There is a word in Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines, that has no easy translation in English. If you ask someone what it means, they will pause. You will see their face light up, as they struggle to act out its meaning. They will scrunch up their shoulders and hug themselves. “It gives you goosebumps,” they will say, “or butterflies.” The closest explanation I’ve been given for this word – kilig – is “love feeling”.

For the entertainment industry in the Philippines, kilig is an important, and highly marketable, feeling. It is this sensation, and the national appetite for romantic tales, that fuels the careers of “love teams” – pairs of young men and women who will co-star in rom-coms, sing in duets and promote merchandise based on their romantic chemistry. This chemistry, which is manufactured and played up to, often leads to real relationships, further cementing the popularity of the couple involved after “will-they-won’t-they” marketing campaigns.

Love teams are put together by management companies or matched by the public after displaying a spark on a reality show. The public then gives them portmanteau names, like KimErald (Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson), or ShaGab (Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion). The most successful love teams are supported by committed fan clubs, their hundreds of thousands of members brought together by online networks.


For Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, these fan clubs can provide a valuable connection to home. “When I started working in Hong Kong, I was alone here,” says Manell Magadia*, admin of KathNiel Dreamers HK, a love team fan club based in Hong Kong. “But then I found the Hong Kong chapter of the main [KathNiel] fan club, and I met other members through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. We met on social media, but we are real friends. We go to meetups once a month, and we have real relationships, like sisters.”

Magadia is a longtime fan of KathNiel, the love team consisting of actor and pop star duo Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla. She arrived in Hong Kong from Batangas City in the Philippines in 2014, employed under Hong Kong’s Domestic Worker Contract. Under the contract, she lives with her employer and works six days a week, undertaking domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning and caring for a young child.

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“The whole day we are so stressed and exhausted,” says Magadia. “But then, at the end, we lie in our beds and watch videos of KathNiel. Just looking at their photos makes us feel better. It’s our medicine.”

According to Hong Kong charity Enrich, there are over 370,000 domestic workers in Hong Kong, of which 190,000 are from the Philippines. They are mostly women, many of whom have left their children behind in order to support their families. For their work, the contract guarantees them a monthly wage of HKD 4,410 (about £422).


Phoebe Ewen of Hong Kong-based NGO The Mekong Club, which advocates preventing and rescuing victims of modern slavery, says that many domestic workers in Hong Kong could be considered to be in “bonded labour”. A 2016 report from human rights NGO The Justice Centre states, “Migrant domestic workers are uniquely vulnerable to forced labour because the nature of their occupation can blur work-life boundaries and isolate them behind closed doors.” The report estimated that 80 per cent of Hong Kong’s domestic workers were being exploited.

Around a table covered in KathNiel merchandise at the Hong Kong University campus, Magadia and other fan club members describe how their Facebook Messenger group chat helps them bypass a sense of isolation. While it exists primarily to share photos and videos of KathNiel, and any resulting feelings of kilig, it has an important side function as an information network, making it a powerful tool for any member in moments of need.

When I ask for an example, the KathNiel Dreamers look grave. “Termination,” says Magadia, referring to the sudden end of a contract. In Hong Kong, if a domestic worker’s contract is terminated, even if she is not at fault or has reason to accuse her employer of unfair practices, she has only two weeks before she must leave the city. The UN has condemned this rule, and called for it to be repealed.

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“Last year, someone was terminated suddenly and needed to find another employer,” says Magadia. “Someone in the group was able to find her a job within the two weeks. Someone might say ‘Let me introduce you to my agency’ or, ‘Let me do some research for you’. Another friend just finished her old contract and found a new one through the chat.”

The KathNiel Dreamers meet on Sundays, when most domestic workers in Hong Kong get their day off, and when the networks within the community become most visible. Often unable to socialise in their small personal spaces in their employer’s homes, workers take to the city’s public spaces, marking out their zones with tents and cardboard and transforming the streets into a glorious fiesta of personal expression.

In Central, traditionally the turf of the Filipino community, thousands of women gather in groups, displaying micro-versions of Philippines-wide culture through dance, song, religious activities, competitions and the sharing of food. These groups may be organised loosely, with friends inviting friends, or they may come together because of a shared home district, church, or interest in activist groups and NGOs.

In recent years, the emergence of love team fandoms in the Philippines has been mirrored on the streets of Hong Kong, as fan clubs, wearing matching uniforms and holding banners, become more prominent at the Sunday gatherings. It was at a gathering in 2015 that I first came across the phenomenon of love team fandoms, when I met a group of women huddled around a banner that read ‘We Love JaDine’. They were the JaDine Lovers HK – fans of the hugely popular love team James Reid and Nadine Lustre.

