It’s not quite yet Halloween, but pro-democracy Hongkongers have already gotten into the spirit of things with a “ghoulish” get up.
Occupy Central supporters have shared photos or Photoshopped images of themselves or others with a yellow strip of paper with the words “I Want Real Universal Suffrage” stuck to their forehead.
If you’ve watched enough horror films, or older (1970s-1990s) Hong Kong kung fu flick, you'll recognize that the Occupy Central protesters and supporters are re-purposing the yellow strips as the talisman plastered to the foreheads of jiangshi, a type of Chinese undead ghoul that has traits of both Western zombies (stiff movement, “mindless” behavior) and vampires (feeding off a living person’s live essence).
Indeed, despite the Hong Kong government’s best efforts to quash expressions of democratic sentiment, just like the latest “Chinese ghoul” meme, the spirit of democracy simply returns to “haunt” them.
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