The latest works by VA Wong Sir and Ah To say so much about the situation in Hong Kong, and "the Far East"

Remember VA Wong Sir and Ah To?  The two talented political cartoonists may have left Hong Kong but they are keeping their eye on what's happening in the city they love and continuing producing works that are say so much about the situation in this part of the world.  And in recent days, both of them have produced illustrations that I think are very much worth sharing with others.  

 

So without further ado, I present to you this from VA Wong Sir (who now is on Twitter as well as Facebook as well as Patreon) which points out that Hong Kong is not (yet) "back to normal" like the Hong Kong government (including the Hong Kong Tourism Board) would like you to believe due to existing pandemic regulations and restrictions (never mind the national security law):

 

And this from Ah To (who has a Twitter account but appears to be more active on Instagram), produced to "celebrate" the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st of this year, which was inspired by -- and updates -- Tse Tsan-tai's "The Situation in the Far East" of July 1898: 

N.B. To appreciate the details of the illustrations, particularly Ah To's, click on the images to view enlarge versions of them!

Protesting while watching football and cheering for the Hong Kong national team

Two national anthems were played before the association 

football match at Hong Kong Stadium tonight

 The Hong Kong national football team 

scored its first goal in the first half

They managed to score a goal too in the second half! :)

Before anything else: here's confirming that, contrary to my truly pessimistic expectations, the police siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is still ongoing.  This is not to say though that the news coming out of there has been all that great.  To the contrary, in fact, as reports, video footage and images galore have attested to terrible things having occured in the past 72 hours or so in the area, including the police reneging on their promises to let people leave unharmed by firing tear gas and rubber bullets as well as effecting arrests in a thoroughly brutal fashion.

So it might seem callous of me to have gone and attended the football match at Hong Kong Stadium this evening between Hong Kong and Cambodia -- except that this World Cup Qualifier was listed on the Hong Kong protest schedule and was arguably one of a number of events these past few days that many people took part in with the hope of causing at least some riot police to be diverted to them, and away from the besieged university.

Yesterday (and especially last night), thousands of people went to central Kowloon to try to create diversions for and also to rescue people trapped at PolyU.  At lunchtime today as well as yesterday, office workers and others protested in Central -- but while it's true enough that protesters were quickly forced off a street they had occupied onto neighboring sidewalks today, their actions resulted in a good number of riot police spending some time in Central rather than, as might have been the case, on the other side of Victoria Harbour.    

Returning to the subject of tonight's football match: here's confirming that I did indeed encounter riot police on duty on the way to and into its venue.  Also, here's confirmation of there being lots of pro-democracy supporters as well as football fans in the crowd came by way of the booing of the Chinese national anthem (which, officially, also is Hong Kong's but really isn't accepted as being so) when it was played before kick off,  the belting out of Glory to Hong Kong more than once this evening, and protest chants reverberating through the stadium along with more football match specific ones.  And even with the latter, shouts of "We are Hong Kong" and "Fight for Hong Kong" are impossible to think of as being non-political in current circumstances. 

At the same time though, I have to admit to having genuinely enjoyed watching the football and being at the game; this not least since Hong Kong ended up notching its first World Cup Qualifying Match victory in five attempts by scoring two goals while not letting in any from Cambodia.  A week after I had broken down and wept upon learning what was happening at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a day after I had gotten so upset about what was happening at PolyU that -- strange but true -- I actually felt the top of my head heat up, it was nice to be able to cheer on Hong Kong, and see at least its football team triumph after having endured a number of losses over the past few months.