Mao Zedong: a life

"Typical of his mood at this time, Mao recalled later, was a manifesto he posted on the wall of his school that spring, suggesting that Sun Yat-sen be made president of China, with Kang acting as premier and Liang as foreign affairs minister. He joined in student demonstrations in Changsha angainst the Qing, and clipped off his own queue of hair as a symbol of his new reformist self. When student friends of his whom he had thought to be revolutionary sympathizers expressed reluctance to cutting off their own queues, Mao and another friend took their shears and forcibly chopped them off."

Jonathan Spence