Salute to youth: Martial arts master shines in boxing ring

Youth is all about passion, self-exploration and living life with no regrets.

Lau Kin-ngai, Occupational Therapy Assistant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, is a champion of Thai boxing. He won the Muay Thai championship in Hong Kong in 1992 and has been practising the martial art for nearly 40 years, overcoming pain, injury and fearsome opponents to stay in peak condition. He always encourages patients to overcome difficulties during the recovery journey with fighting spirit. He passes on priceless life lessons to patients who come to the hospital for rehabilitation and recovery, telling them: “Be a fighter and have a fighting spirit, then you can overcome difficulties and justify yourself.”

Lau’s passion for martial arts and boxing began when the influence of Hollywood movies like ‘Rocky’ and ‘Raging Bull’ captured public imagination in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s. He began with taekwondo at the age of 16, with emphasis on kicking techniques, before switching to boxing two years later. Lau finally diverted his energies to Muay Thai, a fast-paced sport that uses both kicking and punching. Lau was determined to compete the moment he first put on a pair of boxing gloves. “You have to seize the day and make the most of youth because you may have more hesitation when you get older,” he says.

To perfect his craft, Lau scrimped and saved to pay nearly HK$30,000 for three-month intensive training in Thailand at the age of 21. He worked at the sport every day and says what impressed him most was seeing so many local parents send their children to boxing boarding schools to train as fighters, knowing that becoming a champion was a way out of poverty.

Muay Thai is a sometimes brutal sport and injuries are unavoidable. Blackouts, broken nose, tendon and muscle injuries, with a thigh so swollen he could not put his boxing shorts on – Lau suffered them all but carried on. His gritty determination was rewarded when he was crowned Muay Thai Champion (bantamweight) in 1992 and won the title of ‘The Best Muay Thai Fighter’ from the Hong Kong Boxing Association in the same year. “Fighting in competitions reveals my capabilities, my standards, and my limitations,” he says. “You can simply fight a weaker opponent if you just want to win. But I fought stronger opponents to push my limits.”

Today, in his work in the Occupational Therapy Department, Lau passes on his fighting spirit to patients recovering from strokes or physical injuries, and understands the difficulty of recovering from injuries. When patients want to give up because of pain, he imparts the lessons Muay Thai taught him. “I often tell patients that pain is a kind of muscle reflex telling you it is possible to recover,” he says. “However, once you give up training, you will not recover. We should have the fighting spirit to justify ourselves. We should keep calm, be courageous, and persist, even at the lowest points, and situation will turn around.”

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