Ironic that the emerging leader of Bush's democracy wave in Hong Kong just happens to be a long-haired hippy Marxist who quotes Chen Duxiu, the Trotskyite who helped found the Chinese Communist Party:
''If you have nothing to hide, if you do not cheat people . . . then your heart will be at ease, and your spirit will shine like a rainbow.'' And a key player in the forced resignation Thursday (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/international/asia/11hong.html) of Hong Kong's of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. David Bier http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06HONG.html? March 6, 2005 A Rebel in the Emperor's Court By DAISANN McLANE The Legislative Council of Hong Kong meets every Wednesday afternoon in a three-story building that looks like any state capitol, with standard-issue neo-Classical dome and high columns all around. From the council's roof, a statue representing justice brandishes a sword and raises a scale into the tall shadows cast by fabulously expensive Asia-boom-era skyscrapers with designer pedigrees -- a pocket of the 19th century sandwiched amid the castles of global capitalism. The meetings of the Legislative Council, or Legco, also seem anachronistic, a surprisingly seamless blend of Asian and Western pomp and circumstance. The clang of a gong calls the bilingual sessions to order, and proceedings operate according to a precise set of rules adapted from those of the British Parliament. Upon entering or leaving the chamber, Legco members -- all except one -- bow to Rita Fan, the council president, who dominates the body from her high leather chair like a representative of the emperor (which in a way she is, since she also serves as a delegate to Beijing's rubber-stamp National People's Congress). On one Wednesday afternoon in January, all of Legco's 60 members -- except one -- arrived in their best dark suits (the women favored Chanel). Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, was about to make one of his infrequent appearances before the Legislature, to deliver his annual policy address -- a Hong Kong version of the State of the Union. A shipping tycoon's son handpicked by Beijing eight years ago (he was ''elected'' by a committee of 800 businessmen and community leaders), Tung is wildly unpopular in Hong Kong. More than half a million people marched in Hong Kong's streets on July 1, 2003, and again in 2004, demanding Tung's resignation and the right to directly elect the chief executive. Nevertheless, when Tung strode into the Legco chamber, everyone respectfully rose. As Tung took the podium, the representatives sat down. All except one. The Honorable Mr. Leung Kwok-hung, better known in Hong Kong as Cheung Mo, or ''Long Hair,'' remained on his feet. For a moment he said nothing, pausing to let the effect of his disobedience -- and maybe, also, his appearance -- sink in. In a sea of suits and ties, Long Hair, 48, was dressed like a 60's-vintage campus radical, in a ratty tweed jacket over a pair of black trousers patched and repatched with a million tiny stitches. Under the jacket, he wore a blue sweatshirt bearing the face of his idol, an unlikely hero for a Hong Kong-born Chinese politician: Che Guevara. Long Hair tossed his head slightly, causing some of his thick black hair, which falls past his shoulders, to come loose from the black scrunchie that keeps it tamed, sort of, in a ponytail. Finally, he pointed an accusing finger at the chief executive and declared, in a loud, deep voice thickened by 30 years of street demonstrations and thousands of cigarettes: ''You! Mr. Tung! You are not qualified, and have no right to address this body. We have been elected by the Hong Kong people. You were not. You were appointed by a clique of 800 tycoons. You don't defend the interests of Hong Kong people; you are in collusion with tycoons. . . . '' Before he could say another word, Rita Fan hastily adjourned the meeting and Tung scuttled out of the chamber. Fan instructed Long Hair to meet with her in her private chamber. Five minutes later, they returned, and she spoke to him in front of all the representatives, adopting the voice of a mother scolding a child: ''Would you promise not to interrupt the chief executive's speech, Mr. Leung?'' Long Hair stood his ground. ''He is not qualified to speak before elected officials. . . . '' ''Mr. Leung! . . . '' ''And I want to say one more thing. Absolute power leads to absolute corruption.'' Then Long Hair turned on his heel and walked out. Hong Kong politics is such great theater that it's easy to forget that the most important character hardly ever appears onstage: the central government of the People's Republic of China. The Chinese would like Hong Kong's ''one country, two systems'' structure to showcase a controlled, orchestrated Chinese-style democracy. ''It is in Hong Kong that Beijing's ideal for a Chinese model of politics and governance will first be articulated,'' said Christine Loh, a former member of Legco (LEDGE-co) who heads Civic Exchange, a policy group. ''In Beijing's thinking, if they can manage elections in an urban setting like Hong Kong, they can manage elections in cities on the mainland in the