“I had a room for the first time in my life and I wanted something for the wall. I wanted something quintessentially Hong Kong, so I picked the King of Kowloon,” he says.

The King of Kowloon, real name Tsang Tsou-choi, was a graffiti artist who used brush and ink to daub Chinese calligraphy on Hong Kong’s streets.

He began his work in 1956 and was initially considered a madman. However, by the 1990s he was recognised as an artist, and by the time of his death in 2007 he was an icon.

That first purchase piqued Lau’s curiosity in the art market. He began researching artists, visiting galleries and going to art studios.

“The art scene wasn’t that developed, and artists were a lot more accessible. I went to Fo Tan [an artists’ area in Hong Kong’s New Territories]. I learned about Hong Kong art and then Chinese art and collecting things I could connect to,” he says.

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Lau isn’t a fan of the term “art collector”, preferring “art lover”, and has proved to have a voracious appetite.

But he is much more than a man of means collecting pretty shiny things. He has a clear vision and strategy for what he’s doing and can articulate it well.

“All collectors have urgent stories to tell. For someone like me, born in the 1970s, who has lived in Hong Kong, worked in [mainland] China and seen the economic miracle, used start-up internet but also broadband and VR – there’s a Hong Kong story in me, a China story, and a technology story.

“Those are the three themes I collect. I feel they are urgent stories that I want to tell, and I have the experience to connect the dots.”

Keep in mind that until 20 years ago, Lau’s most significant encounter with art was Damien Hirst’s shark at London’s Saatchi Gallery. So the fact that he has not only built up an impressive art collection – much of it stored in a studio in Wong Chuk Hang – but can neatly explain his approach is impressive.

“I think of myself as someone who is putting together an archive rather than just an art collection,” he says. “When I look at an artwork and an artist, I’ll think of what stories they are trying to tell and how I interpret it through my own personal experience, and how that fits into the broader narrative of what I’m trying to say.”

That kind of talk doesn’t come from spending seven years in Shenzhen setting up the insurance business for Tencent, or heading up a US$6 billion blockchain company – the day jobs that have funded Lau’s passion.

It comes from spending quality time not just with artists but with the art establishment: the curators, museum directors, arts centre directors and academics who shape the art world.

A few years into his art collecting, Lau was at the 2009 Venice Biennale when he ran into some of the board members of Para Site, a contemporary Hong Kong arts centre.

The board was not short of architects, designers and artists, but they needed someone who understood finance and could read a balance sheet. Lau immediately offered to help and has been on the board ever since. He currently serves as chairman.

Para Site was just the first. He now also serves as vice-chairman of Hong Kong’s M+ museum, and is co-chair of the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Circle and the Tate’s Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee.

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The weight of responsibility that comes with these positions is not lost on him.

“When I joined the Tate acquisition committee, Frances Morris, who was the director at the time, said, ‘Alan, it’s great you’ve joined. What we do here is choose Asian art works to go into the Tate’s global collection. Whatever we buy is going to be good for next 100 years.’ So, no pressure,” Lau jokes.

Acutely aware of his role in the selection of art to frame perspectives of history, he says it’s important to negotiate the delicate balance of not just buying the work of well-established deceased artists, but to also lean in and support less-established contemporary artists.

As a member of various boards, he gets a “behind the scenes” take on the art world and is invited to join research tours and visit artists in their studios. The conversations on these trips have deepened his understanding of art and given him a front-row seat on decisions in the art world that are out of reach of many collectors.

What’s more, there is a lot of fun to be had.

“I’ve made so many new friends. We share a common language and passion, it’s a real community. And it’s global – you hear stories from different parts of the world. I really cherish that,” he says.

Lau’s personal collection is diverse and includes a vinyl disc made of ice by Japanese artist Lyota Yagi that melts and changes in sound as it’s being played, to highlight the passing of time; and some of Ai Weiwei’s Neolithic vases, originally dating back to as long ago as 5,000BC, which the artist dripped in industrial paint to symbolise destruction and rebirth.

Daphne King Yao, who runs Alisan Fine Arts in Hong Kong, recently commented that young Chinese collectors aren’t as drawn to Chinese paintings and Chinese contemporary art, preferring Western art.

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She put this down in large part to the big Western galleries that woo collectors and throw parties for them. Lau says he has noticed this and puts it down to “cultural confidence”.

“I think there is a cohort of collectors who feel they need Western art that is recognised. I guess the younger generation is exposed to a lot more Western art, but it’s also about cultural concerns – Western and foreign is ‘better’. It is not necessarily so, it’s a perception. That’s what I mean by cultural confidence,” says Lau, who estimates about a third of his collection is made up of works by Chinese artists.

Lau says there is a trend of Japanese collectors to not collect Japanese art. If that’s the case, who is collecting Japanese art? Everyone else, he says.

“If you are still at the stage where there isn’t enough cultural confidence, and you feel you need to carry that foreign bag or foreign phone, and you don’t believe that something done locally is as good, maybe it’s a phase or maybe it’s many years, but hopefully we don’t end up being like Japan,” he says.

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Young people who are just getting into collecting naturally go to what is free, and in Hong Kong that used to be the auction houses and Western galleries, Lau says.

“They see the top sellers and that’s a very narrow set of art. But now we have Tai Kwun and M+ and they are defining the narrative and hopefully opening up new pockets of interest for people,” he explains, believing that the outlook for the art scene in Hong Kong is far from bleak.

As for Lau, he intends to keep his eyes wide open and follow his many and varied interests that include everything from art that can be framed and hung on a wall to unwieldy sculptures, performance art and NFTs.

“I don’t like to get boxed into one thing,” he says. “The minute I get boxed in, I want to move out.”