IN A BARE training hall in Yuen Long, some youngsters practise taekwondo while their instructor prepares a lesson. There's little about his slight build and unassuming manner to suggest it, but Khadka Raju is a black-belt exponent of the Korean martial art.
Raju is also a member of Hong Kong's small Nepalese community, a vestige of the Gurkha troops garrisoned in the city when it was still under British rule.
But the former soldier, who came to the city with his Hong Kong-born wife, sees his job as more than just teaching self defence. Part of his responsibilities, he says, includes ensuring his students - mostly young Nepalese - stay out of trouble. That's why he's creating a safe environment at the club where they feel at home and meet positive role models.
'We're not only working for money. It's like social work,' says Raju, who has seen some of his students win gold medals at tournaments in South Korea. 'Other instructors, my friends, are trying to teach students about Hong Kong and the law. We're trying to stop them from getting into drugs and bad habits.'
Although the last operationally active Gurkha soldiers left in 1996, about 13,000 Nepalese live in Hong Kong. A significant number have settled in Yuen Long and Kam Tin - close to the former British military base in Sek Kong. The air in the sleepy neighbourhoods near Kam Tin is tinged with the aromatic waft of curry, while the strains of popular Bollywood dance tunes punctuate the rhythms of daily life, courtesy of a Nepali-run DVD shop.
The Nepalese began settling in Hong Kong in earnest in the mid-1990s, when Gurkha children born in the city before 1983 were belatedly granted permanent residency. According to the 2001 census, 45 per cent of the Nepalese community was born in Hong Kong. More than half of all Nepalese working men are employed in construction-related jobs.