Last Wednesday night, platoons of students, some wearing colorful handkerchiefs across their faces like bank robbers in a spaghetti western, others wearing surgical masks, fanned out across the heart of the Central financial district in Hong Kong. In small packs they approached the Stock Exchange and the skyscrapers housing some of the world’s biggest banks, hoping to set up new street barricades.
Some found their way into the eastbound lanes of a highway tunnel next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, closed to traffic by a barricade the pro-democracy protesters had set up about 200 yards from its exit. There, they encountered Adrian Ng and Claudia Ho — engaged to be married — with their wedding photographer.
Mr. Ng and Ms. Ho, both 25, have known each other since their childhood in Hong Kong, but only became romantically involved when he was in his first year as a student in Canada. Now they have the quintessential establishment jobs: He’s a corporate headhunter, she’s a public relations professional for a major real estate company. But both were wearing the yellow ribbons that symbolize support for the antiestablishment, pro-democracy Occupy Central movement which has captured attention around the world.
They’re both aware of the historic significance of the events this month, the biggest challenge to Beijing’s authority over Hong Kong since Britain handed over control to China in 1997. They wanted to be part of it.
“The event will be a milestone of Hong Kong’s future development, and it beautifully crosses paths with our prewedding stage,” Ms. Ho said. “This is awesome to celebrate and mark both events together. We hope both Hong Kong and our relationship will hold the integrity of Occupy Central—always with love, peace, passion and listening.”
Said Mr. Ng, “We are both believers of democracy, and Hong Kong is the place we met. The Occupy Central movement gives us hope for change.”
The photos “show the time,” he added. “It’s a special moment. We can tell our kids.”
They’re not alone. Besides serving as a backdrop for wedding photos, the protester-occupied zone in Hong Kong’s financial district is also a memorable background for graduation photos. Students in caps and gowns are a common sight posing before the proliferation of protest art, such as the massive umbrella sculpture — an emblem of the movement — next to the city’s Legislative Council.
In many ways the young protesters are defying the lyrics of one of the protest movement’s signature songs, “Imagine,” by John Lennon.
The late singer and songwriter is an icon of the movement. There’s the Lennon Wall, covered with tens of thousands of sticky notes of support and inspired by the original wall in Prague. And lyrics from “Imagine” hang over a pedestrian bridge overlooking the main protest site, now a bustling, colorful tent city spread across 10 lanes of Harcourt Road. The words are from the last stanza: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
But instead of “living for today,” from the first stanza, Hong Kong’s young democrats are keenly aware that this event is a defining moment in their lives that they want to capture for posterity. They are young. Hong Kong’s tycoons and the seven aging men on the Communist Party Politburo’s Standing Committee in Beijing will be long dead by the time they are reaching the peaks of their professions.
For one couple from mainland China, occupied Hong Kong last week was also a backdrop to their wedding plans, but more as an obstacle course. The police were moving in to retake a road from protesters, blocking off access to the government offices where marriage ceremonies take place.
The young woman, in white bridal dress, took off her shoes and sprinted through a police cordon and across the street with her fiancé.
In a brief interview, the couple explained that they were headed to a municipal marriage registry and were close to missing the time slot for their civil ceremony because of a traffic jam caused by the protests. The man identified himself as Vincent and the woman, aptly, as Juliet.
Both declined to give their last names, but said they were mainland Chinese who now both work in Hong Kong and had chosen to marry there.
Vincent declined to comment on the protests, saying only, “We’re just glad that we’re getting married.”
Hilda Wang and Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.