Hong Kong couple tell the story of their romance – the first date, the first kiss, the marriage proposal
- In the first in a series of interviews, US-born Marsha Yuan and her Moroccan-born fiancé Mehdi Elajimi tell us how they met via a dating app
- The couple, who will be married this month, can’t wait to have a family – including a dog, if they can resolve whether it should be big or small
How they met. The first date. The first kiss. The proposal. In a new series, we talk to couples in Hong Kong – young, old, multi-faith, multi-racial, LGBT – about their relationships and the obstacles to love they’ve overcome, whether personal or political.
First up are US-born Marsha Yuan (she was raised in Los Angeles and studied musical theatre at New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy) and Mehdi Elajimi, her Moroccan-born investment banker fiancé who spent most of his life in France.
Yuan is many things – singer, pole dancer (she won the 2008 International Pole Dance Championship in Manila), yoga teacher and 1st runner-up in the Miss Hong Kong 1999 pageant (she represented Hong Kong and China in the 1999 Miss World Pageant in London).
She is also an actress, having starred in TVB sitcoms such as War of the Genders and popular movies such as Men Suddenly in Black. It’s in her blood (her mother is famous Chinese actress Cheng Pei-pei, best known internationally for playing Jade Fox in the 2000 hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
Marsha recently portrayed unlucky-in-love Mimi in the play Hong Kong Love Stories. But off stage she’s lucky in love and on February 22, after dating for two-and-half years, Marsha and Mehdi will take their relationship to the next level by tying the knot at the Aberdeen Marina Club.