IT WAS a revealing tale of two cities. In Hong Kong tens of thousands of people last night held a candlelit vigil to commemorate the 1989 crackdown on pro democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
But in the Chinese capital, the vast public space was empty except for reporters trying to look like tourists, plainclothes police trying to look like tourists and tourists trying not to look like tourists.
Nothing could better illustrate the impotence of the democracy movement in China eight years after the crushing of the student led protests.
The vast gathering in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, estimated by the organisers at 55,000 people, was on the other hand eloquent testimony to the concerns of Hong Kong democrats that what happened in Beijing in 1989 should never happen there.
Memories are still vivid in Hong Kong of June 3rd-4th 1989, when People's Liberation Army troops and tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in a night of bloodshed. The violence then brought a million people on to the streets of the British territory in protest.
Last night's vigil, the biggest for years, could be the last. After the Territory reverts to China on July 1st, police can ban demonstrations considered a danger to China's national security.
Watching on television, Beijing's leaders can only have been alarmed at the challenge such a demonstration would pose to stability when Hong Kong is part of China.
One of the vigil leaders, Mr Leung Kwokhung, said, "I don't think the new Hong Kong government will allow the people to have a demonstration next year." But participants told reporters they would be back in 1998.
Hong Kong's chief executive designate, Mr Tung Cheehwa, has said that future demonstrations which do not break the law will be allowed.
In Beijing no one demonstrated, apart from a few individuals who wore black armbands. The universities were quiet. Students say they see no point in spending time behind bars in a lost cause.
However, the wife of jailed dissident Mr Liu Nianchun, serving three years for helping former student leader Mr Wang Dan draft a pro democracy petition, took the daring step of giving an interview to CNN, alleging that her husband was being tortured and deprived of proper nourishment in jail.
"Why persecute someone who only thinks and writes?" said Ms Chu Hailan through her tears, as she described in Beijing's Ritan Park the harsh treatment her husband received when he staged a hunger strike after his sentence was extended by six months.
On May 15th, 42 relatives of people killed petitioned the National People's Congress in Beijing for an official inquiry into the deaths. Ms Ding Zilin, whose 17 year old son died, said, "The government committed a crime against the people".
Speakers at the Hong Kong vigil called for the release of Mr Wang Dan, who is serving 14 years, and a reversal of the official finding that the students were guilty of "counterrevolutionary turmoil".
Chinese dissidents who escaped to Hong Kong after 1989 have mostly left the territory in recent weeks.
"There are very few now in Hong Kong," said Mr Lau Chinshek of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. "Nineteen left last week, leaving just about 10."
The Alliance, considered subversive by China, has helped dozens of mainland democracy activists to settle abroad during the last eight years.
One dissident, Mr Zhang Taisong, threatened to set himself on fire at the rally to force the Hong Kong government to speed up his exit papers.
In Tokyo a protest by Chinese dissidents outside the Chinese embassy turned ugly when two people tried to drive a car through a security barrier. Police broke the windscreen with truncheons and arrested the driver and a companion.
Amnesty International alleges that 303 people are still in prison in China for their role in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
Former Communist Party Secretary Mr Zhao Ziyang, now 77, who sympathised with the students, is under virtual house arrest. Mr Bao Tong, a senior party official regarded as a "black hand" behind the 1989 events, is not allowed to live in Beijing.