Emerging from anxiety: Karen Kong on her Hong Kong low point, faith and repairing relationships
A 2022 Sing Pao “恩雨有晴天” feature produced with Showers of Blessing traces Karen Kong’s path from childhood singing contests and her Malaysian debut to the turns her career took in Taiwan and Hong Kong. After a Hong Kong record company closed, she still chose to return on a one-way ticket. With no family or close friends nearby, dwindling savings and the burden of handling her independent career alone, she developed severe anxiety. Karen also describes how Chiu Tsang Hei offered her work during this low period and how Christian singers including Gary Lau and Corinna Chamberlain helped reconnect her with faith. In her account, the change that followed involved not only her emotional state but also taking responsibility for past resentment and repairing relationships with her former boss, family and friends.
From a childhood contest win to a Malaysian debut
Karen says she loved singing from the age of four. She once asked her mother for the ten-ringgit entry fee for a singing contest and went on to win first prize. She grew up attending church, learned English hymns, listened to Mandarin and English pop, and also made an effort to sing Malay songs. At university she won a national inter-college singing competition and was discovered by the music industry. Her father worried about her entering entertainment too early and asked her to finish university first, so Karen completed an accounting degree before formally debuting. She recalls an unusually smooth start: two records in her first year, a nomination for Malaysia’s best female singer, and later opportunities in Taiwan, including a Mandarin album and reality and challenge-format programmes.
After “a voice from heaven”: returning to Hong Kong on a one-way ticket
Karen recalls that during a Hong Kong singing competition, Chiu Tsang Hei described her voice as coming “from heaven.” The encouragement convinced her that Hong Kong could be a good place for her career. She subsequently joined a Hong Kong record company, but it soon closed and she had to return to Malaysia. Still determined to pursue Hong Kong, she clashed with her former company over that choice. In the interview she admits she felt disrespected and reacted impulsively, buying a one-way ticket and returning to Hong Kong alone with her luggage and a guitar. Looking back, she says the decision was not a mature one.
Isolation, financial pressure and worsening anxiety
Life in Hong Kong proved far harder than she expected. With no relatives or close friends nearby, Karen spent many nights alone. She later formed her own company and worked as an independent singer, creating and releasing music while handling almost everything herself. As her savings ran down, her anxiety intensified: she would wake in the middle of the night crying, feel suffocated and nauseous in lifts, and suddenly experience panic while waiting to cross the road. She also said that intense anger could trigger eczema across her body. Despite this, she did not regret coming to Hong Kong and said she did not want to give up once she had made the decision. Her father told her by phone that she could always come home if she was exhausted, which she found deeply moving.
Chiu Tsang Hei offers work during a low point
With her emotional difficulties unresolved and her savings nearly gone, Karen had decided she would take almost any job she could find, whether in a supermarket or a 24-hour convenience store. During a conversation with Chiu Tsang Hei, he instead offered her work at his company helping with music. Karen expresses strong gratitude for that opportunity and says she learned a great deal from him. The job did not immediately remove every difficulty, but it gave her a practical foothold both financially and within music.
A singers’ fellowship and returning to faith
Karen says her emotional state was still not fully settled. Before a television performance, Gary Lau and Corinna Chamberlain noticed how nervous she was, prayed for her and later invited her to join a Christian singers’ fellowship. She accepted quickly because she felt physically and emotionally exhausted and knew she had been distant from her faith for a long time. She describes experiencing Christian love through the group and being moved by what she read in the Bible. In her own account, as faith again became part of her life, her inner distress and anxiety gradually improved, and the suffocating feeling in lifts and her eczema stopped recurring.
Repairing relationships and lightening the emotional load
Returning to faith also led Karen to think about forgiveness in both directions—not only what others had done to her, but whom she herself had hurt. She recognised that her impulsiveness had wounded her former boss and family, and that carrying bitterness had affected friends around her. She therefore contacted people one by one and tried to repair those relationships. Karen says she felt much lighter afterwards, comparing it to removing many heavy objects from a loaded backpack. The interview closes with her sharing Matthew 6:33, framing the story as one that connects career disruption, anxiety, renewed faith and deliberate repair of relationships.