tsa Tsui, or nearby Jordan, generally making cops’ lives difficult and engendering fear that, like Houdini’s submerged cabinet, the streets would fill again.

◆◆◆

Writing regularly about the protests that first month, I was on the street almost every day. The last month, less so: work and life calling, my enthusiasm waning and emotional and physical exhaustion increasing. I began to feel like an intruder. Without my notebook, without my purpose, why was I there? It felt voyeuristic. Wandering, watching frantic first-aid workers shuttle water and saline solution to the wounded and dehydrated, snapping photos of hardcore kids wearing yellow hard hats and homemade shields strapped to their arms to deflect police strikes. Standing among onlookers on the overpass as police plunged into a crowd on Lung Wo Road to whip teenagers with their batons; the boys’ and girls’ skin was raw and inflamed from the new, super-strength pepper spray.

I still supported the Occupiers—defending them with my dirtied yellow ribbon still tied to the strap of my bag—but I followed at more of a distance. Nothing had changed: the government had abdicated its duty to the many thousands who had made their voices heard and put the onus on police to solve a political problem. After two months of being hung out to dry by their superiors, the cops had lost their patience and were much less hesitant about using violence and intimidation to manage the crowds. As a consequence of that cowardice, this younger generation of Hong Kong people will now completely distrust and disrespect not only the government, but the police as well; maybe it’s not a bad thing, but it was a depressing and totally unnecessary outcome.

In the short-term aftermath, the majority of wrap-up articles I read seemed to take a positive spin on the events of the past months: the students are now more civically minded, less beholden to old ideas; Beijing will use caution going forward to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. And I agree the seeds have been planted for a more activist and engaged future, though am less certain Beijing is bothered either way. The students will think more critically about the version of the world the government and their parents present to them and make their own decisions.

Joshua Wong, founder of Scholarism and Time magazine person of the year nominee; Lester Shum, Alex Chow, and Yvonne Leung of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, along with dozens of other young students leaders and activists—those who spoke on the main stage of Admiralty almost every night for ten weeks, stood toe-to-toe in televised debates with government representatives—will likely be important and influential people in the political and commercial life of Hong Kong in ten or twenty years. Indeed, in many ways they already are. The lessons they have learned, the skills they have acquired, will not be shoveled so easily into Dumpsters as were the protesters’ tents and supplies. After the loveliness of walking in areas of the city unmarred by exhaust and overcrowded sidewalks, there is talk of making Hong Kong more pedestrian friendly. Recent elections in Taiwan—with the pro-Chinese ruling party suffering record losses—indicate that the Taiwanese have been watching the protests, and Beijing’s callous response. There is a real debate about income inequality in the city, and a renewed awareness of the valuable role of a strong and independent press. Yet many students involved with the protests have already been refused entry into China and Macau because of their actions; thousands of names and ID numbers of protesters have been taken to uncertain effect; Chief Executive CY Leung is tone deaf as ever; police and pro-China politicians and citizens have declared victory over the protesters with high-fives and exuberant selfies in front of wrecked barricades, on pristine then once-again-choked-with-traffic streets. The city is split.

Now it’s 2015. The #9wu hashtag shows up in my Twitter feed from time to time: pictures of protesters filling the sidewalk in Kowloon’s shopping areas, taunting the cops with a toe dipped in the street, reports of the occasional scuffles with the still active pro-police Blue-Ribbons. I’m just not sure I see the point of the same old tricks and misdirection. And no one, outside of those doing the protesting, seems to care much.

◆◆◆

A student and I were talking about the protests a few weeks ago and he referenced an atrociously presumptuous and utterly embarrassing Forbes article about why Joshua Wong would make “a great hire.” My student didn’t quite understand the reasoning. He felt that Wong’s vehement disregard of the status quo was something that a prospective employer would avoid, rather than celebrate. I replied that Wong had shown great leadership and ability and would likely be a very important figure going forward regardless of where he decided to work or go to school—as an eighteen-year-old he’s surely accomplished more than I have in twice as long on earth. It occurs to me now, thinking about my student’s reaction, that Joshua Wong represents a very different type of role-model for Asian youth than the stereotypically hard-working, family-centered, bespectacled high-achiever. Though he is all those things, the added streak of rebellion and his courage to stand up in the face of an implacable foe, create an even more formidable and inspirational example.

