In the upside-down world of Hong Kong politics, it is only logical that Hong Kong's most famous democracy activist is a staunch Communist.
Leung Gwok Hung, known as "Long Hair" to his supporters, has a recent growing following. His name is a reference to a promise he has made not to cut his hair until the Chinese government apologizes for the crackdown on 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. His hair currently reaches halfway down his back, and there is no indication Beijing will be apologizing anytime soon.
Hung is a true independent in a political system where they are sorely lacking. Long Hair is a mainstay on television news and newspapers - billowing against injustice at an anti-government rally or giving a speech denouncing inequality.
Long Hair has been working for decades, but his profile grew substantially when he unexpectedly won a seat in Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LEGCO) as an independent. The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy profile on him, and the local South China Morning Post tracks his every move. Now he can be seen in the ironic position of yelling his anti-government sentiments inside the territory's seat of power.
The apparent contradictions are glaring. How can the self-described "Marxist revolutionary" work inside a capitalist, nominally democratic state? Long Hair shed some light on this question when he popped into Hong Kong University's library for a question-and-answer session with a couple hundred students.
The forum was a "book talk" conducted in English on his favorite book, The Communist Manifesto. Long Hair began the talk by declaring that he had not read the book in some time, and more crucially, never in English.
He was dressed in faded blue jeans, an open vest and his trademark Ch?© Guevara shirt. The Ch?© shirt is Long Hair's trademark: he is never seen in public without one. He has one in every color and wears them to LEGCO. At protests, he sometimes wears a custom-made shirt with Ch?©'s face on the front and the logo of the protesting organization on the back. His pulled-back hair and casual appearance made him look younger than his 48 years.
Rather than lecture with revolutionary passion, however, Long Hair spoke in a mannered voice about his history with The Communist Manifesto. He gave a detailed introduction to the text, showing an easy familiarity with key events in Marx's life and the aftermath of the failed European revolutions of 1848. He talked about the dream of eliminating inequalities and starting socialist state-inspired academics in Europe.
He blamed the decline of communism on its failure to develop once leaders had taken power. The Chinese were no longer communist, as they had embraced a capitalist system of economics. With the change in China, he said, the entire world had embraced a capitalist model.
Long Hair connected the democracy movement with his own desire for a communist revolution. "I believe it is difficult for any revolution to start here in Hong Kong," he said. Because of this situation, he was working towards the development of a democratic socialism that would work to end inequalities in the territory.
He dismissed Hong Kong's Acting Chief Executive Donald Tsang as a "yes-man" who focused on keeping the city's tycoons happy and making sure it was a safe place for investment. The ordinary citizens were left out of the equation, and Long Hair was working to make sure they were not forgotten.
The academic setting and English language may have taken much of the spirit out of the conversation, but Long Hair sprang to life at several points. He pondered what Marx would have theorized if he had time to finish his multi-volume work, Das Kapital, before "he went to heaven...or down to the hell."
When one student brazenly asked him to explain the differences between Marxism, socialism, Maoism and communism, he rolled his eyes. "It's like the difference between Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola," he quipped.
As he got into his answer, Long Hair admitted that he was a "little bit exhausted," and that his English was not good enough to explain the theoretical differences. Later he boasted that if he were allowed to answer in Chinese, he would be "10 times more fluent" in responding.
Long Hair never got around to reconciling the ordinary people's dependence on a capitalist system with communist government's preference for centrally-planned economies. He was also not able to clearly explain how exactly his goals of reviving communism on the mainland fit together with his support for the student democracy movement.
After a healthy round of applause and a group photo, Long Hair was off to another appointment. He left a group of students who, if they did not entirely agree with his theories, admired his dedication. The common reaction among people I spoke with was that they were happy to have seen the man behind the media coverage.
Even though Long Hair's ideas are not practical solutions to fix the economic and political inequalities in Hong Kong, it is possible that his dedication will serve as an inspiration to someone who has the correct vision. On Sunday he was marching in another protest, dressed in black and carrying black balloons to symbolize the "loss of color" stemming from Hong Kong's increasingly limited autonomy.
For Long Hair, the revolution never stops.
