So, what now? Have we really turned a final corner or does another labyrinth lie ahead? You must have read the news: Beijing blinked. Our Ah Yeh up north - or 'grandfather', as Hongkongers like to call Beijing - saw sense in giving moderate democrats an inch on political reforms. Hong Kong could have become ungovernable otherwise, Ah Yeh was warned. But does an inch constitute a blink? Or did Ah Yeh sucker the moderates, giving them a minor victory designed to divide the democrats into rational and radical camps?
Divided the democrats are. Anybody can see that. They're trading abuse and going their separate ways. Radicals even jeered the moderates at Thursday's July 1 march. They're doing all this in the name of democracy. Go figure.
Someone on the internet even urged the mass rape of legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing. And all because her Democratic Party concluded that the rational thing to do for now is to settle for something, however little, from Ah Yeh instead of persisting with its all-or-nothing position. But, for that, she and her party are being branded turncoats. Who would have thought we'd come to this?
Not that any of this matters to our chief executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, who's walking on air right now. His drubbing by arch-foe Audrey Eu Yuet-mee in a live TV debate saw his standing sink even further.
But then Ah Yeh came to the rescue with its last-minute nod to yield an inch to the moderate democrats. That got Tsang's political reform package - which most had treated as dead on arrival - passed in the legislature. Our church-going chief executive must have thought to himself that there really is a God.
But the pro-Beijing parties must be wondering why God has forsaken them. Taking their cue from Ah Yeh, they at first insisted there would be no ground given on reforms aside from what Tsang had proposed. But Ah Yeh's sudden reversal meant the pro-Beijing parties had to mimic the new tune of their masters, making them look even more like stooges.
They're wrong if they think God forsook them. He didn't get involved. That's because the communists up north don't believe in God.