future.'' But democracy does not always follow the script. In Hong Kong last September, voters went to the polls and elected to the Legislature an unreconstructed Trotskyite with a passion for soccer, Latin American revolutionaries and universal suffrage. Long Hair sticks out in a Hong Kong where people flaunt their cash and their BMW's; he lives like an ascetic, alone, in a $110-a-month, 200-square-foot public-housing apartment where his bed is an island in an ocean of books and newspapers. He gives most of his $7,000 monthly legislator's salary to his political group, April 5 Action. None of the pundits expected Long Hair to win. He was known as an eccentric: for more than 25 years, he was Hong Kong's indefatigable protester, hauling the loudspeakers to pro-democracy street demonstrations, yelling anti-Tung slogans from the Legco gallery (for which he went to prison) and marching with mock coffins on June 4 to remember the Chinese students murdered in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. But in recent years, Hong Kong has suffered as its manufacturing base has fled to the mainland. The Tung government is under fire for its lackluster response to Hong Kong's high unemployment, economic downturn and the SARS crisis. Meanwhile, Beijing has been ''reinterpreting'' Hong Kong's constitution (called the Basic Law) to trim away freedom of speech and assembly and push talks on universal suffrage back from 2007 to an unspecified date. Hong Kong responded with the half-million-strong marches of July 2003 and 2004 -- and the Legco representative Long Hair. At the big march last July, Long Hair stood up on a ladder and shouted to the passing crowd: ''Now, I'm going to run in the next election. Come over here and put in 10 dollars, 20 dollars! I will represent you!'' Ten Hong Kong dollars was a bit more than one American dollar; by the end of the day he had collected the equivalent of $20,000. During the campaign, Long Hair aced the TV debates (in Cantonese he uses folksy idioms and street slang with masterful skill; he's a Chinese Al Sharpton) and displayed a talent for political theatrics -- at one point, he thrust a bunch of bananas through the window of the limousine of James Tien, one of his wealthy opponents from the Liberal Party. ''Mr. Tien,'' he asked, ''do you know how much these cost in the street market?'' At the end of the 42-day campaign, Long Hair won a four-year term to represent his district, New Territories East. With more than 60,000 votes, he was one of the top individual vote getters in Hong Kong. I went to interview him for the first time the morning after his victory. When he showed up, a half-hour late, he was a mess. His olive green Che T-shirt and cutoffs appeared slept in, his hair was stringy and his eyes occasionally drifted shut in the middle of sentences. But when I finally got to ask him his take on the Hong Kong elections, he suddenly sharpened and delivered, in a round-toned British-accented English sprinkled with ''bloody'' this and ''bloody'' that, an incisive analysis of the results, with asides on the American presidential campaign and the radical politics of the 60's and a dollop of Marxist analysis. The next time I saw him, three months into his legislative term, Long Hair's life had already changed a lot. He had offices in the government building and had given them a dorm-room Marxist makeover. Draped crookedly from one wall was a big red cloth banner covered in hand-painted Chinese characters with a quote from Chen Duxiu, the Trotskyite who helped found the Chinese Communist Party: ''If you have nothing to hide, if you do not cheat people . . . then your heart will be at ease, and your spirit will shine like a rainbow.'' Tacked up on the back wall, directly above and behind Long Hair's desk chair, was a calendar with Alberto Korda's famous black-and-white photograph of Che. Coffee cups and stray papers and cards spilled across the desk. ''It's very simple,'' Long Hair said, using his favorite way to begin a sentence in both English and Cantonese. ''Hou gaan daan. The Legislative Council is a chah goon, a teahouse. It's full of politicians with no mission; technocrats, not philosophers.'' He waved his hand dismissively and then reached for his cellphone, which had, for about the fifth time in five minutes, started to vibrate and crawl across the desk. Long Hair gives his personal cell number out to everyone, and it was on his campaign fliers, so he gets calls constantly, from reporters, constituents, taxi drivers. All Legco members receive an operating budget of $14,000 a month, so Long Hair now had an assistant, Keith Au, who was keeping track of Long Hair's day from an official printed timetable that blocked out his daily appointments, which usually ran from 9 a.m. to well past midnight. Having a schedule was a huge change for Long Hair, who was legendary among reporters for showing up on the wrong day for appointments. ''Long Hair was late when I met him 26 years ago, and he's still late,'' said Szeto Wah, the eminence grise of Hong Kong's oldest democratic party, the Man Jyuh. ''So, have you read this?'' Long Hair said, handing me a well-thumbed, thin, cream-colored book with lots of orange