He's famed in Hong Kong for helping design its contribution to space discovery - tools for the Mir space station and European Mars missions. Ng Tze-chuen recalls in our new weekly series the highs and lows of 30 years working with celebrated scientists, battling bureaucracy ... . and being tailed by spies
A Russian security service agent greeted me when I stepped out of my Moscow hotel in 1994. He was to be my tour guide on my first and last trip to Star City, the nerve centre of the Russian space agency.
The Russian winter is nothing to sneer at, and the drive without heating on terrible roads took an hour. Our tiny black box of a 1940 Russian vehicle felt like it had no suspension and broke down soon after we set out. The driver used a crank like those used on antique motors to restart the engine.
Instead of feeling privileged at being the first Hong Kong citizen invited to the city, I felt more like a kidnapped Chinese scientist because my ever-friendly tour guide was eyeing every inch of me and my every move. To increase my discomfort, he and the driver smoked cheap cigars incessantly. I couldn't open a window - the winder was broken - so I was practically choking in a gas chamber by the time we reached the formidable gate to the city.
Inside the gate we were overtaken by a car carrying four grim-looking men in raincoats who didn't look any more welcoming than my 'tour guide'. 'Just what I need - more secret agents,' I thought. 'Now I am completely on my own. If I disappear now, no one would know where to find me. '
It turned out one of the men in the second car was Alexander Alexandrov, one of Russia's most famous astronauts. I greeted him politely but he just ignored me.
It had taken me years of effort and correspondence to get here. After watching a television documentary on laboratory work aboard a US space shuttle, I realised I could design much better tools. Based on a surgical forceps I had designed and patented for a German medical instruments maker, I designed instruments for use by astronauts in zero gravity. I drafted some early designs for use in outer space before there were any takers.