Wednesday January 16, 2008 Hong Kong Steven Ma (馬浚偉) and Yumiko Cheng (鄭希怡) were joined by fellow cast members from TVB series The Gentle Crackdown II <秀才愛上兵>, including Wayne Lai (黎耀祥) and Ha Yu (夏雨) at a Thai boxing centre to promote the series, which will begin airing shortly. During some Thai boxing demonstrations, Steven was very gracious and let Yumiko win their bout, but judge Ha Yu declared it as a bad round. She revealed later that she has taken lessons in Thai boxing from Deep Ng (吳浩康) in the past, to try and keep fit, but she gave it up after a few lessons. Talking of the series being arranged to aired over the Chinese new year period and suggestions that it will be a "sacrifice" over the holiday peak season when viewers will be taking vacations away from Hong Kong, Yumiko said that she was still confident about the show, but added that the ratings were outside of her control. She added that she has done her best during filming and she hoped that the viewers will enjoy the series. Steven said that all series that are aired over the new year period face the same problems of low ratings every year, so he sees this has a reason to put less pressure on himself. He explained that this is a completely new story independent of the first Gentle Crackdown series that starred Niki Chow (周麗淇) and Moses Chan (陳豪) and he believed that the audience will not be disappointed. He also revealed tht this is the series that he has worked hardest for during filming because on one occasion, he worked through two consecutive nights and days, with only a short break for breakfast between shoots. credits: batgwa.
