On Sunday mornings, Anne Ngai wishes she could step inside her church in Mong Kok and worship with fellow congregants. Instead, she sings along to a livestreamed service that she watches from a tablet in her living room.

On Nov. 17, police surrounded the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hung Hom and launched one of the fiercest confrontations with protesters since Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations began in June. Protesters’ Molotov cocktails, bricks, and bows and arrows went up against police officers’ tear gas, rubber bullets, and sponge grenades.

Fires blazed through a thick fog of tear gas on Nov. 12 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where students dressed in black clashed with riot police and tried to regain control of a bridge on campus. In mid-November the Hong Kong protests entered university campuses and the city’s financial hub following the death of a protester who fell from a parking garage.