Hong Kong protests wane -- for now
HONG KONG -- In some areas of Hong Kong's streets Monday morning, it seemed there were more supplies for protesters than protesters themselves, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane.
Hong Kong's Beijing-backed Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying set Monday morning as the deadline for some schools and government offices to re-open, and for the streets to be cleared.
Schools reopened and civil servants returned to work on Monday after protesters cleared the area outside the city government headquarters, a focal point of the demonstrations that began a week earlier.
Crowds also thinned markedly at the two other protest sites, and traffic flowed again through many roads that had been blocked.
In the Mong Kok district, the site of ugly clashes over the weekend as mobs tried to drive the demonstrators out of the intersection they were blocking, hundreds of curious onlookers surrounded the remaining sit-in protesters Monday evening, taking pictures.
Commuters were able to walk straight down the middle of the street as protesters -- far fewer than last week -- remained camped out on the pavement, but the government office building next to one of the main protest sites did reopen.
Legislator Paul Tse, an elected leader in the semi-autonomous Chinese island, told CBS News that he's tried to remain neutral about the pro-democracy protests which have choked Hong Kong for more than a week.
"It's kind of difficult, of course," he said about getting to the office, "but given the circumstances, everybody is trying very hard to try to accommodate the situation."
But the situation got messier over the weekend as counter-protest groups -- people either in favor of Beijing's assertion of control over the island, or simply fed up with the protests -- faced off with pro-democracy demonstrators.
The counter-demonstrators tried to destroy protest camps after enduring more than a week of blocked roads, closed businesses, and inconvenience.
Early Monday morning, around 2 a.m., the streets were still littered with protesters sleeping, or trying to.
Among them was 22-year-old Kaho Lee, who told CBS News that in spite of tempers cooling and protest numbers dwindling after the Chief Executive agreed to launch a dialogue with the pro-democracy movement, that now was not the time to pack up and go home.
"I don't think we should back down now because if we back down now it means we are giving up all our hopes," said Lee.
Despite differences, protest leaders have taken steps toward resuming talks with the government. They've threatened to call off the talks -- once again, and before they even begin in earnest -- if protesters are forcibly removed from the streets.