This is a two-part story; please go here for Part 2
Li Ka-shing is a legendary businessman who has achieved tremendous success in his life, but he also relied on his deep belief in feng shui to help him make the right decisions. Let’s look at how the richest man in Hong Kong met his feng shui master and uncover his secret to wealth and prosperity.
In 1958, Li Ka-shing, then 30 years old, was just a small businessman, running his own company, Cheung Kong Industries, and the factory was divided into two sections. On one side, they continued to produce the plastic toys they had been making for years, while on the other side, they developed and produced a new product–plastic flowers.
Why did Li Ka-shing choose plastic flowers? One day, while reading an English magazine, he discovered that an Italian company had developed the technology to manufacture plastic flowers and would soon be mass-producing them in Europe.
With his business acumen, Li Ka-shing immediately realized that Westerners love to decorate their homes and gardens with flowers, but modern fast-paced living makes it difficult to care for delicate plants. Plastic flowers could fill this gap and would certainly sell well. Hong Kong follows Western trends, so these plastic flowers would surely be popular there too.
Li Ka-shing, who seized the business opportunity, quickly tasted the sweetness of success. Soon, his plastic flowers were in high demand and the business was booming. However, due to the short supply of products, Li Ka-shing’s factory began to compromise on quality to fulfill orders.
The consequences of this dishonesty soon emerged: Customers who received low-quality products demanded refunds and banks sought immediate repayment of the money they had loaned to the company. The plastic factory was on the brink of bankruptcy. In order to pay off all the debts, Li Ka-shing’s wife at the time, Chow Yei-ching, had to sell all her jewelry.
This experience made Li Ka-shing realize the importance of integrity, but rebuilding his company and making a comeback was not easy. He began to think he would really end up like what the fortune teller had told him when he was 14 years old.
So, what did the fortune teller say?
Two vastly different fortune-telling results
When Li Ka-shing was young, his family fled from Guangzhou to Hong Kong to escape the Second Sino-Japanese War, but Hong Kong was soon occupied by the Japanese army as well. The poor living conditions continued for Li Ka-shing’s family.
In 1942, when Li Ka-shing was 14 years old, a fortune teller saw him as a sickly child with no bright prospects, and told his mother that he would not achieve great things in life. If he stayed low-key, it would be possible for him to barely make a living, but he did not have the blessing to achieve great success.
From that time on, Li Ka-shing had a negative impression of fortune tellers. But what Li Ka-shing could not anticipate was that at a party in 1958, he would meet another fortune teller who would become a major part of his life and his official feng shui master. This man was Chen Lang.
Chen Lang had an interesting background. His family was wealthy and he became fascinated by fortune telling and feng shui after passing by a fortune telling booth when he was young. His father then hired two masters to teach him about these topics. Chen Lang eventually became a devout Taoist, mastered the I Ching, and was particularly skilled in feng shui and face reading. He soon became famous in Hong Kong.
When they met at the party, Li Ka-shing agreed to listen to what Chen Lang had to say about his future even though he did not have much interest in fortune telling.
Chen Lang read Li’s fortune and jokingly asked Li: “How much wealth do you want in order to satisfy yourself?” Li answered: “If I could have $30 million, I would be very satisfied.”
Chen Lang then told Li: “In your life, your wealth will not top out. It has no limit. You will become the richest person in Hong Kong!”
This encounter changed Li Ka-shing’s life and Chen Lang became his trusted feng shui master and advisor. When Li began investing in real estate, his success was partly attributed to Chen Lang’s guidance. Chen Lang’s predictions turned out to be accurate, as Li Ka-shing’s business empire grew larger and more successful. As a result, Li Ka-shing held Chen Lang in high regard and sought his counsel in various aspects of his life, including his office and residence arrangements.
Later, as Hong Kong’s tycoons vied for control of the feng shui of Hong Kong’s central business district, Chen Lang played a critical role in keeping Li Ka-shing safe during this “feng shui battle.”
Hong Kong’s thrilling feng shui battle
In Hong Kong’s central business district, there are three skyscrapers from left to right, which are the Bank of China Tower, the Cheung Kong Center, and the HSBC building. The HSBC Building was the first to be built after extensive consultation with feng shui masters, and it is considered to have excellent feng shui. Business has been good and wealth is abundant.
Then the nearby Bank of China Tower was completed, adopting a three-sided steel knife design with one of the sharp edges pointing directly at the HSBC Building. Strange to say, after the new building went up, HSBC’s performance fell sharply and its share price also plummeted. What could be done about it?
After consulting with feng shui masters, HSBC quickly installed two 17-meter-long steel cannon-like objects on top of the bank building that aim directly at the sharp edges of the Bank of China Tower, forming a “knife and cannon battle” and resolving the crisis.
There was another incident concerning the steel cannons installed by HSBC. It is said that one year a typhoon blew one of the cannons on the HSBC building so that it aimed at the Standard Chartered Bank building. This was not something taken lightly. Standard Chartered Bank had their lawyers send a letter to HSBC demanding that they correct the matter within a specific time frame. It seems everyone in Hong Kong really believes in feng shui.
The story of this thrilling central Hong Kong feng shui battle is well-known and widely circulated in Hong Kong.
So what is the significance of the Cheung Kong Center located between these other two buildings? In the early 1990s, the Hong Kong government granted Li Ka-shing this piece of land in an excellent location, but with bad feng shui. How could anything built on the spot have good prospects? Wouldn’t it be destined to end up as “cannon fodder with a thousand cuts”? It was Chen Lang who gave Li Ka-shing the guidance that broke this evil feng shui.
Translated by Chua BC
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