Post-its sticking out: his copy of Hong Kong's Basic Law. ''You should read this. Read Article 74, and that's all you need to know about Legco.'' I read the paragraph, which spells out the obstacle that any opposition politician in the Legislature must confront. It says Legco members may introduce bills, but ''written consent of the chief executive shall be required before bills relating to government policies are introduced.'' ''You see,'' Long Hair continued. ''That means nothing happens in Legco unless Mr. Tung and Beijing say so. It is a teahouse.'' Emily Lau, the BBC journalist turned legislator who is one of the most prominent members of the pro-democracy caucus in Legco, disagreed. In her office one evening, over good tea served in fine china, she told me that Long Hair's assessment of Legco was ''wrong, all wrong.'' Despite the limitations of Article 74, ''Legco is still very powerful,'' Lau emphasized. ''We pass all the laws. We pass all the money matters. That is powerful. But it is a power that can only be realized collectively. So, if we have enough numbers, we are powerful. If we are divided, gridlocked, we get nowhere.'' Long Hair, she said, ''operates in a curious way.'' ''I think he likes to be working on his own or with his friends,'' Lau added. ''He's been here for such a short time . . . maybe he doesn't understand. Or doesn't want to understand.'' Long Hair invited me to follow him around for a couple of days and suggested we meet in the Legco parking lot. It wasn't hard to spot his new vehicle in the Legco members' area -- his white Ford van stuck out among the sleek Jaguars, Mercedeses and Lexuses belonging to other legislators and, like his office, had received a makeover. Painted on the sides and rear in red were the Chinese characters for ''Long Hair,'' plus lots of pro-democracy slogans and a large cartoon of Long Hair kicking Tung in the butt. A decal of Che adorned the back window. Long Hair came bounding out the back door of Legco. He always walks at a fast, impatient trot. He nodded to me, then jumped into the van next to his driver, Ah Wah. I sat in the back. He put on a tape of Latin American protest music -- ''El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido'' -- followed by Joni Mitchell's ''Car on a Hill'' as we headed for a tunnel that joins Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories. Long Hair needed a car now because his district, New Territories East, is one of the largest in Hong Kong. It sprawls from dense areas of block-tower public housing to old walled farming villages a shout from the Chinese border -- it's the Queens to Hong Kong Island's Manhattan. The change in atmosphere is also palpable. On Hong Kong Island, when Long Hair is riding the subway or walking down the street, the rushing office workers and executives may smile when they spot his famous face. But here on the other side of the tunnel in Kowloon, driving down the side streets of working-class Mongkok, Long Hair stopped traffic. Taxi drivers waved and whooped. A guy in a truck pulled alongside and shouted to him, ''Ngoh deih kauh leih!'' -- We are counting on you! ''Have you eaten yet?'' Long Hair abruptly asked. I mumbled something about having had lunch, but an instant later we'd pulled over, and Long Hair was running down the street in search of a place to eat. He ducked into the first coffee shop we passed, grabbed a tiny booth and, without much thought, ordered item A from the ''fast food'' menu. As he was cadging a cigarette from the guy in the next booth, suddenly five cooks and dishwashers raced out of the kitchen in their greasy white uniforms to shake his hand. ''Cheung Mo!'' they shouted delightedly in Cantonese, then one added, teasingly, ''I didn't vote for you.'' Long Hair grinned and didn't miss a beat. ''Next time,'' he said. He's a hero in this part of Hong Kong, which was one of the hardest hit by SARS and where unemployment is high because of job losses to the mainland. For all its success as a financial center, Hong Kong is a city of great economic disparity. A third of its 6.8 million residents live, like Long Hair, in public housing projects, and more than one million live below the poverty line. The Tung government is aggressively trying to Thatcherize Hong Kong, dismantling the social safety net and privatizing the infrastructure left by the British. Long Hair promised, during his campaign, to fight for the poor, and the first thing he did in Legco was try to block government cuts in pensions for the elderly -- a move that failed to gain sufficient votes to pass. Meanwhile, his daily schedule is packed with a mixture of social work, constituency outreach and political protests, a combination of his old and new careers. Every Monday evening Long Hair holds an open house in the town of Tai Po. I tagged along with him to two of these sessions, held in a cramped rented office up a flight of narrow stairs from a busy market street. They reminded me a lot of scenes in the old kung-fu movies in which the peasants carry their plights to the agent of the emperor. On both nights, about 20 people waited patiently in folding chairs for a chance to pour out their troubles to the man they call not by his