Former boss of British engineer suing Hong Kong company for discrimination admits calling him a ‘gweilo’, but says using foreigner would have sounded odd

The former boss of a British engineer who has accused his ex-employer of discrimination has admitted using the Cantonese slang “gweilo”, but said it was odd to call them foreigners in Hong Kong’s dialect.

Lai Chiu-nam told the District Court on Monday that the slang term – which translates as “ghost man” – was a colloquialism he used to describe white people in the city, such as the plaintiff, Francis William Haden.

Haden, a blasting specialist who also has Australia citizenship, is seeking damages and a written apology from Leighton Contractors (Asia) for alleged violation of the Race Discrimination Ordinance over an array of unwelcome gestures between August 2016 and February 2017 when he was working on a tunnel project, including the repeated use of the word by his then colleagues.

The project, which aims to bridge Tseung Kwan O and Lam Tin, was contracted to Leighton and China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) in a joint venture. Initially expected for operation in mid-2021, the completion date has since been pushed back by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lai, a China State employee, was assigned the role of an executive board member in January 2017 to oversee the works of engineers on the site, including Haden, who worked as a blasting manager.

Testifying on the first day of trial, Lai said the use of “gweilo” (pronounced gwhy-low) was prevalent in the workplace and, among all the foreigners he had partnered with, he had never seen anyone, including Haden, complain about it.