So awake again to find the battle raging over the numbers, as expected. For the moment, I'll turn away from those wishing to discredit and belittle the march for their political reasons and move to a more personal view of things.

Unlike Glutter I brought my camera. I thought I would document the march, though in the end I became hands on a large banner, so my camera was put away once the march began. I'll post a photo gallery later, but I've selected 4 photos from early on in the gathering for sharing.

When I arrived at 1pm, various organisations were promoting the march and selling t-shirts in Causeway Bay. The general theme for the march was democracy in a cage. The Frontier, a political organisation, rolled out their Lady Democracy In A Cage. You can see the back of this in at least one of the wire photos of the event.

The Frontier's Lady Democracy In A Cage w/ Gay Rights Rainbow WristBand
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Victoria Park at 1pm was fairly empty except for the usual Indonesian domestic workers and park crowd. Leung Yiu-chung, Legislator and founder of the Neighbourhood and Workers Service Centre, was handling the microphone on stage and holding an open mic forum.

Leung Yiu-chung {on the left} and Crowd Member
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By 1:30pm, they had moved Leung Yiu-chung off the main stage to one of the courts to encourage folks to reduce the congestion around the stage. Lee Cheuk-yan, Legislator and General Secretary of the Confederation of Trade Unions, took over the main stage and I followed the forum. Glutter was impressed by the youth. I was impressed by the elderly. Many apoh and ayeh came up to me and gave me the thumbs up and smiles and said thank you or very good to me, while I was watching the forum and wandering around. Much later in the march, I discoverd one of the Democratic legislators was using a platform outside Pacific Place and bringing elderly men and women up to speak. The oldest reported while cohorts were there was 92. This elderly gentleman was cruising around Victoria Park before the march posing for photographs.

Elderly Gentleman expressing his views
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Some how through the work of another cohort, I ended up helping carry a banner for e-politics21.org. Since I was helping to carry the banner, I didn't end up taking the photos of protest babes. But I did snap this photo around 3pm of some of the e-politics21 ring leaders with the crowd in the background.

e-politics21.org ring leaders and Victoria Park Crowd
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At 2:00pm or 2:45pm, I had my doubts that the march was going to be that large. It wasn't until that we had made it out of Victoria Park and through the twisty sections of Causeway Bay that it really hit me how many people were there. We had just made it under the Canal Street Flyover at Causway Bay/Wan Chai at 5pm, when I got the phone call from the cohort up in Central/Admiralty that the front of the march had reached HSBC. I had thought we were near the front of the march, because there were still a lot of courts of people left behind us, like the Democratic Party and Confederation of Trade Unions contingents.

Walking through Wan Chai, you could see lots of people taking breaks and going in to the cafes and restaurants to eat. We got to Pacific Place around 6pm and went to dinner with the advance team. I had expected the rear of the march to have passed by the time we came back out, but it was still pouring by heavily. Trying to catch the 7:30pm Ferry home, we rejoined the march up to Cheung Kong Center and cut across Chater Garden to get to the central ferry piers.

The constriction of the march route at the Bank of China Tower was miserable. I can only imagine what it would be like once the route constricted more at HSBC and then further down on the path up to the Central Government Offices. Will I be counted officially by the government, if I didn't knock on the gates at CGO? Will people who joined the march in Causeway Bay or Wan Chai or who left early be counted by the government and police? Who knows? But if that march was only 63,000, then I'm a monkey's uncle. After coming out from dinner I had guesstimated 200,000-250,000 marchers and when I arrived home, the organiser estimates were at a believable 250,000.