What enamored me of these students, what has given me genuine feeling for a city I could have taken or left before the night of September 28th, when I and thousands of others were tear-gassed and otherwise assaulted, is the hope and passion and sincerity of their movement, the purity and absolute righteousness of their cause, the art, the signage, the kindness. Sure, there were problems: unclear directions, confused missions, pissing contests between various Occupy groups; the last Scholarism/HKFS-encouraged “escalation” carried out at Admiralty resulted in many needless injuries and likely signaled the death knell for the site; after ten weeks of being stonewalled, they ran out of ideas. But watching my own country, watching the world fall to pieces in a swirl of rapes and chokeholds and burning cities and beheadings and rectal feedings, I could take a stroll through Admiralty and have faith in a better future when these young people, hewn by their experience of Occupy, were running the show. Maybe Joshua or Alex or Yvonne will grow old and jaded and become just another corporate shill, another politician with promise and droning disappointment in equal measure. Another empty performer. I hope not.

◆◆◆

There is a gang of street magicians at the quasi-upscale British chain coffee and sandwich bar, Pret, in Causeway Bay. Mozzarella, tomato, and pesto on ciabatta disappear and reappear. The foam on a cappuccino levitates like a cumulus cloud before settling. The street magicians wear black or shades of grey and their clothes have a multitude of extraneous zippers. The men are well built, biceps tight in t-shirts, slim waists in beltless trousers; the two women may be street magicians or merely street-magic groupies or relatives; they perform no tricks, just nod with a tired appreciation while looking at their phones. The men smile at each other’s antics. Then

poof.

They’re gone. 

Missing Impossible: Hong Kong, China, and the Abducted Booksellers

(13 Months Later)

Middle-aged men with stern faces stand outside their shops and watch the procession, smoke cigarettes and grumble. A few are curious, interested in the reason for yet another protest march in Hong Kong – is it Falun Gong people again? Or those damned Umbrella students? They hold phones up to their faces to record the passersby.

Young cops on the pavement are unconcerned, don’t even watch, and instead wile away the time button-mashing at League of Legends. A homeless guy picks through the trash for empty bottles. Aside from the footsteps, this stretch of marchers routed onto this quiet street, is silent.

Earlier, when the march was on Des Voeux Road in Central, walking past Hermes and Lane Crawford and other high-end shops so fancy I don’t even recognize their names, there was greater energy. Estimates place the crowd in a range between 3500 and 7000 people. It is an all-ages affair.

I overhear an Australian couple ask a policeman minding the crowd what the story is. He tells them a blatant lie and they move on nodding their heads at the great moment of cultural connection. I debate for a moment calling after them, “Actually they’re protesting the abduction of five Hongkongers by Chinese secret police,” but think better of it. Other Sunday afternoon shoppers and wandering tourists seem equally oblivious, take a few snapshots and move on.

The signs the marchers hold are pre-printed, indicating pre-planning. There are trade groups, professional organizations and the like: Financiers and Progressive Lawyers Group support Hong Kong Freedom. The umbrella imagery is present, along with the color yellow, which we all wore for so many months back then. “Umbrella Blossom” is a new turn-of-phrase. “USA – UK please help Hong Kong!”

For some reason there is a petition on the White House website that doesn’t ask for anything, just recounts the story of the abductions in poor English. International Umbrella media darling Joshua Wong delivered a letter to the British Consulate. Don’t hold your breath.

It’s not as if the booksellers were putting out particularly good work – the books were popular with mainland tourists after all, not known as arbiters of good taste. Mighty Current, the publishing imprint of the store, specialized in saucy tales of high-ranking Communist Party members, supermarket check-out aisle stuff, not high-brow political critique. Nonetheless, many see this is a direct attack on the idea of Hong Kong.

More than just free speech, it is the prospect of Hong Kong people being under the sway of Chinese law, being swept away in the middle of the night, that has frightened so many. Even CY Leung, Hong Kong’s chief executive and goat of Occupy, has implored the Chinese government for some reasonable explanation of what has happened, an explanation that has yet to come. “It would be unacceptable if mainland law enforcement agents enforce laws in Hong Kong because this violates the Basic Law,” he said.

It’s 2016 now and that means to me that the Umbrella Revolution happened two years ago. The one-year anniversary of the day we were all tear gassed by fierce-eyed baton-wielding riot police was the last time I went to Admiralty – there’s really no reason to go there unless you work for the government.