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When they can’t meet in person, fan clubs stay in touch via social media groups. The Philippines is one of the biggest users of social media in the world, in part because of the large number of overseas workers who need to stay in touch with loved ones. Michael Manio, founder of Hong Kong University’s Domestic Workers Empowerment Project, says that, in recent years, social media and smartphones have changed the experiences of domestic workers in Hong Kong for the better. Through his programme, he has seen women who have suffered abuse escape their situations by reaching out to online networks. Above all, he says, modern technology allows for an instant portal to home.

“Twenty years ago, women had to use voicemail or letters to contact home. It was too slow. Now, if they have a problem, they can call home straight away,” says Manio, who came to Hong Kong from the Philippines in 2010 on a PhD scholarship. “Because of all the platforms today, we feel that our family and friends are within our reach. Even if they are not physically present, it gives us Filipinos a sense of joy, despite some hardships, because we believe our family back home are happy and soon we will all be reunited physically.”

The separation of families is a by-product of a labour export policy in place in the Philippines since the 1970s. Around 2.3 million Filipinos work abroad, with remittances making up over 10 per cent of GDP in 2016. In the same year, a New Yorker article estimated that nine million children in the Philippines were missing a parent to the overseas workforce. As of 2014, the number of Filipino women taking overseas contracts began to outnumber men, in part because of the demand for female domestic workers. In Hong Kong, where many of these women spend their days caring for other people’s children, the distance can be agonising.

Inay Reyes, an admin of the MayWard Flyers HK, the fanclub for Maymay Entrata and Edward Barber, wrote to me on Facebook: “As a domestic helper, I am not just physically stressed but emotionally stressed as well, and one big reason is homesickness. MayWard helps me with this. They make me laugh, they inspire me – Maymay specially, ‘cause she reminds me of my eldest daughter.”

Love teams in the Philippines have been generating kilig since as far back as the 1920s, when the actors Mary Walter and Gregario Fernandez shared billings in films such as Desperation and Ang Lumang. In the 1990s, the Olivier and Tony-award-winning actress Lea Salonga began her career in the love team LeAga, with Aga Muhlach. While they never dated in real life, a “love letter” written by Muhlach to Salonga went viral in 2013, demonstrating how the internet has reignited and redefined public interest in love teams.

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A JaDine Lovers member shows off some merch Emma-Lee Moss

In the age of social media, it’s not just the love teams, but their fans, who are in the spotlight. If a fandom is deemed not active enough by a management company, a love team may be broken up and reassigned to new partners. The activity of a fandom can also dictate a love team’s touring schedule. For KathNiel, this meant scheduling their 2017 trip to Hong Kong to meet the KathNiel Dreamers on a Sunday, to make sure their fans could attend. Meanwhile, the MayWard Flyers HK and JaDine Lovers HK continue to advocate for their idols to appear in Hong Kong, and bring a little slice of home to the district.

Ricky Ilacad, chairman of the major record label MCA/AMG Philippines, to which the love team JereBela (Jeremy Glinoga and Isabela Vinzon) is signed, says that love team fandoms allow overseas fans the opportunity to feel at one with their kabayan, or countrymen. “It’s great these days, because we get to connect with Filipinos even if they are far away. Like the workers in Hong Kong, or in Saudi Arabia [another key destination for migrant workers]. Some of them only get to go home after two years, or they live abroad and come back once in a while. But we know they are engaged because we see it online.”

To Ilacad, love teams are all about promoting positivity. “They uplift people, make them feel good,” he says. He credits “the kilig factor” for adding a layer of magic to the entertainment, especially, as often happens, when a duo falls in love outside of work. “It’s very genuine,” says Ilacad, when asked if he has any cynicism about the relationships that have arisen out of love team campaigns. “They’re all together most of the time, in shows, in movie tapings, commercials. It’s you two and no one else, so you fall in love.”


Back at the university, the KathNiel Dreamers try to describe the appeal of kilig one more time. “Maybe it’s because I’ve never been in love,” jokes one member, while Magadia adds, “We’ve already been married, some are even separated. We love to see two people at the beginning of their life together.”

To me, it seems that kilig takes on even more power when transported from the Philippines to Hong Kong. Love team fandoms become about more than shared interests. Under the umbrella of this uniquely modern, Pinoy phenomenon, the fan clubs shelter together against a city that is too often hostile to their needs, looking for something beautiful that nobody can explain.

*Names of fan club members have been changed