'A Drink That Karens Hate' - The Real Story Behind Fok Hing Gin

News broke across the world for local Hong Kong brand gin company, Fok Hing Gin, in mid-November, for unexpected reasons.

A PR release published online on Nov. 11 by Portman Group, a U.K. trade body composed of British alcoholic beverage producers and brewers, read that a recent complaint made by a member of the public was upheld against Fok Hing Gin, in relation to the drink’s name “causing serious or widespread offense.”

The complaint was made by a “Karen,” as the people behind Fok Hing Gin allude to, who lodged her suggestion of the brand changing their name in July 2021.

Every major British newspaper jumped on the story like a rat at a buffet. The South China Morning Post, Tatler, and Coconuts touched the story here in Hong Kong, and the news found itself to Chinese, Indian, and Spanish outlets.

The Karen in question, an anonymous licensing officer living in the U.K., grew furious at the idea of Fok Hing Gin being named with the “inten[t] to shock,” her complaint bordered on cultural insensitivity.

She wrote, “despite claims this is a Hong Kong language term meaning good luck – it’s obvious the intention is to shock and offend those who find swearing undesirable and unacceptable.”

“Personally,” she claimed, “I wouldn’t want to see this product on family supermarket shelves or being promoted in an environment where children have access – such as most social media sites.”

Prior to the media frenzy surrounding the Karen story, benefitting Fok Hing Gin’s worldwide image, the idea for the gin began four years ago when the owner, Paul Harper-Cox, was working late nights and said, “I need a f*cking drink.”

Paul created and founded Fok Hing Gin last year under founded Incognito Group, a start-up group in Hong Kong.

“Whilst Hong Kong is known for so much, a tourist hotspot, a crazy city, beautiful hills, massive trading port, it’s not known as a gin-making city,” Holly Fok said, brand representative of Fok Hing Gin.

“Fok Hing Gin was a project for us to join the modern Hong Kong Chinese culture that we live and breathe every day and the colonial British history that the city is known for.”

The name of the gin was inspired by Fuk Hing Lane in Causeway Bay, a 45-metere long small alley that stretches from Jardine’s Bazaar and the famous Jardine Cres street market. It is a wide thoroughfare that houses a cha chaan teng, a couple of stalls selling tourist items and fabrics, and four noodles' stores.

Whilst the street has no former colonial beer-brewing history, the team at Fok Hing Gin decided to use the street name for inspiration of the brand as an ode to the history of Causeway Bay and the English translation of the street name.

The name “Fok Hing Gin” is an English romanization of traditional Chinese, which translates to fortune and prosperity. When pronouncing “Fok Hing” in Cantonese, it should sound like “Fuk Hing,” as written in the Cantonese Jyutping, the modern writing system for Cantonese.

“In Hong Kong, there are so many street names [that are named after the Chinese for fortune, good luck, prosperity, wealth], why not [use Fuk Hing Lane] as inspiration for our brand.”

As a result of the complaint lodged in July 2021, Fok Hing Gin had initiated consultations with the Portman Group during the summer; they agreed to update the gin’s reverse label describing the details of the name that inspired the gin from “Fuk” to “Fok,” to avoid using overtly offensive language and, inadvertently, avoiding pissing off any Karen’s in the process.

“[Paul] is British and really likes to romanticise and explore Hong Kong’s British colonial links with the city’s Chinese culture,” Holly explained.

The process of creating Fok Hing Gin takes place both in Sheung Wan, where the ingredients of the gin are procured, San Po Kong, where the gin is packed up for international orders, and Northampton, U.K., where the Asian spices meet British soil to enter the distillation process.

The journey of the gin begins on Hollywood Road, specifically at the 109-year-old Yuen Hang Spice Company, where the 10 base ingredients for making the gin, along with the jasmine green tea are purchased.

The gin has tea-based flowers from the jasmine green tea flavouring, along with a Szechuan pepper aftertaste. “We wanted to bridge British and Hong Kong tea-drinking culture.”

The Asian botanical ingredients are then shipped over 9,000 kilometres to their distillery in Northampton to begin the distillation process.

To celebrate the British-Hong Kong connection, the gin’s website even states that “Hong Kong and Great Britain will forever be connected, bit - not just in the history books, but now in gin too.”

Each month, 250 bottles are shipped back to Hong Kong from the East Midlands distillery, to ensure quality. As demand increased in the spring of 2021, Fok Hing Gin amped up sales in Hong Kong six months ago, scaling back in Hong Kong, which allowed the company to open their third market in Singapore.

“A lot of people do like us for the fortune and prosperity angle. Sometimes, people might misread and pronounce our name wrong; it makes them chuckle and laugh.”

Holly admits that Fok Hing Gin’s identity is as tongue-in-cheek as their marketing copy presents, “we are a gin that doesn’t take ourselves seriously, we are all about creating good times and experiential moments.”

Despite media and gin-drinking fandom in Hong Kong and worldwide, Holly says that running Fok Hing Gin has been a challenge initially. As a direct-to-consumer business, selling a product in the food and beverage business is hard when you are unable to taste or sample the drink beforehand.

With the name and British-inspired branding and labelling, “the product sells itself and we sell the moment to be enjoyed with friends.”

Fok Hing Gin has only been in business for a year and prides itself on being a premium gin that “doesn’t take [itself] too seriously.”

Besides the two larger independent gins in Hong Kong, Two Moons and NIP, catering to a local Hong Kong Chinese market, Fok Hing Gin taps into the older British and expat markets.

“With our online marketing, we have a lot of people who support our project, the identity, brand, and what we do. One in 10 hates our gin brand, the Karens, but we can’t produce a brand that everyone loves.”