One afternoon in Yau Ma Tei and Mongkok

A crazy amount of police on one street corner yesterday

There also were a large number of riot police on the streets

of Hong Kong yesterday afternoon

Police vans and officers in riot gear have become

an all too familiar sight in Hong Kong these days :(

While passing through Causeway Bay on a bus yesterday afternoon, I caught sight of such a large number of police vans and also some police officers in riot gear that I felt compelled to text a friend to ask her if she knew what was going on.  She answered that she didn't know of any protests in that area, and reported that parts of Kowloon -- including that which I was on my way to -- also were filled with cops.  

And so it proved, with my spotting a line of police vans parked in the middle of Nathan Road soon after I got off the bus at Yau Ma Tei.  With a few minutes to spare before I was due to meet up with a friend, I popped into a pharmacy to look for some pharmaceutical items I was thinking of buying.  Upon walking out, I found myself passing by not only a group of police officers but a couple of actually pretty innocent looking young adults they had decided to stop and presumably check to see what they were doing in the area.

At times like this, I really do feel that being young has become a crime in Hong Kong, since the police are among those sections of Hong Kong society who seem to think that protestors are primarily young in age.  And in the case of these two individuals who were held by the police before being let go, it really was sad how their age alone appeared to give the police grounds for suspecting them of committing a crime (or just plain planning to protest); this especially since they weren't attired in the black clothing that also has become a marker of a protestor in the eyes of those who don't seem to really know what protestors look like and actually are (i.e., quite a range). 

After I did meet with my friend, we went for a stroll up to Mongkok (and then back again).  Interestingly, despite her having lived all her life in Hong Kong, it was I who was more familiar with these sections of the Big Lychee; something I attributed to being a fan of Hong Kong cinema (whose products include films with titles like One Nite in Mongkok and Mongkok Story) and the Broadway Cinematheque.  

Nonetheless, Mongkok and Yau Ma Tei yesterday was not how I usually find it -- in that it was seriously crawling with police, particularly on Nathan Road but also on a number of other streets, including the section of Argyle Street near Langham Place.  Looking at them, how they dressed and how they acted, one would be moved to conclude that some argy-bargy was taking place.  And yet, the reality was that the vast majority of people in the area besides them that afternoon were there to peacefully walk about, shop and window-shop -- as is the wont of many Hong Kongers on a Sunday afternoon.

To be sure, a protest against the draconian security legislation that China's imposing on Hong Kong had indeed been planned.  Somewhat unusually, it was meant to be a silent one and involve protestors walking on the side of roads rather than the road itself.  But even while that did generally seem to be the case, I did hear a few chants of such as "five demands, not one less" (which my friend actually suspected was by people who weren't actual protest participants but decided to shout out encouragement to those who did!).  And when the police acted in ways that made people unhappy, there were some pretty vocal reactions too.

More than once, the riot police would start running after people -- for no real reason that those of us close to the action could actually see.  They also took to blocking off sections of roads and sidewalks, dragging people out of shops, arresting people, pepper spraying people (including journalists) and raising the blue flag (to indicate that an illegal assembly was in progress) a number of times.  And, of course, they also went about arresting people -- more than 50, in fact, and, I suspect, mistakenly in a good number of cases (including that of a father whose young son appeared pretty traumatized by it all).

When such actions ensued, you could feel the anger -- far more than fear, actually -- in the crowd.  And it seemed that some of the most upset people out there yesterday were people who hadn't specifically gone to the area to protest but were enraged upon having their paths blocked by the police (for no real reason that anyone who wasn't in uniform could see), and otherwise saw their rights and freedoms being tampered with.  

For the record: the two most vocal people I witnessed were an old woman and even more elderly man who repeatedly called out "hak keng (black/crooked cops)" and "dieu leh loh moh (f--k your mother!)" at the police.  And while I don't usually advocate the shouting of obscenities, I must say that I definitely could understand their frustration -- not just at the police, per se, but what they have come to represent: enablers of the super unpopular Hong Kong government and its Beijing overlords (who seem to be out to enrage other governments right, left and center!).