WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1989: Three days after the Tiananmen Square massacre, hundreds of thousands of people are marching in Queen's Road, Central. Walking among the crowds is a long-haired, tall woman, waving banners and chanting the slogan 'slaughtering the city is a crime'. She is a factory worker with little knowledge of politics but, upset and angry about the killing of students, she has taken to the street for her first protest.
She notices a man with long hair like hers, also shouting slogans. 'He shouted the loudest and the most violently,' she says. She strikes up a conversation with him. 'Not all the Government says is right, we can have our own views,' he tells her. They become friends.
Twelve years pass and the man, Leung Kwok-hung, known as 'Long Hair', is a high-profile pro-democracy activist and co-founder of the April 5th Action Group. The woman is Lui Yuk-lin, 40, who embraced the protest scene in 1995 when she joined a sit-in for the release of Chinese dissident Wang Dan and went on to become a regular fixture at the group's protests. She has been dubbed 'lui cheung mo' or 'Female Long Hair' by the media. Security guards at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and police call her 'Lin Tse', or Madam Lin.
Of all Hong Kong's protesters she is notorious for yelling the loudest, climbing fences and using her long ponytail as a weapon, whipping it around so police can't grab her by the neck. Some jokingly refer to her as 'Long Hair's Sister'; others say they are lovers. The truth is that since Lui became the media's protest pin-up girl, she and Leung rarely talk. When I tell Leung that I am working on a profile of Lui, he is silent. Asked if he is jealous of the media attention she receives, he retorts: 'Why should I be jealous? It is nonsense, I have nothing to say.'
I ask him about her background and he mutters: 'She is not a close friend.' I tell him I have heard she is an educated feminist from Canada. 'Of course not,' he says.
The rumour couldn't be further from the truth. Lui can't tell you about the democratic movements in Hong Kong or China. She doesn't know what the Bill of Rights is. Asked what the Taleban is, she replies: 'Like Beijing of China, it is a capital.' Before a protest outside the Legislative Council last year, she asked a photo-grapher to help her write 'To Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa', on a petition. 'Actually, I can't write,' she confessed. Later, she says she can only read and write simple Chinese characters. When she is asked what her agenda is, she replies: 'I want to overturn the mistakes of June 4, 1989, to find out who did it and why, and to make people responsible for it apologise and compensate the families.'
