Then & Now | How Hong Kong’s Gurkha soldiers found love – and a chance to choose – with Filipino domestic helpers
- The Gurkhas were part of the British army in Hong Kong, and their marriages were traditionally meant to be arranged by their families
- They started friendships and relationships with another group of migrant workers, Filipino domestic helpers, a choice that was impossible back in Nepal
Last week, we looked at “long-term temporary” romantic liaisons formed between Chinese women and British servicemen stationed in Hong Kong between the wars. Broadly similar relationships came into being in the 1980s and early ’90s, when an entire network of officially non-existent, yet nevertheless real, long-term connections evolved between hundreds – maybe thousands – of locally stationed British Army Gurkha soldiers and Filipino domestic workers.
As these connections demonstrated, individual members of migrant worker communities, separated for years – sometimes decades – from their own families, home countries and broader cultures, nevertheless managed, against unpromising odds, to find companionship, love and affection where large tracts of their working lives were spent.
Few civilian outsiders knew anything about their now-vanished parallel world.
Gurkha-Filipino relationships mostly started out from disco encounters, barbecues and through introductions by friends. English provided a common language of sorts, interspersed with mutually acquired Nepali and Tagalog words and phrases; sitting behind these couples on a bus or tram was always a linguistic revelation.
Inexpensive guest houses across Hong Kong did a roaring trade on Sundays, when both parties were usually off-duty. With nowhere else private to go, bookings were shared between couples; split costs reduced everyone’s overheads, and provided a base from which to go shopping, meet friends, or share a meal somewhere.
Sexism, inevitably, came into play; while the soldiers were jocularly regarded as “young men doing what young men do”, the women were, as ever, stereotyped as “no better than they ought to be”, and treated as such whenever encountered by disapproving eyes. Known in Nepali as sun dante – literally, “gold teeth” – this nasty label typecast the Filipino’s supposedly tenacious gold-digging capabilities, as well as any metal fillings she may have had.