Public Eye | Hong Kong husbands get a bit on the other side

Public Eye won't pour scorn on legislator Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee. Others have already done it. Besides, chivalry requires that we not kick a lady when she is down. But Ip's bizarre claim that Filipino domestic helpers use sex to seduce their expatriate bosses away from their wives made us think of mainland women. Many would agree mainland women are in a league of their own when it comes to seducing helpless Hong Kong men, married or unmarried. There are, of course, no statistics on how many Hong Kong men have been seduced by beauties across the border but anecdotal evidence suggests there are far more rich locals with mainland mistresses than there are expat bosses who dump their wives for their maids. Even disgraced former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan kept a Shanghainese mistress. The only difference is that cheating locals play the game differently. They slip across the border for hanky-panky with their kept women - sometimes with the unspoken acquiescence of their mahjong-loving wives - but marriages and families stay intact whereas unfaithful expats, according to Ip, ditch their wives for their helpers. We don't know if maids are really seducing their sirs but to the expat tai tais who have moaned to Ip we say this: fight back if your man is worth fighting for and fight dirty. By that we mean body workouts, dieting, sexy lingerie, and, dare we say, even Botox if necessary. All's fair in love and war.

Public Eye is still trying to get our head around this: don't Filipino maids belong to Hong Kong's dark-skinned underclass of Nepalese, Pakistanis, Indonesians and Indians, who are derisively classified as ethnic minorities? And aren't expats worshipped as the superior class? So how come maids from the underclass are able to seduce their expat bosses away from their superior-class wives, as Regina Ip claims? Is Public Eye missing something or is sex colour blind?