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And then, just as we are descending the escalator to the train tracks, a group of demonstrators rushes in behind us and calling for everyone to run—the police are coming.

This is the scariest moment of the night, as a quick stampede starts in the very confined space of the escalator. I am terrified that someone will trip and get trampled. On the train, people are holding the doors open, and yellow-shirted MTR personnel appear to restore order. Protests are protests, but the MTR must run!

Later that night, we will learn that in another subway station, police fired tear gas canisters directly at people, a terrible thing to do in a confined space. There is video of police beating unarmed protesters savagely on an MTR escalator. And the whole city sees the pictures of a young medic who lost the vision in her eye after police shot her in the face with a bean bag round. The outrage from those acts of violence will provoke the massive protests that shut down the airport on Monday and Tuesday.

But that news is still a few hours away, and again the MTR performs its alchemy of taking us into a world apart, the skyscrapers and hotels around Central, where the view is of tankers and brightly lit junks drifting through the harbor, and there is no sign at all of the turmoil we have just witnessed.