IT IS always hot and loud. Each year since the first anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from Britain to China, in 1998, an angry opposition has organised a protest rally on July 1st. It's a day off work, because everyone in the territory is invited to celebrate Reunification day. Inevitably it's sweltering too. The people of this air-conditioned metropolis who choose to spend the day packed together for long hours under the beating sun are determined to make their suffering heard: chanting slogans, cursing, laughing, chatting, soliciting political donations and then with the slogans again. But each year's July 1st protest is different from the last. It can offer an unparalleled demonstration of the public mood, arguably more so than any poll here does. This year's was a big one, and everyone can agree that it reflects genuine disquiet (though some will argue that the disquiet is due merely to spoiled Hong Kongers' resentment at China's great success—eg the Wen Wei Po editorial copied here). But good cheer is also in evidence. The Chinese word formed by the characters for “hot” and “loud”, 热闹 or renao in Mandarin, means “lively” and might be used to describe a good party. Things sound different in Cantonese, the language of Hong Kong, where it's pronounced as jit naau (and written 熱鬧) but the meaning is the same. A sweaty stroll through the protesters is always worthwhile, not just to see what's making them boil. By the time this year's was under way, a solid column of marchers had filled the city's main artery, from Causeway Bay to the new government buildings in Admiralty. (A contingent continued on to the Liaison Office in Western, to make the point that Hong Kong's own government is not so much a problem as a puppet.) Hours before, thousands had massed in Victoria Park, to wait there in a kind of holding pen until the march began officially at 3pm, at which point a single gate opened onto the highway. It took until 6pm before the last of the people standing in the park had made it within sight of the exit. Counting the protesters has become an aggravating sport. With a salutary freedom of expression but virtually no real power to turn their numbers into political power, Hong Kongers become fixated on counting those among them who vote with their feet. The umbrella group that organises the July 1st protest had announced by 6pm that there were 400,000 marchers. Their method for estimating that number is mysterious and their motive for inflating it is obvious. The police gave a government-approved estimate of only 63,000, which they achieved by counting only the heads of the protesters who were patient enough to wait in the park for as long as it took to squeeze through the bottleneck at the end, under the security cameras. Their figure, in other words, represents a deliberate undercount. Many, many marchers joined the Victoria Park diehards from the side-streets, as soon as their first ranks emerged through the gate. Albert Cheng, a politician who sympathises with the protesters and a member of the Independent Police Complaints Council, claims that he was watching the official monitors and saw what must have been more than 400,000 on camera. The involved parties' donation boxes took in about twice as much cash as the year before.

Disinterested observers reckon there were more people than at any time since 2003 and 2004, when an utterly shocking number of protesters effectively ended the career of the then-chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa. Nowadays most accounts peg that historic turnout at about 500,000—probably because that was halfway between the highest and lowest estimates offered at the time. Which makes it easy to see why any government would want to lowball the figure, in subsequent years. As big as this year's was, it was certainly somewhat smaller than those Tung-era marches. The more important difference was that this year's crowd was neither much greater nor much smaller than anyone had predicted.

So it came to pass that "C.Y." Leung Chun-ying started his five-year term as the territory's supremo with thousands of people shuffling slowly through the centre of Hong Kong shouting in unison “Leung Chun-ying, step down!” (see the image at the top of this post). This was nothing like the case when Mr Tsang took office in 2005, nor when Mr Tung did before him, in 1997. In last year's annual protest march, inequality, the property market and the perfidy of Hong Kong's tycoons were the chief object of scorn, even though the official theme was supposed to be about a by-election law. Hong Kong's biggest tycoon, Li Ka-shing, and the then-chief executive, Donald Tsang, were denounced as thieves and beaten in effigy. This year however the crowds' invective was concentrated at leaders in Beijing and at the CCP as a whole. Mr Leung was almost alone in having his likeness beaten, and in many cases his figure was dressed as an evil Communist, eg, as Mao, or a Red Guard. In many more cases he was dressed simply as a wolf, a Pinocchio-style liar, or a devil-man. Mr Leung has never been popular, especially not with the city's democrats. (It's a great irony that he won Hong Kong's top office earlier this year by being less unpopular than his rival.) The property tycoons may loathe him with the suspicion that he plans to attack their land banks and bring affordable housing to the masses. But the masses who loathe him seem to have one complaint in particular: that he is a closet Communist, too friendly with his unacknowledged masters in Beijing. The accusation that hurt him most during the recent election season was his rival's unfounded charge that Mr Leung had recommended calling in the tanks of the PLA during the great July 1st protest of 2003.

