The Pursuit of Happiness

Property tycoon Cecil Chao has gone to some mighty extreme lengths to ensure his family’s legacy. His daughter, Gigi, wants to make it about more than just money

- Eric Wilson

Cecil Chao presses a button at the desk where he begins his workday each morning, and his voice echoes around the four-storey modernist-inspired mansion he designed himself some 40 years ago in Pok Fu Lam, before there were even streetlights on the roads.

“Bring some ice cream and a spoon,” he commands, and they arrive on a gilded platter seconds later. The 83-year-old property tycoon pushes up the sleeves of his leather jacket—orange, Italian, probably python, by Fabio Caviglia—revealing an all-diamond watch from Piaget on his left wrist, and dips into a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs, still in its carton, as he ponders how to answer a question about his legacy.

“My life, and I think that of every person living in this world, is for just one purpose”, he says, “and this is happiness.”

The gated entrance of his home—called Happy Lodge—is one of the few signposts of the ultra-rich that is easily recognisable to Hongkongers as they pass along Victoria Road on the western side of the island. Several members of the Chao family reside there, right alongside some of their tenants in the surrounding, and expanding, luxury condominium complex known as Villa Cecil that is owned by Cheuk Nang Holdings, of which Cecil is executive chairman. His red and white Rolls-Royce, which bears the vanity licence plate “CECIL”, is hard to miss in the car park, as were his once frequent arrivals by helicopter during the years when he cultivated an image as one of the city’s most flamboyant and decadent playboys. It is rumoured that prospective tenants, at one point, were prohibited in their leases from filing noise complaints.