On July 1st, 2003, 500,000 residents of Hong Kong took to the streets to protest Article 23, a lovely piece of legislation wherein the Chinese government can ban or arrest any organization it considers to be a "threat to national security." In a city with little history of civil disobedience and little history of democracy, one fourteenth of the population turned out to defend its freedom of assembly based on something one small human rights organization circulated online. If something like that happened in the States, (even where people seem to protest or rally at the drop of a hat) something would REALLY happen! I don't know what you saw in the press; I have NO idea what kind of "foreign" news makes American news these days, but the streets were filled as far as you could see from one horizon to another, spilling over with people even in aerial shots, like Times Square on New Years Eve- the air was excited and electrified, almost festive, like though that's trivializing it, because something very important was happening, and people were part of something big, and doing something that mattered. Most of my family went (both my uncles, my aunt, and all four of my cousins), though I didn't; I kind of regret not participating in what is now a part of history; my cousin Joanne and her friends, in a Where's Waldo fashion, can be found in a crowd photo on the 2nd page of "The Apple" newspaper, which she's saved for posterity. She's now a part of documented history.

On July the second, looking at the sickle moon over a neon night, the city and harbor felt very much alive. It- the crowd moving and alive splashed across the tv and papers captioned in big lightning characters reading "Against 23!" and "To the Streets!" and "Hong Kong Lives Forever!"- was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long while. Perhaps there is hope for this century after all.

Unrelated and Interesting Tidbit: Omnipresent in public places are a bunch of hand sanitizing boxes, like electric blow dryers you see in public bathrooms. You stick your hands under the motion detector and a little mist of antibacterial wash sprays bout. The bottled variety is also popular. Ah, zeitgeist of the times.