Hong Kong's vehicles of democracy: The vernacular monumentality of buses during the Umbrella Revolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution saw some of the city's busiest streets transformed into temporary sites of artistic expression and freedom. This essay explores the everyday items were turned into in-situ tools of protest – in particular, the subversive use of double-decker buses. I analyze how a number of double-decker buses were transformed from a form of moving rhetoric into static, vernacular monuments representing Hong Kong's history and serving as democratic billboards. Through the display of Hong Kong's present (mainlandization), past (colonization), and future (democracy), the city's protesters were, I suggest, able to communicate their fears about the increasing effects of mainlandization in an attempt to shift Hong Kong's political possibilities.