A Stroll Through the Hong Kong Protests
I landed at HKG just a few hours ago. As I was walking from Hong Kong Station to the restaurant a fellow F2B blogger John Carter over at Top Travel Tips recommended to me, I saw the barricades so I knew the protest was nearby. The restaurant was Mott32 located a block from Central Station on Hong Kong Island.
I wasn’t intended to check out the protest, but everything seemed civil so I decided to check it out after dinner.
Admiralty
I walked through tonight, which was a Sunday night, so everything was very peaceful and quiet, despite at least a thousand people near Admiralty and another few hundred on Connaught Road. I started from near Central Station and walked towards Admiralty.
There were plenty of water stations and water bottles in case of another use of tear gas.
Umbrellas were also used against the tear gas and quickly became a symbol for the #occupycentral movement. Here is a great article about umbrellas as political symbols: Hong Kong Protest Umbrellas Have Deep Political History
You can see the Police Headquarters at Admiralty in the below two pictures. It seems most of the police force is concentrated on protecting the building rather than to control the crowd on the elevated roadway and the main road.
The huge gathering is at Admiralty. The crowd here is very young, who are mostly students. I shockingly have seen people give out Mcdonald’s sandwiches to feed the protesters. Many young protestors (high school, college students) are present here at Admiralty and their main food source is Mcdonald’s from what I can see.
Below you see two protesters going around to the different areas to collect trash. How organized and how clean this place is boggles my mind. It is easily cleaner here at Admiralty than New York City Chinatown or all of Paris any day of the week.
Below are some pictures of “Lennon Wall Hong Kong.” Many people have left messages on this wall with post its and there is a small nook that they are giving out pens and post its for people to post messages. Here are some pictures of those post-its. There is also a live facebook stream as well (並肩上：佔中打氣機 Stand By You: ‘Add Oil’ Machine’ for OCLP
並肩上：佔中打氣機 Stand By You: ‘Add Oil’ Machine’ for OCLP)
Mongkok
The scene was a bit more tense with a much more present police force here. They are in groups of 10-20 all around the main intersection here at Mong Kok. The crowd here is much older than the scene at Admiralty.
The crowd here have sent up large areas of cover from rain and sun.
