{"id":844795,"date":"2025-04-30T21:11:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T02:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/hong-kongs-kai-tak-sports-park-launch-a-landmark-that-filled-me-with-pride\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T21:11:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T02:11:58","slug":"hong-kongs-kai-tak-sports-park-launch-a-landmark-that-filled-me-with-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/hong-kongs-kai-tak-sports-park-launch-a-landmark-that-filled-me-with-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong\u2019s Kai Tak Sports Park launch a landmark that filled me with pride"},"content":{"rendered":"<section data-qa=\"GenericArticle-Content\">\n<p>As an invited guest at <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/hong-kong\/society\/article\/3300668\/live-hong-kongs-kai-tak-sports-park-opens-finally-after-20-years-making?module=top_story&#038;pgtype=homepage?module=inline&#038;pgtype=article\" title data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\"><span data-qa=\"Component-Text\">the two-hour opening<\/span><\/a> extravaganza at the main stadium of Hong Kong\u2019s newest landmark, Kai Tak Sports Park, I found myself exclaiming a few times and swinging through a range of emotions during the opening ceremony, not least during the moment Andy Lau Tak-wah, one of the \u201cFour Heavenly Kings\u201d of Cantopop, appeared on stage.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\">I gasped, first with delight at the film star\u2019s cameo, and then with a murmur of disappointment when he departed the stage after just three minutes without singing a single song.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\">I was astonished to see my mother\u2019s silver idols, 77-year-old George Lam Tsz-Cheung and his 63-year-old wife Sally Yeh Chen-ven, singing a medley of Cantopop hits from the 1980s and 90s, with Yeh dancing like a teenager.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\">At that point, the music was so loud and the lighting so bright that I wished I had a pair of ear plugs and sunglasses with me. The massiveness of the space and its acoustics could be overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\">Later, I was more than a little bemused to see Olympic table tennis champion Fan Zhendong and local paddler Doo Hoi-kem thwack balls at each other using ridiculously big bats in a bizarre clown version of ping pong.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\">And then I found myself literally feeling the heat and exclaiming as spectacular plumes of fire flared towards the retractable rooftop in my first experience of an indoor pyrotechnics display at a tremendous scale.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<p> Leigha Drews <br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/hong-kong\/hong-kong-economy\/article\/3300717\/hong-kongs-kai-tak-sports-park-launch-landmark-fills-me-pride?utm_source=rss_feed\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an invited guest at the two-hour opening extravaganza at the main stadium of Hong Kong\u2019s newest landmark, Kai Tak Sports Park, I found myself exclaiming a few times and swinging through a range of emotions during the opening ceremony, not least during the moment Andy Lau Tak-wah, one of the \u201cFour Heavenly Kings\u201d of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":844796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2124,192],"tags":[15477,6810],"class_list":{"0":"post-844795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kongs","8":"category-sports","9":"tag-kongs","10":"tag-sports"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}