I lived in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1995. I had just studied Mandarin for a year at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University and married this French bint I had met there, and we moved to Hong Kong. My first job was crap but I got it because I was fairly fluent in Mandarin. It was a Sales Manager job for a shipping company. I had zero experience and got booted after the 3 month probationary period. But that initial salary enabled me to rent a 700 sq ft apartment for us in Heng Fa Chuen. My wife got a job with Cherry Lane as a Merchandise Manager and later did the same job with Country Road. Meanwhile I found another job as a Marketing Manager for a huge joint venture company between Hong Kong and China. I did that job for two and a half years, my salary shot up pretty high and then I enquired what my annual increment would be and was told 5%. It was disappointing but my salary had almost reached the same as the Vice President, so I quit. The boss of the subsidiary that I worked for told me he planned to move to Singapore and asked my to join him to form a new company there, but I declined.
Instead, I decided to create my own business. I found a business lawyer and bought a shelf company. I then started to contact fashion and clothing companies in the UK, Europe and Australia by sending faxes. Simultaneously, I sourced China garment factories. One of the companies I found was a big french company that had lines similar to Rene Derhy and included women's and girls clothing. Another was Mayagor. We met the bosses and buyers of these companies in Hong Kong and ended up with some huge sample orders which were to be exhibited at the Paris Fashion Week. We made all the samples. At that time we had agreed to make a 50-50 partnership with a friends established company in HK and we used their office space which gave us a base. Meanwhile one of the customers buyers had told us to be careful about sending the samples to her boss as he might not pay for them. So we hesitated and demanded that they pay for the samples in advance. The boss was tough, he insisted that we send the samples otherwise he would have no fashion lines to exhibit. We told him that if he didn't pay for the samples then we would sell off the samples. Our office was in the Central district and we knew we could easily sell off all the samples as office staff often visited garment companies to be samples during their lunch breaks. At the same time our partners had received a payment from one of our smaller customers and paid us 25% of what the customer had paid. Apparently they had decided to split the profit 50/50 and then charge us 25% for use of their office. We confronted them, ended up in a huge argument and the partnership was dissolved. We now had no office at all.
For the huge sample orders, we waited for the customer to pay us, and he in turn kept insisting that we send the samples first. This was a huge sample order including all kinds of outerwear and sweaters made from high quality factories, it was huge. Finally he caved in a paid us, the amount was about HK500,000, and we sent him the samples via DHL which he also paid for. We used the money to rent an office, buy computers, copier, office furniture, clothing racks and employed a couple of staff. After that our business boomed and we never looked back.
So as expats in Hong Kong our life was pretty good because our income was good. We bought an apartment in Discovery Bay, and then bought a second larger low-rise apartment there too. We had kids, and sent three of them to the French International School. I bought some windsurfing boards (F2 Lightning and F2 Comet) with different sized sails, and that was my hobby. We often went hiking on the islands nearby, Lamma Island, Peng Chau Island etc. And we bought antique furniture and went to exotic carpet auctions on Hollywood Road which was just behind our office. We ate in nice restaurants most days and often went to Macau to eat seafood. We bought ourselves gold Rolex watches, mine was a Submariner and my wife's had diamonds all around it. We had parties on our rooftop most weekends. It was fun in those days, lots of shopping and travelling to Bali and Thailand. Life was sweet.
We sold up and left in 1995 ahead the handover in 1997 and moved to France.
I went back to Hong Kong with my family a few years ago before flying on to Taiwan and Japan. Hong Kong had a completely different vibe. It had lost it's "Cantonese" vibe and now felt like "China". People were rude, no manners, no class, over crowded, even places like Stanley Market seemed very different, although the scary bus ride still existed. I suppose we could have continued living in HK for many more years but the way HK is today I am really glad I no longer live there.
