Brave front: The pro-democracy guerrilla fighters taking on Hong Kong’s riot police

 Hong Kong

Mo Ming zig-zagged through the tear-gas. He ran across a central Hong Kong flyover in a low crouch he learned from the shoot-’em-up video game Counter-Strike. It was 1 October, China’s National Day, and the confrontations in Hong Kong were in their 17th week. I followed him as he picked a path through the thickening fog, slingshot at the ready for a counterstrike of his own against the police’s water cannon — their most formidable weapon, which sprays protesters with blue, irritant-laced water. It fired just short of our position, and we made it across to the far side, where other pro-democracy fighters had retreated. These were the Braves: the frontliners taking on the Hong Kong riot police with umbrellas, gas masks, kneepads and the occasional Guy Fawkes mask. Next to us, a small group tried and failed to light a Molotov cocktail brewed in a miniature screw-top wine bottle; others hurled bricks and petrol bombs.