THOSE WHO gathered in black T-shirts for a huge rally in Hong Kong island’s main park on August 18th hoped their demonstration would send two messages. First, that even after 11 weeks of protests, their anti-government campaign is still in fine fettle. Second, that those responsible for the havoc and violence at the city’s airport a few days earlier were not representative of the largely peaceful and broad-based pro-democracy movement. Under heavy rain showers and despite police restrictions, the rally achieved both aims.

The organisers were the loose association of pro-democracy parties and NGOs responsible for bringing about enormous rallies in June and July. They had applied to lead participants along a two-and-a-half mile stretch of downtown Hong Kong, past the government offices. Police objected in advance, approving only a static assembly at Victoria Park. In the end a march proceeded anyway. It could hardly have done otherwise: rivers of people were flowing into the park and out of it. The organisers claimed that 1.7m people attended at least some portion of the protest. Police said the crowd present inside the park numbered 128,000 at its peak.

The rain-soaked procession capped a few days of striking calm in Hong Kong, with little of the skirmishing between police and protesters that had marked previous weekends as well as a general strike on Monday, August 5th. On Friday night thousands of Hong Kongers attended a student-organised rally at Chater Gardens in Hong Kong’s Central district. They called for Britain to declare China in breach of the promises of autonomy made when it took back Hong Kong in 1997. A few attendees waved Hong Kong’s old colonial flag. Many more raised the chant “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!”

The following day crowds of teachers supportive of student protesters gathered for a short march of their own. A pro-government demonstration, organised by politicians and some business groups, took place at about the same time. On Saturday evening a few hundred anti-government protesters wearing masks and yellow hard hats gathered briefly outside a police station in Kowloon, throwing eggs and shining laser pointers at officers stationed outside. They quickly left when chased off by riot police, though some hung around long enough to throw rubbish bins into the path of police vans.

For the first time in several weekends police fired no tear-gas. Nor did they find reason to deploy three newly-acquired trucks bearing water-cannon. Late on Sunday evening protesters persuaded peers who had gathered near the Legislative Council to disperse quietly (“We win if we leave,” one cried). Several thousand members of the People’s Armed Police, the force China deploys to quell riots, remain stationed at a sports centre in Shenzhen, the closest mainland city. Yet nothing suggested they would soon quit their exercises.

Hong Kong’s own government said it regretted the big march on August 18th—but, significantly, did not condemn it. It said it would conduct “a sincere dialogue with the public” only “when everything is calm”. The peaceful weekend will amplify the call for them to reach out to protesters (whose demands now run the gamut, from a judicial inquiry into the behaviour of the police force to Hong Kong’s being able to choose its own leaders). Another big rally is planned for August 31st; some students say they are planning to boycott classes once term begins in September. “Tell everyone that we Hong Kong people are patient!”, shouted a protester caught up in the long queues at Victoria Park. “We will get what we want.”