nickname but Leung Sir. Their problems reflected the range of difficulties Hong Kong faces as it tries to integrate with China -- immigration woes, employers cheating on wages, poverty made even worse by cuts in social services. One woman, in her 30's, told Long Hair she had been living in Hong Kong for many years without legal status (''right of abode''), and her aged mother was sick -- what could she do? ''Be careful,'' Long Hair advised her, then suggested some social-service organizations that could help her but wouldn't investigate her immigration status. ''When I see Tung,'' he promised her, ''no matter what I will tell him about this problem.'' (Long Hair seldom passes up an opportunity to confront Tung, and at a meeting with him some weeks later, Long Hair recited a litany of grievances and then handed Tung a classic Chinese story with some loaded symbolism. In the story, the hero kills a dragon and a tiger that threaten his village; in the end, he eliminates the third threat to his community by reforming himself from an evil person to a good man.) Another woman, in her 50's, arrived very agitated, carrying a battered shopping bag filled with stuff. When her turn came she began pulling large photographs out of her bag one by one -- pictures taken after she was supposedly mistreated by doctors at a local hospital. Ranting in a loud voice, she pulled more pictures and papers out to show Long Hair. Finally, she pulled out a plastic bag filled with what looked like feces and set it on his desk. The other people in the room cringed and whispered, ''Crazy.'' Long Hair's immediate reaction, however, wasn't disgust but concern. He gently told the woman that other people were waiting. The woman calmed down, put everything back into her bag and quietly left. Long Hair stayed in Tai Po for another two hours, until the last petitioner had been heard. Whether Long Hair would be able to directly help any of these people remained to be seen. As a Legco member, he now commands a certain legitimacy that he didn't have before -- when he hastily called a press conference in January to highlight the plight of a constituent who'd been beaten by gangs, the reporters showed up in force. But the deck is stacked against him or any Legco member trying to move against Hong Kong's elite. Under the Basic Law, ordinary citizens have little electoral clout in the government. The chief executive is appointed, and only half of Legco's 60 members are actually elected from districts; the other half represent ''functional constituencies,'' various professions like banking, insurance and finance, most of whom fall in step with Tung and Beijing since they don't have to answer to the voting public. Legco's pro-democracy caucus is a minority of 25. Under the circumstances, observed Christine Loh, the former Legco representative, supporting Long Hair makes a lot of sense: ''If you are not electing a government, why not then have someone like Long Hair there to prod the government?'' It is a role Long Hair embraces, even as he admits its limitations. ''I don't know if there is much I will be able to do,'' he told me as we walked away from yet another protest march on the government's offices one afternoon. ''But the alternative is to do nothing, to stop fighting, and if you do, things in Hong Kong will almost certainly get worse.'' "The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love'' is Long Hair's favorite quote from his favorite Marxist. Che Guevara, besides being the mainstay of Long Hair's wardrobe, is his model and idol, and he gets irritable when critics point out Guevara's shortcomings. When he watched the scene in ''The Motorcycle Diaries'' in which Gael Garcia Bernal, as Che, swims across the river to the leper colony, Long Hair cried. ''Long Hair has that spirit, the idea that you must give up everything to be true to your ideals,'' said the theater director Augustine Mok, who has known Long Hair for more than 25 years. (Mok took Long Hair on a version of ''The Motorcycle Diaries'' last year -- a trip to Cuba, Argentina and Bolivia made into a film, with Long Hair in the lead role.) But Che Guevara grew up well-to-do. Long Hair, in Hong Kong, grew up as poor as the people he represents, and in troubled surroundings too. When he was 6, his alcoholic father abandoned his mother, who then took a job as a live-in servant for an upper-class British family. She had to leave her only son in the care of family friends. I asked Long Hair if he was treated O.K. by his stepfamily, and he snapped back angrily. ''No! The other children were a bunch of spoiled kids . . . the father was an alcoholic. He was very moody, he would come home and. . . . '' He trailed off and lowered his voice, returning, as he usually does when questions got too personal, to abstract, general observations about society: ''You know, the Chinese people, they want to ignore that there's a thing called alcoholism.'' Long Hair's mother would visit her son on her day off and give him pocket money. He used it to take the Hong Kong tram downtown to the public library, where the unusually bright child developed a lifelong addiction to books. In high school, where he was a middling student, he gravitated