The Sun Still Rises in Hong Kong
It’s Monday morning in Hong Kong and the sun still rises. I check the MTR schedule to make sure the trains are still running before I join the other morning commuters on the way to their jobs and responsibilities.
People look tired and often sleep as the Tsuen Wan line needles its way throughout Kowloon and into the New Territories. There is some light chatter here and there and a few young kids in their school uniform scroll through their favorite apps and message their friends.
Except for maybe the noticeably less number people on the trains these days, to the outsider this would look like any other work day in almost any modern metropolis in the world, one could hardly tell that last night parts of Hong Kong were burning and people lay on the streets bleeding as protesters clashed against police and Chinese-sympathizers again for the 17th week in a row.
Like a slow boiling frog, over the span of these 17 weeks, we’ve seen escalations rise. Police shooting & beating people, Chinese sympathizers joining in with police support, protesters pushing back, fires, Molotov…