Boy band Mirror ruining marriages, Hong Kong husbands claim

Hong Kong husbands are in distress.

A Facebook group titled “My wife married Mirror and left my marriage in ruins” has gone viral this week. Its members take issue with the Hong Kong boy band – whose 12 members, they claim, have stolen the hearts of their wives (and, in some cases, also the hearts of their mothers and sisters).

Set up on July 3, the Facebook “concern” group attracted more than 200,000 members in its first three days.

“I don’t hate Mirror, but I just feel that fellow men need a group to share our thoughts and feelings,” says the group’s administrator and moderator, whose username is Tcr Ch.

Mirror are a Canto-pop boy band formed through a reality-TV talent competition, Good Night Show – King Maker, that screened on ViuTV in 2018. Its 12 members – Keung To, Ian Chan, Anson Lo Hon-ting, Edan Lui Cheuk-on, Alton Wong Chi-tak, Anson Kong, Frankie Chan Siu-fai, Jer Lau, Jeremy Lee Chun-kit, Lokman Yeung, Stanley Yau and Tiger Yau – were selected after they beat another 99 male contestants who auditioned in the first season of the show.

Now their faces are ubiquitous: on advertising hoardings, TV shows, YouTube and, to the dismay of many Hong Kong married men, on the screens of many married women’s mobile phones and laptops.

Keung, the winner of the first season of Good Night Show , is probably Mirror’s best-known and most popular member; his is the name most frequently mentioned in comments by members of the Facebook concern group.

“If I fall into the water with Keung To, who will you save first?” a group member asks. One member (evidently not everyone in the group is a man) responded: “Of course, Keung To!”

“There is only one Keung To in the world, but you can always find another husband,” says another. Members have been warned not to raise this question with their wives – it would only further “worsen the relationship”.

This group’s “crisis” has extended to anxiety over the countless products that the group seem to be endorsing, notably cosmetics, that have found their way into married women’s shopping bags. One group member noted his wife’s purchasing habits showed her support of her idol Keung To.

One distressed group member begs mooncake companies not to include any of the young men in their promotional campaigns for this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival (in September) “because we cannot eat them all”.

Another fears that if luxury brands recruit the 12 band members as spokesmen or ambassadors, many husbands will be bankrupted. (Keung To was one of the ambassadors for Cartier’s “Make Your Own Path Live” online musical performance this year.)

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Some say there is light at the end the tunnel because ViuTV has announced it will form a female group in the next season of Good Night Show . Young women aged 16 or over can apply, and the deadline for registration is July 8.

“It’s time for us to get our revenge,” says one member of the Facebook group.

The launch date for the new season hasn’t been decided yet, but members of the concern group are already excited by the prospect they will be able to “change their smartphone’s wallpaper to the girl group”.

Meanwhile, three members of Mirror are getting even more exposure. The three – Anson Lo, Edan Lui and Stanley Yau – feature in ViuTV’s latest smash hit series, Ossan’s Love. An adaptation of the Japanese TV drama series of the same name, the show is about a romantic, or “boy love” relationship between three men, one of whom is married.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.