to fellow students who were politically minded; his mother, who was active in union politics, had introduced him to a leftist milieu. But by the time he fled his stepfamily's home, at 14, he was already questioning Mao. ''We came under the influence of the worldwide 70's rebellion,'' explained Mok, who met Long Hair when they were arrested together for putting up posters supporting mainland Chinese political prisoners. ''Red Guards were fleeing to Hong Kong, telling us Mao is the biggest bureaucrat of all, so we became very much against the Chinese bureaucracy.'' The schism that opened in the 70's between the pro- and anti-Beijing Communists in Hong Kong, and grew deeper over Tiananmen Square in the 80's, continues to reverberate today. Long Hair's biggest opponents in Legco aren't the tycoons' proxies in the Liberal Party but the Beijing stalwarts in the pro-Communist Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB). ''When I became a Marxist,'' Long Hair said, ''it was like, almost a turning upside down of my world, you know? Marxism is about a unity of practice and theory, so if you are really, truly a Marxist you have to live what you believe.'' But Long Hair's immersion in Marxism could also be seen as a survival tactic; in Cantonese culture, family is the anchor, the cornerstone, and Long Hair didn't have one. So the Trotsky movement filled in. In his teens, he moved into the headquarters of the Revolutionary Marxist Party and slept in an office there for more than a decade. His formal schooling ended after high school; he got his higher education in Marxist study groups and by teaching himself English. He devoted himself to party political work, which consisted mainly in editing a small magazine and organizing demonstrations, while supporting himself, barely, by odd jobs as a surveyor, factory worker, waiter in a bar (he got fired for flirting with the clients and drinking on the job), sportswriter and translator. (Even today he hangs onto his pre-Legco gig, filing soccer columns for three Hong Kong dailies and one magazine at 15 cents a word.) While working as a bus cleaner on the night shift, he taught himself conversational English by listening, on headphones, to radio broadcasts -- those plummy British tones in his English come from the BBC. Over the month that I followed him around, I saw Long Hair become increasingly impatient with the slow, bureaucratic rhythms and elite composition of the Legislature. He also seemed very much a loner in the chamber. As a Marxist, his natural allies on Hong Kong's social and economic issues would be in the Beijing-backed DAB, which enjoys strong grassroots support in Hong Kong because of its opposition to the British during the colonial era. But Long Hair's opposition to the Chinese Communists and support for democratic reform in China make him a DAB pariah. As a solid supporter of universal suffrage and human rights, he's a natural member of the pro-democracy caucus, and usually votes along with it. Legco's pro-democracy caucus, however, consists mainly of well-off lawyers and professionals, whom Long Hair derides as ''pro-capitalist.'' So it was easy for him to fall into the role of gadfly in his first few months in Legco. Since he had years of practice at being an outsider, he played the role like a pro. When debates about the details of income requirements for public housing droned on in the chamber, he'd stand to speak and begin, ''Since I am the only one here who lives in public housing. . . . '' During a debate on how long the jail terms for illegal immigrant workers ought to be, the other legislators stopped shuffling papers when he opened with, ''When I was in prison. . . . '' The Legco debates always reverted to questions of fines and amounts, of details and figures. Still, after Long Hair finished speaking, there was a sense that a reality had entered the chamber that wasn't there before -- that the constituents of Tai Po had visited the floor of Legco, if only for a moment. ''There is more than one role that legislators can play,'' observed Christine Loh. And maybe, I thought, this was Long Hair's: to be the reality check, the guy who brought up the elephant in the room. Maybe it didn't matter that he was a disorganized solo kung-fu fighter. To be himself was perhaps the most effective thing that Long Hair, Marxist and legislator, could do for the Hong Kongers who elected him. Early on a Monday morning, a few days after his Legco confrontation with Tung, Long Hair called me. ''Did you know that Mr. Zhao has died?'' he asked. Zhao Ziyang was the premier of China who was ousted from the Communist Party in 1989 for supporting the Tiananmen Square students; he spent the last 15 years under house arrest. Vindicating the massacred students of Tiananmen Square is one of the issues closest to Long Hair's heart, a moment of betrayal that he returned to time and again in conversation about China. He was anxious to make sure Zhao was properly memorialized in Hong Kong: ''Hong Kong is the only place in China where we are free to remember Zhao's bravery in public.'' So, that day, he visited Rita Fan to ask that she allow members to stand for a moment of silence in the chamber to remember