The Democracy March 2009

It looked terrifying for a while.

The morning's Pro-Beijing Anti-Democracy March was about 4000 strong - including those who'd undoubtedly done it at least twice, judging how they arrived at Southorn Park and then snuck out the side, en masse, and walked back down side streets in the direction the march had come.

Thought it would be easy for our side to ace that number.

The March was due to start at 3.00pm at Victoria Park, however we no longer go down there. In the past, with about 100,000 folk ahead of us, it usually took about four to five hours to get out and that gets really annoying, so for the last few years we've waited until the March reaches Wan Chai and simply join in.


Then at 3.20 about 4000 folk marched under our window ...

... which we thought was quite remarkable time because Victoria Park is quite a distance away ...

Can someone explain
who they are?

... and then it stopped. That was it! Yup, it looked like it was over. I couldn't believe it and felt really quite sick.


We'd invited Aussie Christine over from Lantau to march with us and it seemed so much like a wasted journey. Only 4000 folk! Surely not!

But the streets were still all cut off and there were zillions of police, journalists and spectators lining the road ...... so it was all most odd.

After more than an hour of ringing folk we knew had gone to the park and not being able to get them - not a single person - and hanging out the windows looking down towards Causeway Bay, we'd talked ourselves into thinking that something had happened - like maybe an accident - and all the rest of the march was dead and/or panicking somewhere back at the start ...

... but then, just before 5.00pm, in the distance and coming towards us ...

4.55pm

... Yayyy! Mucho cheering!

We hung out the window and filmed for a while ...

5.15pm

... and the numbers kept coming ...

5.45 pm

... and coming ...

6.00pm

Just after six, The Redoubtable Walkers rang to say they were passing beneath us so we went down and added ourselves to the count ...

And instantly scored a banana with Donald Tsang's face on it:



A good march. Lots and lots of causes, lots and lots of discontent:

Loved this homemade banner.
Can someone tell me what it's about?

Although mainly it was about One Person: One Vote, and we scored pendants saying that too:

How cute is Leon!
Starting young, huh?

But it seems the main reason for the discontent was Donald Tsang's comment last month that "Hong Kong doesn't care what happened at Tiannaman Square", which, as you know, so outraged HK that 150,000 turned up to The Vigil for the Fallen in Victoria Park a few weeks back. And it also lead to that song, now on Youtube, "Donald Tsang! Please Die!" which I really should find and show you.


I actually like Our Donald a lot, but it was a truly stupid remark to make and I don't mind that he's copping all this flak, as long as it doesn't go beyond ...

... mass sales of this T-shirt, which tens of thousands were wearing.

And this poster up everyplace which I just love and want to buy:

"The Voice of Beijing"

And also to this cartoon, being handed out during the march, which is amazingly drawn but which no one can actually explain to me:

Everyone recognises
Longhair and Our Donald
and that guy who threw bananas at him
- which actually happened, by the way -
and they can see the line from Mao
"Nothing happens without struggle from the people"
But beyond that, it's beyond them.

Maybe it's that there's something
deeply strange
about using Communist slogans
to fight against communists!

Or does that just say something about how far
the Communist Party of China
has moved away from its roots.

Since I was wearing my pedometer I can now tell you that it's 5340 steps from our place to Government House, but when we got to the turn-off ...

... we all decided that all the bottle-necks up there, with all those twists and turns and thousands pressing against your back, had kinda freaked us out in the past, so we stopped off for chai lattes in a cafe immediately opposite and watched the march through the windows, waiting to see when it would end.

If you haven't been on HK's Democracy March, what happens is that you go up the winding path on the hill ...

... to Government House where you stick your banners - and bananas - petitions and ribbons around the gate and fence, and then you pass through the main entrance to the street on the other side - where the Comedy Club is, by the way, if that's your thing!

Well, we sat and watched the march for over an hour and I can tell you categorically that it was still all ...

... with absolutely no end in sight, so we decided we'd all go into Lan Kwai Fong for a while instead.

So what do you reckon? Did our side ACE the Pro-Beijing Anti-Democracy March, or what?

Will give you the actual numbers for both sides, including the police ones which totally LIE!, when I get today's newspapers.

The official Beijing count:

Pro-Beijing Rally
40,000

Pro-Democracy March
26,000

Don't you just love it?

My count was about 4,000 for the Pro-Beijing crowd, and our side came in at about 100,000.

Let me see if I can find what the Pro-Democracy crowd had to say about it:

The organisers put the count at 76,000 and that seems about right.

Ah, and the mystery crowd in the middle who didn't appear to belong to either March were the folk who lost all their savings on the Lehmann Brothers minibond scam, who wanted to protest against USA suing HK to stop HK giving them back their money, and who didn't want to be seen belonging to either side.

And the numbers given to this march was 4000, exactly what my eye told me ... which makes it extremely odd that my eye also put the Pro-Beijing March at roughly the same number ... yet the Pro-Beijing count put at 40,000. How could I have been so right about one and so wrong about the other?

Because I wasn't! Those are just stinking rotten lies! And it's starting to deeply concern me that China lies so easily ... as also witnessed by that hideous Guangzhou policeman who wrote that my belongings weren't stolen so they didn't have to investigate!

But here's strange thing: the front cover of South China Morning Post has a photograph of the Pro-Beijing Rally that is actually the Lehmann Brothers protesters! In fact, this is such a big deal - and it's too difficult inserting photographs when I've already got so many - I'll do another post on it to show you.