The pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, which expanded into additional neighborhoods on Tuesday in defiance of new government warnings, has been a diligently clean, exceedingly polite and scrupulously peaceful insurgency that supporters have taken to calling the Umbrella Revolution.
“An umbrella looks nonthreatening,” said Chloe Ho, 20, a history student distributing apples, chocolate and wet towels on a six-lane downtown expressway occupied by protesters. “It shows how mild we Hong Kong people are, but when you cross our bottom line, we all come out together, just like the umbrellas all come out at the same time when it rains.”
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“We want to stay clean to show that we are normal citizens fighting for our democracy,” said Billy Chan, 21, a computer science student who was heading home on Tuesday morning to wash up.
Other supporters were arriving in the morning, saying they wanted to ensure that crowd numbers remained strong enough to ward off the police and impress the many television cameras. Joe Tang, an 18-year-old student wearing a black T-shirt decorated with a yellow ribbon, the uniform of many protesters, said he was a little embarrassed to seem so idealistic.
“It sounds stupid, but I came for liberty and democracy,” he said, as he prepared to hunker down for a day in the hot sun.
Many participants in the Umbrella Revolution acknowledged that their movement could well fail, scattered by a fresh police crackdown or just petering out. But many also said that their street movement, with its fastidious attention to hygiene and good manners and signs apologizing for “causing inconvenience” to other residents, was more than a reflection of Hong Kongers’ neat ways. The trash sorting, constant speeches from megaphones and self-organized medical teams send a message of determination to leaders, and the world, they said.
“With such a big area, if the waste is not handled well, it will cause hygiene problems and increase disorder,” said Chan Sau-ching, a 21-year-old medical student, who was helping sort trash. “In this protest, we want to show our citizenship and our will to have a democratic government. Although this cleanup is a small thing, it is something that shows the values that all Hong Kong citizens should have.”