Zhao. His arguments were compelling: Zhao's courageous support of the Tiananmen students in 1989 was remembered by the more than one million Hong Kong Chinese who had marched in the streets back then in support of Chinese democracy. Also, Zhao, as premier, had an important place in Hong Kong history, for he co-signed, along with Margaret Thatcher, the Sino-British agreement for the Hong Kong handover. There was also a precedent for Legco memorials to fallen Chinese leaders -- the members had stood in silence for a minute when Deng Xiaoping died. Fan, as Long Hair expected, refused to grant the request. To officially memorialize an ousted Chinese leader on the floor of Legco was too provocative. But she informed Long Hair that if he could, before 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, come up with a majority of members to support him, she would agree to open a floor debate, a ''motion of adjournment'' on the subject. It was a near-impossible task, which Fan of course knew. Although two-thirds of Hong Kongers voted for pro-democracy legislators, the pro-democracy camp had only 25 of Legco's 60 seats. To get a plurality would mean finding six members willing to break ranks. Long Hair was determined to try. The next afternoon, I visited him in his office and found his assistant, Keith, on the phone and Long Hair pacing around holding a checklist of members. ''I am lobbying!'' he said gleefully. At 10 a.m. the day of the regular Legco meeting, I phoned him to see if he'd come up with the numbers. He hadn't. I stopped by his office on the way to the meeting, expecting to find a dejected or angry Long Hair. But he was sitting at his desk, smiling, thumbing idly through a book of photographs and stories about Che. He'd spoken to his democrat allies, he told me. Something was up. Promptly at 2:30 p.m., the gong announcing the session sounded and the chamber filled. An unusually large number of members wore black. Rita Fan entered and all members stood. She called the meeting to order and all sat down. All except 24. The entire pro-democracy caucus (the 25th member, Fernando Cheung, came in several minutes late) continued standing, heads bowed, as one member, Lee Cheuk-yan, announced the group's intention to remain silent for a minute to honor Zhao Ziyang. ''Cheng choh! Cheng choh! Please sit down,'' an irritated Rita Fan told the democrats. But they remained on their feet, standing together, just as Long Hair had remained standing in defiance of Fan's instructions before Tung exactly one week before. Fan adjourned the meeting and all the other members abandoned the chamber to the silent mourners. From the press gallery above, I tried to read Long Hair's expression but couldn't -- for this occasion he'd wrapped a black mourning band around his head, and his head was deeply bowed. After the long, somber minute, the democracy camp sat back down and waited quietly in the chamber for the meeting to reconvene. But when Rita Fan returned to the chamber, she returned alone. ''I believe we do not have a quorum,'' she intoned. ''I will ring the bell to call the other members.'' For more than 15 minutes, the Legco bell tolled, and no members entered the chamber. Gradually, both the democrats and the stunned press in the gallery began to understand that the other members were not coming back. They were staging a counterdemonstration of a sort by depriving Long Hair and his allies of their venue. They had the numbers to stop the Legco show, and that's what they were doing -- like one of those standoffs in a John Woo movie, where three guys are pointing guns at one another in deadlock. The bells, at last, fell silent, and Rita Fan officially, and for the first time in Legco history, canceled the scheduled meeting. About a half-hour later, the democrats held a press conference. The dais wasn't big enough to hold all of them, so a few, including Long Hair, sat in front by the microphones while the others formed two ranks in back, like students posing for a class picture. I was expecting Long Hair to deliver a statement, but instead he suddenly rose and gave up his place in the front to Margaret Ng, a veteran legislator and one of the democracy advocates he told me he most trusted and admired. He then uncharacteristically slipped into the back row, as Emily Lau, acting as the spokeswoman for all the democrats, explained their actions. Lau, collegially, made a point to mention Long Hair by name, and to acknowledge it was he who had started the protest with his petition to Rita Fan. After the press conference a happy Long Hair invited me out for coffee. ''Not bad for a second-former, eh?'' he said jubilantly, trotting at full speed across a four-lane street against the light. ''I am singing.'' His lobbying had galvanized the democrats to move on their consciences, take action and break the rules. This time, for the first time in Legco, he didn't stand alone. Daisann McLane is a journalist who lives in New York and Hong Kong. She is working on a book about Cantonese language and culture. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project. http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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