I had been wondering what was bugging me about Leung Kwok Hing or ‘Long Hair’, the Trotskyite independent who recently won a seat in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (or Legco as it’s known). The man’s name is mentioned at least in passing in about 1/3 of all SCMP articles, be they on genocide in Darfur or the US Presidential elections, the South China Morning Post seems to manage some bizarrely tangential segue into a sentence that will, I personally guarantee, contain the words “Trademark Che Guevara T-Shirt”.
I have finally realized what ‘Long Hair’ is. He’s Rudy Wong. For the uninitiated, The World of Lily Wong was a Hong Kong satirical cartoon drawn by Larry Feign and printed in the SCMP, Standard and Malaysia Strait Times at different times during its lengthy run. It had some brilliant strips and captured Hong Kong life rather well, sending up everything from mobile phones (back when they were bricks with aerials and only Hong Kongers would buy them) to the Communist Party over in the mainland.
One of its central characters was Lily Wong’s layabout brother, Rudy. Rudy wore a ragged T-Shirt at all times and was seldom seen without a cigarette hanging limply from his mouth, perhaps accompanied by a can of beer. One of Feign’s running series of jokes was Rudy’s election to Legco, allowing the writer an excellent platform from which to brutally lampoon the entire institution and all the participants in Hong Kong political debate. I remember them clearly because I had something of a rabid appetite for political satire even at a young age and took great delight in finding a strip with my grandfather in it (for me, the highest accolade of his professional life) rebuking Rudy in his capacity as president, for singing in Legco, or more accurately for singing the wrong words to a song (his cartoon form corrects Rudy and gives him the correct lyrics, lest there be any semblance of actual legislative activity in Legco).
Anyhow, this post from Hemlock’s Diary on Leung Kwok Hing, was the source of this revelation.
Thanks to him, we can look forward to a refreshing new approach to sartorial style and deportment in the chamber, as he stumbles in late, tosses his cigarettes and can of beer on the table, pulls his sweaty T-shirt off and takes his seat with a satisfied burp.
Sounds like Rudy Wong to me.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at October 7, 2004 01:02 PM | TrackBack