In Hong Kong, lesbian life has rarely announced itself with slogans or parades. Instead, it has learned to whisper, to joke, to blend into the city’s dense grammar of implication. One of the most locally rooted expressions of this is the “HeHe” lesbian scene—a Cantonese-coded way of naming desire, gender, and partnership that feels light on the surface and deeply strategic underneath.
“HeHe” (pronounced heh-heh, written 嘿嘿 or sometimes simply “HeHe”) is not a Western import, not an acronym, not a political identity in the capital-letter sense. It sounds playful, almost silly, the kind of word that could pass as nothing at all. That is precisely its power. To say someone is “HeHe” is to say she is not straight, without demanding a declaration, a coming-out speech, or a flag. It allows recognition without exposure. In a city where many people still live with parents well into adulthood, where housing is scarce and careers fragile, such linguistic softness matters.
The women who circulate in HeHe spaces often share a recognisable but understated look. This is not the hard-edged butch of Western lesbian mythology, nor the hyper-femme counterpoint that sometimes accompanies it. HeHe style leans soft-butch: short or neutral haircuts, loose shirts, jeans, sneakers, minimal makeup, a posture that signals quiet confidence rather than confrontation. It is a gender expression that reads, to outsiders, as practical or slightly tomboyish—well within the acceptable margins of Hong Kong femininity. Nothing about it screams rebellion, which is exactly why it works.
This soft-butch aesthetic is less about performance than survival. In offices, on the MTR, at family dinners, HeHe women can move through the city without constant explanation. Their queerness is visible enough to those who know how to read it, but deniable enough to everyone else. It is an identity calibrated to a place where being too legible can come at a cost.
Relationships within the HeHe scene tend to be intensely domestic. While Hong Kong’s gay male culture has long had visible nightlife anchors, lesbian spaces have been more fragile, more itinerant. As a result, many HeHe couples build their lives inward rather than outward. They live together as “roommates,” share rent, groceries, pets, and emotional labor, and quietly construct long-term partnerships that look, in every meaningful way, like marriages—except on paper.
Because same-sex partnerships have no full legal recognition, these domestic arrangements exist in a state of constant negotiation. Families may know but not name the relationship. Landlords may ask no questions. Employers may be told nothing. Hospitals, banks, and immigration forms remain potential fault lines. The home becomes not just a private space but a political one: the only place where the relationship is fully real.
Language plays a central role in maintaining this delicate balance. Cantonese is famously rich in tone, humor, and euphemism, and HeHe sits comfortably in that tradition. It can mean lesbian, queer, or simply “not straight, don’t push it.” It allows women to find one another through casual conversation, jokes, or sideways references. It also allows families to look away, preserving harmony without forcing denial into the open.
The social life of the HeHe scene mirrors this semi-visibility. Rather than relying on permanent lesbian bars—which struggle to survive in Hong Kong’s brutal rental market—HeHe networks flow through temporary or shared spaces. Women meet at mixed queer venues on women-friendly nights, at private house parties, through friends of friends, or online in tightly moderated groups. Cafés, gyms, hiking trails, creative workshops, and volunteer circles become sites of quiet connection. The scene is real, but it is deliberately low-volume.
What emerges from this is not a lack of culture, but a different kind of one. HeHe culture values discretion over declaration, continuity over spectacle. It is not that these women lack political awareness—many are deeply conscious of the legal and social limits placed on them—but that they choose tactics suited to their environment. Visibility, here, is selective. To outsiders, especially those accustomed to louder forms of queer expression, the HeHe scene can look frustratingly muted. But to understand it only through the lens of what it does not do is to miss its ingenuity. HeHe culture has allowed generations of women to love other women, to build stable lives together, and to remain embedded in family and work networks that might otherwise reject them.
In a city that prizes adaptability, efficiency, and understatement, the HeHe lesbian scene feels unmistakably local. It is queerness with a Hong Kong accent: pragmatic, coded, resilient. Not a revolution shouted from the rooftops, but a long-term occupation of everyday life—one shared apartment, one carefully chosen word, one soft-butch silhouette at a time.
I have so many HeHe friends in Hong Kong. And yes—before you ask—at least one ex-lover, I think. Possibly two. It depends how you define “dating,” which, in HeHe terms, can mean anything from sharing a toothbrush to emotionally co-parenting a cat for seven years while insisting you’re “just very close.”
This is the thing outsiders never quite get about HeHe culture: it’s not shy, it’s selective. My HeHe friends are not confused, closeted, or waiting to bloom into something louder and prouder. They know exactly who they are. They just don’t feel the need to announce it at brunch.
I’ve watched these women move through the city with a kind of elegant understatement. Short hair, clean sneakers, oversized shirts, an aura of calm competence. The soft-butch look that says, “I can fix your Wi-Fi and your life, but I’m not here to explain myself.” Families often adore them—“Ah, she’s so sensible”—while completely missing the fact that she’s been sharing a bed, a mortgage-sized rent, and an entire emotional universe with another woman for a decade.
And the relationships? Intense. Domestic. Serious in ways that would terrify half the men I’ve dated. HeHe couples do not play house; they run it. Bills paid, meals planned, aging parents negotiated, future contingencies quietly mapped out because the law will not catch them when they fall. Romance here is not about spectacle. It’s about logistics, loyalty, and showing up.
What I love most is the language. “HeHe” itself—playful, slippery, a little cheeky. A word that can pass through a family dinner unnoticed while carrying a whole secret life inside it. Cantonese is brilliant that way. It lets you say everything while pretending you said nothing.
Do I sometimes want to shake Hong Kong and scream, “These women deserve full legal recognition, yesterday”? Of course. Auntie is not allergic to a good protest. But I also respect the intelligence of a culture that has learned how to survive without burning itself out on constant visibility.
The HeHe women I know are not hiding. They are curating. Their lives are full, their loves real, their homes warm and very obviously shared if you’re invited inside. And if you’re not? Well, that’s kind of the point.
As for that ex-lover… if you’re reading this: yes, we were together. No, we don’t need to define it. Very HeHe of us, really.