Polygamy in the City

Go back two generations or so in Hong Kong, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know someone who married more than a few someones in their lifetime.

Turns out, polygamy — or polygyny, the practice of a husband taking multiple wives, to be precise — was alive and legal in Hong Kong up until 1971 and it wasn’t uncommon back then for prominent men to take up more than just one spouse.

A well-known example of this de facto way of life would be casino mogul Stanley Ho and his four “wives”. Although technically, Ho “married” wives number three and four after 1971, which goes to show how the age-old practice of polygamy is ingrained enough in Hong Kong culture to override even accepted legal definitions.