All this was so long ago I barely even remember, much like the news that flitted past a blue screen I held in front of my face, news of a Hong Kong man, a bookselling man, who had disappeared in Pattaya, Thailand in November. I found this news unremarkable – I have been to Pattaya, a long time ago:  I was with my father and we went to see the Sylvester Stallone movie in which he is a truck-driver and an arm-wrestler (as if they are distinct professions) and his young son is heavily involved somehow, so it was touching for us, my father and me.

I remember playing Connect-4 with bargirls (prostitutes) for free Cokes at a beachside bamboo bar – I was devastating these poor girls for several games until the Madam had enough of the slow soft drain on her coffers and proceeded to wallop me. It’s a story I, or my father, often tell.

Now I imagine as not a ten-year old boy I might get up to a few other things than Sly Stallone flicks and Connect-4 in Pattaya, but who can say really, and who can say what the Hong Kong bookseller was up to there and why exactly he disappeared. The point is there is a lot of trouble one could find oneself in in Pattaya without Chinese paramilitary forces abducting one in the dead of the night. Members of the HK parliament seem to share my suspicions.  

But then the number of disappearing booksellers kept increasing – it’s like a Hardy Boys story – and it became difficult to put it all down to high jinx.

I remember watching Agnes Chow on the makeshift stage at the central protest site in Admiralty, where she stood with other members of the student group Scholarism and the protest leaders of Occupy Central. She was the only girl in the mix of teenage boys and men. She was also the one who stepped away from the protests after a time, citing exhaustion and stress, which seemed to me an eminently reasonable, even right, reaction for a 17-year-old student engaged in a 24-hour-a-day occupation.

Remembering this, I clicked the link of her YouTube speech about the abductions. What I heard was, “In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of the mainland China. However, the circumstances have changed… Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore, it is named as Hong Kong only.” I was momentarily jarred from my complacency.

For his part, Joshua Wong, when sharing the video on his Facebook page, wrote, “Even I am also afraid of my personal safety after this incident happened, I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear because it is an important core value that we should uphold.”

I emailed Mr. Wong to see if I could interview him to write something about this and he responded, much to my surprise, but when the time finally came to call, I had neglected to check out the speaker phone in my office and it didn’t work and I was greeted with repeated cries of “Yes? Yes? Yes?” in Chinese till he finally hung up. When I called back, having sorted the phone issues, he didn’t respond, nor to my later emails, perhaps in semi-understandable fear that it was an abduction plot by the ginger-bearded man with the darting eyes.

◆◆◆

The march winds from Admiralty to Central, to Sheung Wan to Sai Ying Pun and eventually to the front of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The march is orderly and well-mannered, quiet even, aside from the few pockets where one person or another shouts in Chinese into a loudspeaker: “No political abductions! Let them go!” I am told.

But the space in front of the LOCPGHKSAR is limited and I wonder about the planning of the Hong Kong police as there are many people and I wonder where they will all go. The police are keeping a tight rein on matters, the sky starts to spit cold rain, and we are close to a subway station. They will go home it turns out. I see the police planning was just right.

A man with long thin grey hair and a long goatee wears a black t-shirt that says “Fuck the Government” in English and Chinese. He walks past the gated Chinese building, shakes a fist, and disappears back underground.

Notes

(September – December 2014)

It is September 28th, 2014, the popular beginning of the Umbrella Revolution, and students prepare for the pepper spray by wrapping their faces in plastic film, donning ponchos. In moments we will push into the highway and occasion the subsequent creation of Admiralty, the epicenter for the next months.

As the streets fill there are explosions of gas and swinging batons. The police attack and retreat, dumbstruck by our actions.

Night has fallen. Cordoned off into a narrow passage across from the Admiralty MTR station, gas comes out of the ground like horror movie dry ice. Gas canisters fill the sky like fireworks. Rushing off and around. Fear of being trampled. People ducked into an alley. The troops rushing on in black helmets, khaki jumpsuits, transparent body shields.

A stand-off on a meaningless street on a meaningless plot of ground. Black sign: We’re gonna gas you. Gas. Run. Later the police abandon the same street. This is the first night of a pattern that will play out for months. Heading home, I find the protests have spread to Causeway Bay (and Mong Kok).

