Foreign Domestic Helpers account for nearly half of Hong Kong’s total ethnic minority population and are therefore integral to any discussion of diversity in the postcolonial, global Chinese city. In Asia, discourses of diversity have evolved from the juncture of complex historical, political, and cultural factors including colonialism, postcoloniality, traditional and precolonial customs and values, religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as Western-derived liberal-democratic discourses of rights and citizenship. “Diversity” has been identified as one of the core values and attributes of the territory by the Hong Kong Government yet it is not a concept that is carefully interrogated and delineated. This essay examines discourses of diversity via analysis of a varied set of cultural representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers, including a television programme and advertisements, a work of short literary fiction, online erotic fiction, social media, as well as an example of multi-media artwork. Taken together, these representative forms provide insight into the cultural imaginary that shapes private and public discourse and perception. Using an approach informed by both cognitive linguistics and postcolonial studies, the essay focuses on metonymic techniques, for example, doubling and substitution to argue that representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers reveal the anxieties, fears, and desires of the dominant culture. The essay shows that the Foreign Domestic Helper becomes a critical figure around whom linked questions of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in the majority ethnic Chinese population of Hong Kong circulate.

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As 2016 Draws to a Close, the Most Hotly Debated Topic in Hong Kong is the Controversial Behavior of Two Newly elected legislators of a localist political party during their oath taking at the Legislative Council earlier this year. The proindependence advocates roused anger among mainland Chinese and local Hong Kong officials and citizens alike when they declared allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation” and pronounced “China” in a way that painfully echoed for many the derogatory pronunciation used by the Japanese forces that occupied Hong Kong in World War II. Ironically, in their attempts to lobby for the Hong Kong people's interests and right to self-determination, the legislators were accused of ignoring Hong Kong's history and disrespecting those who had perished during or survived those dark days. Subsequently, China's National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) issued an interpretation of Hong Kong's Basic Law that disqualified the pair from government service and preempted any ruling by a local Hong Kong court. This decision prompted thirteen thousand Hong Kong people to take to the streets in protest against what is widely perceived as the mainland's tightening of control over its special administrative region.

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