Leaked Receipt reveals Andy Lau’s secret to looking 20 years younger

A receipt leaked online may have spilled the beans on how Andy Lau manages to look 20 years younger than he is. No, it’s not a bill for a medical procedure or cosmetic surgery. Instead, it’s a receipt of a meal eaten by the 59-year-old Hong Kong actor in late November 2020. The menu is strictly vegetarian – and a costly one at that. 

The receipt, dated November 26, circulated on Chinese social networking platform Weibo in early December. Marked on the receipt was, “Solely vegetarian food only, Andy Lau’s personal meal”.

It seemed to be the actor’s food when he attended the Golden Rooster Film Venture Capital Conference. Lau was a judge for the conference. 

Lau’s vegetarian meal isn’t exactly your usual salad. Some netizens were quick to note that the menu was quite exquisite. And it came with a hefty price tag to boot.

According to the image, the concessionaire prepared five vegetarian dishes for Lau. These are mushroom soup, Taiwanese vermicelli, steamed pumpkin with chestnuts, stir-fried Chinese yam with fungus, and a stew of bamboo shoots.

The menu gave fans an excellent idea of what the actor eats on the regular. This may have a lot to do with how the almost-60-year-old actor manages to look so young.

A Family of Vegetarians

Lau, who is one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop together with Jacky Cheung, Aaron Kwok, and Leon Lai, has been a proud vegetarian for several years now. 

During the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2011, Lau celebrated his birthday in advance with his family, friends, and hundreds of fans. He treated his guests to an all-vegetarian banquet, possibly introducing meat-eaters to his healthy but delicious diet.  

Lau explained that his wife, Malaysian beauty queen Carol Chu, has been a vegetarian for more than a decade. Lau found it practical to follow suit.

“My daughter is (vegetarian), and so is my wife, so if I were to be the only one who isn’t, wouldn’t that be strange?” he said.

When the actor’s daughter, Hanna, was born in 2012, Lau took time off his showbiz career to focus on being a father. Looking after Hanna also involved preparing vegetarian meals for his bundle of joy. 

“The nanny we hired was not vegetarian, so I had to be in charge of the vegetarian meals for my wife and daughter,” Lau said in an interview then. “I wanted to ensure that the entire family had a clean and wholesome diet.”

Vegetarian and Proud of It

Lau, directly and indirectly, endorses the healthy but delicious diet to his fans. In fact, PETA Asia selected him as “the sexiest vegetarian male artist” in 2015. 

In 2019, the actor also appeared as a guest in a Chinese variety show, where he introduced the audience to his favorite vegetarian restaurant.

Some speculate that Lau’s promotion of the vegetarian diet was ingrained when he became a disciple of Master monk Miao Lian. 

“One person is vegetarian, and the other is peaceful; everyone in the world is vegetarian, and the whole world is peaceful,” Miao Lian once said.