Rumors are that Beijing has instructed the Hong Kong decision-makers to wait it out. We wait. A weird young white guy wearing Jams, a sleeveless t-shirt, and bum bag (fanny pack) struts back and forth along the road like a gunslinger on the streets of Deadwood.

On Day 4, Falun Gong are marching with full band and multiple garish banners illuminating the manifold atrocities perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party — they are never one to miss a moment. The cops are managing the parade and I imagine how overworked and tired they must be — a police captain committed suicide last night — and still they are helping out the Falun Gong with their march. One cop looked at me and his eyes went to the yellow ribbon (a sign of solidarity for the movement) pinned to my chest and it seemed like he thought I was going to confront him somehow but I smiled and he smiled back and it was all okay.

In Causeway Bay the next day, the spirit is festive and friendly, unafraid of teargas or pepper spray. That is until the triads (mafia instigators supposedly in the pay of pro-Chinese groups) attack.

…pushing kids to the ground, slapping phones out of hands…I try to get the cops…say ‘We can’t get involved’…get in their car and leave…please, I’m 27 years old and I don’t know what to do…I’ve never done this (protest) before…please let everyone know what is happening…guy runs at the barricade like Juggernaut…they are paying them… the police helped this…it’s totally wrong…they are beating the students…police just fucking stand there…hired goons…disgraceful…thugs come down here to destroy property and molest girls…I saw gangsters being handed money I swear to you… I didn’t see how much…cops are helping them…you may not realize, but to Hong Kong people it’s obvious they’re triad…I wouldn’t write that; they’ll cut your arms off, seriously…

A guy with poofy blue hair, a John Waters mustache, and an alligator tooth hanging from a chain around his neck smokes Menthol 100s and coolly watches the fracas. The sign outside Government Headquarters has been given an addendum, “and Triad HQ.”

“All roads must be cleared by Monday,” announces the Chief Executive. Given the amount of people and supplies throughout the city, this would be an almost impossible task even without resistance. And even if they do succeed in clearing the roads and tearing down the largest banners, the myriad cuts to this city’s psyche will leave scars that will remain for a long time to come. Along with the tens of thousands of yellow ribbons tied to seemingly every fence and street sign to be dirtied and faded by rain, sun, and smog.

A bag filled with feces and insects is thrown at protestors in Mong Kok. 屎蜢 (shit-cricket) is an elaborate prank common, I am told, with gangsters in the seventies. The sound of the words in Cantonese is similar to the Mandarin word for “death.” Mong Kok is the most dangerous of the three protests sits, most open to triad (and other) invasion.

While teaching The Great Gatsby one afternoon, I don’t need to look far for an old-money new-money corollary in Hong Kong society. Discussing when Jay and Nick first meet, Jay’s ridiculous boasts bringing the image to Nick of “a turbaned ‘character’ leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne,” my Hong Kong-born students make a quick leap to Givenchy bags, Prada shoes, and the streets of TST. (Tsim Sha Tsui is a shopping and entertainment district popular with tourists.) Many fear if the trend continues Hong Kong’s East Egg will become the Valley of Ashes, or just another Chinese city.

A white guy in business attire walks quickly by the crowd carrying a SOGO (department store) shopping bag. He shakes his head and mutters, “Fucking…” I don’t catch the rest. SOGO closes early.

A guy in a V-neck t-shirt, aviator sunglasses and Capri pants sidles up to me, asks, “Do you read Chinese?” When I say no, he replies, “Such a shame, you should see all these wonderful signs.” His face carries a wistful smile. “One says, ‘To not know democracy is no sin, to know it and turn a blind eye is despicable.’ That’s what these people are doing,” he says, referring to the anti-Occupy crowd. “They’ll trade everything for a free lunch.”

The police say they will remove the remaining barricades from Queensway and Yee Woo Street. Following the afternoon’s Blue-Ribbon ruckus, the Occupier’s take the threat seriously and spend the remainder of Monday afternoon, evening, and night, rebuilding with great vigor and enhanced technique. A man plays Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” through tinny portable speakers and the scene is like an 80’s film montage, the plucky young Occupiers sawing wood, nailing boards, and fashioning long stalks of bamboo to the barricades. The smell of epoxy fills the air. On Tuesday afternoon, it will take the police less than an hour to cut through the renewed barricades, bringing sledgehammer, chainsaw, and a backhoe to bear.

