Trail Mix | Hong Kong protests spread to trail races, as runners chant slogans and wear posters calling for ‘revolution of our times’
- The masses of runners lined up for races bring their political stance to the course calling for other participants to ‘add oil’ and to ‘restore Hong Kong’
As I walked up with my teammates to the start line of the Ferei Dark 45km trail running race just before midnight on Monday, shouts rang out in the air.
“Restore Hong Kong!” someone yelled in the crowd.
“Revolution of our times!” came the resounding response.
“Hongkongers!” someone else cried out. “Add oil!” the crowd called back, not missing a beat.
It was a surreal scene. Here we were, hundreds of runners on the eve of the October 1, about to embark on a 45km overnight jaunt on the MacLehose Trail. Everything looked exactly like the start line of other trail races: people in running backpacks, headlamps on, hiking poles at the ready, bibs attached at the waist. What was different were the protest chants.
More than four months into the anti-government protests, which started in June against an extradition bill and have since morphed into a broader movement for greater democracy and against what many see as police brutality, each and every aspect of daily life now holds within it a potential to be a site of political action, no matter how fleeting.