Earlier that same day Hu Jintao had accepted Mr Leung's oath of service on a stage not far away, barricaded against any early-rising protesters. The theatre of the event did not work to Mr Leung's advantage, as far as anti-Communists were concerned. Inside a convention centre a hall and dais were prepared in quasi-CCP style. A slogan identifying the day was written in man-sized characters above the stage. Two flags hung against it, an enormous Chinese flag to the left and a Hong Kong flag to the right, equally red but 25% smaller. The dignitaries were asked to take their seats in Cantonese and in English, but once the ceremony began, only Mandarin was used. Many in the audience, and not just the foreigner ambassadors, couldn't understand more than a smattering from the entire ceremony, which lasted 90 minutes. Mr Leung's putonghua is not bad at all, though anyone could tell that it is not his native language. He recited his oath of office standing before Hu Jintao, with one arm raised, as if China's president were himself a living bible. Mr Hu's speech invoked the mantra of “one country, two systems” several times and with approval, as if to bid Hong Kong keep doing what it's doing, and appealed more for unity, harmony and the like. But then he made reference to the “the deep disagreements and problems in Hong Kong society” and urged Mr Leung to tend to them. He might well have been talking about the income inequality and the silly cost of housing, in which case his speech was approximately one year out of date.

Back outside, symbols of antagonism towards the mainland were in much greater evidence this year than last. Twelve months ago it had been remarkable to see protesters waving the odd British-colonial flag. This year it appeared by the dozen, in some cases carried by phalanxes of young students who had barely been born when Hong Kong was handed back to China. (There was another irony, perhaps unintended, in seeing colonial flags flying from the same pole as pennants demanding “1 person, 1 vote”.) The example of the late Li Wangyang, in his determination and suffering at the hands of injustice, was also a major theme. As in other years, much of the interest of this general-purpose rally was in seeing the city's great variety of NGOs. Each of the democratic political parties, the Land Justice League, People Power, Taiwan loyalists stranded since the handover, anti-Article 23 civil-rights campaigners, the postal workers' union, Indonesian Migrants Rights Society, Stop the Repatriation of North Korean Refugees, Citizens Radio (a pirate outfit), “Poor Parties of Hong Kong”, Abolish Functional Constituencies, Free-Tibet-Free-China, several save-a-school battalions, the Association for the Advancement of Feminism, Socialist Action … all were there, and dozens more besides. All this on the way past stores selling luxury watches, cheap luggage and dried shark fins. The crowds were orderly, in typical Hong Kong fashion, queuing to buy their refreshments at roadside 7-Elevens and piling their empties neatly beside the overfilled bins. One of the more intriguing groups came to Hong Kong from the mainland. They marched behind a red banner that identified them as the “P.R.U.C.” in English (they have no presence on the web as yet). It was said that they had come from Guangdong province to complain before the world press about the violation of their land rights. Enormous cheers were raised for them everywhere they went; the crowd was in no way anti-mainlander. The government though had the last word. The day was nearly brought to a close with a massive display of fireworks over Victoria harbour at 8pm—celebration, not protest. It was a terrific show, if you like fireworks, better even than the annual Chinese New Year's display. Then on Monday, a holiday, a contingent of paratroopers from the People's Liberation Army jumped out of helicopters onto Victoria Park in a final, tone-deaf show of national joy and prowess. It made an uncomfortable sight for many of the Hong Kongers who saw it on television. Perhaps it was put on for the benefit of innocent viewers back on the mainland, who would be unaware that the paratroopers were landing feet first on the site of the big protest, one day after the fact. Or perhaps the show was meant for the Hong Kongers, as a kind of reminder. Public demonstrations work both ways.