Hawick Lau's New Romance Sparks an Eight-Year Divorce Reckoning
A single bowl of rice noodles, split between two people at a roadside stall, has become the most talked-about meal in Chinese entertainment this week. Hong Kong paparazzi photographed actor Hawick Lau, 52, hand in hand with a younger model identified in local reports as Lai Kiki, walking to a badminton court, eating a cheap bowl of mixian noodles together and, in one widely shared detail, sharing a backpack strap along the way. The images landed on 20 October and sent Lau back into mainland headlines for the first time in years.
What gave the story its charge was the timing. On the same day, his ex-wife Yang Mi, 40, was appearing at Milan Fashion Week to promote a new drama, cycling through several haute couture looks and dominating social media chatter. The two divorced in 2018, and Chinese outlets have spent the week framing the coincidence as a study in diverging paths: one former spouse climbing ever higher in the mainland’s celebrity hierarchy, the other living a quieter life back in Hong Kong.
Lau’s retreat was, by most accounts, deliberate. After the divorce he stepped away from the glossy leading-man roles that made him famous in mainland dramas and returned to Hong Kong, where he has focused on stage work and on being present for his daughter’s school runs. Fans who once called him washed-up, the coverage suggests, may have misread a choice as a decline. The shared noodles and the badminton date read less like a comeback bid than the ordinary rhythm of a man who opted out of the rat race.
The story also revived a familiar genre of Chinese celebrity writing: the divorce retrospective. Outlets contrasted Yang Mi’s packed schedule and fashion-week glamour with Lau’s low-key Hong Kong routine, and the phrase “eight years” did most of the emotional work. Neither party has commented publicly on the new relationship, and the model’s identity rests largely on paparazzi captions rather than any confirmed statement.
Meanwhile, the internet did what it always does with a celebrity romance: it dug up old interviews. A resurfaced clip of actress Zhao Liying being asked whether kissing scenes on set cause physical reactions went viral again, with her blunt reply that it is work, not romance, and that any reaction would more likely come from the male co-star. Another old clip showed Yang Mi joking that she eats garlic before kissing scenes so nobody can get too invested. The two answers, one earnest and one mischievous, were held up as a small masterclass in handling awkward questions.
There was also a nostalgic thread running alongside the gossip. A reunion dinner of the cast of The First Half of My Life, the 2017 drama about a woman rebuilding her life after divorce, brought actress Ma Yili back into view. Photos posted by producer Huang Lan showed the cast gathered again, and commenters seized on how much Ma’s appearance and manner had changed since the show aired, reading a kind of serenity into her short hair and plain styling.
Taken together, the week’s chatter says less about any one star than about how Chinese audiences consume celebrity. A model’s new boyfriend, a garlic-eating anecdote and a cast reunion all become parables about aging, ambition and what a good life looks like after a public split. For Lau, the noodles were probably just lunch. For everyone else, they were a headline.