Document 2 of 3.
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 7, 1997, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 445 words
HEADLINE: A Parade Brings Pride and Protest
BYLINE:
By FRANK BRUNI
BODY:
In a procession that was short on visual flourishes but long on ethnic pride,
thousands of Chinese-Americans marched through the heart of Manhattan yesterday
to celebrate the return of Hong Kong last week to Chinese rule.
Their numbers -- which one senior police officer estimated at
10,000 -- suggested both the degree to which many recent Chinese immigrants
feel a close affinity to events in
China and their measure of joy in reclaiming Hong Kong.
"Chinese people felt humiliated about Hong Kong," said King Liu, president of the Chinese Student Association at City College.
He said the long British rule of Hong Kong was an international insult, and its
end was both a restoration of justice and a vote of confidence in
a Chinese Government that is more trustworthy than in the past.
That sentiment was not shared by all Chinese-Americans, some of whom joined a
group of about 100 protesters on a traffic island in Times Square, two blocks
north of the parade's terminus at West
41st Street and Seventh Avenue.
The protesters complained of lingering human-rights abuses in China, cried out
for democratic reforms and said that the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule
simply meant that more people would come under the control of a corrupt,
tyrannical system.
"Six
million more people are under bloody Communist rule," said
Shengde Lian, an alumnus of the student protests that were violently quashed in
Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.
Ni Yuxian, the former dissident who is now chairman of an organization called
Party for
Freedom and Democracy in China, yelled hoarsely at the parade through the
makeshift megaphone of a rolled poster.
"We want to show Americans that not all Chinese are happy that Hong Kong is back
to China," he said.
Most of the marchers yesterday said they believed that the Chinese Government
would honor its pledges to
let Hong Kong operate as an autonomous zone within China and to leave Hong
Kong's free-market system and way of life largely unaltered.
Most participants belonged to trade associations, student groups or civic
organizations. A few groups came from as far away as Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania.
The marchers began at West 58th Street and Broadway and proceeded south. There
were more than a dozen floats and a few marching bands, but the two-hour
procession was dominated by everyday people in everyday dress.
Some marchers carried bouquets of freshly cut
flowers, while others waved the red Chinese flag. But the predominant visual
motif, sewn onto white caps and printed on white T-shirts, was a red flower
with five spiraling, pinwheel-like petals that is the symbol of the new Hong
Kong.
GRAPHIC: Photos: Thousands of Chinese-Americans marched in a parade yesterday
celebrating the return of Hong Kong to China. David Peng, 9, watched from the
side, draped over a barricade and wearing a souvenir cap. Demonstrators using
makeshift megaphones shout out their opposition to the parade's
theme, citing civil rights abuses by China. (Photographs by Frances Roberts for
The New York Times)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 7, 1997
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