We had inadvertently chosen an ‘interesting’ time to visit Hong Kong at the beginning of our south-east Asian holiday, autumn 2019. Most of our bookings had been made during the late autumn of the year before, while all was peaceful...
By the time we arrived, the democracy protests had been running for over 6 months, with considerable disruption caused to some localised parts of the territory, including mainland Chinese-owned businesses, some facilities such as the Mass Transit Railway (MTR, which was considered to have taken the side of PRC-backed law enforcement during early clashes with demonstrators) and initially the Airport Express shuttle in to Central district.
Hong Kong is watching you: surveillance was a real issue for local democracy supporters.
Fortunately a range of internet and app-based resources were available to alert travellers to where the day’s disruption was occurring at any time, plus our hotel staff were very helpful with up-to-the-minute advice (thank you Bonham 99!), and we were mostly able to avoid problems. We were aided by knowing the territory well, by not wanting to visit the tourist clichés, and by being flexible about which attractions we visited.
We avoided the areas where protestors were blocking roads, smashing windows and burning tyres nightly, so I don’t have any photojournalistic images of that, but I did illustrate some of the peripheral and more subtle signs of conflict. As ever in such places and at such times, these were hard to spot until one developed an understanding of the memes, branding and slogans of the sides involved. I’d say we saw as many manifestations of support for democracy as for the Chinese government, and many posters for one side or the other had been ripped from the wall.
Cheung Chau, outside the island school.
Democracy protest posters.
Stanley village, supporting the PRC.
Sheung Wan.
Multi-purpose graffiti and stickers, including pro-democracy.
A ‘gwailo’ or ‘white ghost’ is a westerner…
Pro-China sticker, Hollywood Rd.
I also noticed some evidence of other disputes in the city - most notably against the sharks fin industry, the commercial centre for which was based close to where we were staying in Sheung Wan on HK island, Graffiti could be seen protesting against this all over the territory.
Sharks fin sales, Sheung Wan.
Uncompromising: Hollywood Rd.
Overlooking the old police HQ, off Hollywood Rd.