Causeway Bay is raided by the police. Afterwards, a woman with a black painter’s cap decorated with silver studs, her voice muffled through a facemask tells me, “The policeman when he leave he said to me, ‘Go now. We can’t control the gangsters,’” implying other unwelcome visitors are likely to follow.

An old man wearing a Chinese-flag t-shirt clips yellow ribbons off the road posts; another pushes a camera into a reporter’s chin. Much indignation results from the latter and the perpetrator is comically chased down the street by a dozen other photographers, buzzing like mosquitoes and snapping pictures in his face. Three men are arrested on weapons charges. In this country, that means knives.

A guy in Mong Kok trying to get across the street at the jammed crosswalk yells at a cop and a police-liaison-type dude comes over to settle him down. A middle-aged Blue-Ribbon lady wears a t-shirt that says: “Let’s Go Picnic!” but doesn’t look like she would enjoy it very much. In the meantime, Admiralty has become its own municipality, a village in the middle of a city.

A Blue-Ribbon (anti-Occupy) Facebook group posts pictures of a cop with grievously damaged face, complains that the media is not covering his injury with the same vehemence they do injured protestors. It is quickly revealed they are stills from a Hong Kong TV movie about zombie police.

In Causeway Bay, I sit and watch Foie and Brian make origami umbrellas for a while; it is a cool night and pleasant on the street. Someone hands me an orange and some water. Ten feet away from the origami circle, an old guy with scraggly grey hair and a long beard walks up and pees in the grate; after he is chased off, Foie tells me it’s the second time tonight; another girl says, “He’s lonely.”

A boozy old guy in Jams, flip-flops, and a hard hat straddles the adjacent barricade, holds court. Happy Birthday is sung to men yelling at those behind the barricade (the standard tactic to deal with interlopers). Mong Kok grows increasingly heated.

Nearly everyone towards the front lines has a hard hat, something: mats, water bottles, books, shin guards, taped around their arms. A boy wears a crude gauntlet on one arm emblazoned with a teddy bear. The word is the police are nearly out of pepper spray, so the plastic wrap and umbrellas of the first week have given way to more substantial defense (and attack). A kid sees me relatively naked and seems concerned: “No helmet? No mask?” Another, later: “You have enough protection?” Even in the unoccupied areas, Nathan road is closed; a parking lot for the dozens of police vans and repurposed tour busses. Protestors closest to the police hold reflective foil up to the cops’ faces — if they needed reminding of their origins — safer than mirrors. A girl bashes her boyfriend’s helmeted head, seemingly to test the efficacy of the defense, but also appearing to enjoy it. An old lady pulls on a facemask; cool kids in all-black skinny jeans and t-shirts lounge against a barricade and smoke.

Yan, a 27-year-old woman in advertising, is sitting on the street back from the front line with two friends. She tells me she and her friends are “not fighters,” but are here to “support the protestors and occupy the space.” She too wonders why the police decided to clear Mong Kok on a Friday night and believes they are “trying to make it violent.” Yan seems prescient as when near midnight police don their previously stowed helmets and riot shields, leading to frantic flash bulbs and screams, in what seems to me as purely pointless instigation.

October 26th2014 — Four weeks ago today I was running around Admiralty like a fucking manic, dodging teargas canisters rocketing through the air. Today it is a city.

The major Occupy portion of the Umbrella Movement ended on December 11th 2014. TBC… 

The Guernica pieces were published between October and December 2014 on their website. Occupy Tour Guide was in Asian Review of Books’ “Letters from Hong Kong” I don’t remember when exactly, but probably around the same time. The HKFP piece was in January 2016. Thanks to all editors and all involved. Thanks especially to Andrew Rose for sticking with me through all the Guernica stuff, and to all those Hong Kong people who patiently and kindly offered their opinions or translated something for the gweilo.

Erik Wennermark’s Falun Gong inspired novella “The True Story of Yu Fen” and short story collection “Evil Men” are available in ebook format. His nonfiction on topics as varied as the politics of Hong Kong independence, the death rattle of an Indian guru, and murderous Hmong, is likewise dispersed on the web and beyond. He lived in Hong Kong from 2014-2016, and then, curious as to the view from the other side, moved to Dalian, a port city in northeastern China. He is currently based in Japan.