Warren Buffet and Chinese Tigers

Warren Buffet's philanthropic act yesterday got me thinking this morning. First of all, it got me thinking about 2 words: philanthropy and charity. The two words are often used interchangeably. But in my mind, what Buffet did was a philanthropic act rather than a charitable act. Philanthropy comes from Greek roots -- phil-/philo- meaning love of and anthro- meaning man/mankind. Charity has its roots in Old French meaning Christian love as well as the Latin caritas meaning affection. In my mind, charity has an association with gifts to help the poor or disadvantaged or alleviate suffering. Gifts are only gifts when they come without expectations of a return. Philanthropy, on the other hand, brings to mind grand visions of change. So I decided to look up the two words to see what the dictionary had to say. On charity: The first of six definitions was, "Provision of help or relief to the poor, almsgiving". On philanthropy: "An activity performed with the goal of promoting the well-being of man".

Charitable gifts do not expect a return, but in my mind philanthropy is an investment in the betterment of the human condition. Where charity works towards alleviating pain and suffering of poverty, philanthropy seeks the eradication of poverty as the ultimate goal. Buffet has been one of the greatest investors in businesses of our time. Now, he hopes to also become one of the greatest investors in the "well-being of man" of our time, empowering people to find solutions that will make the world a more peaceful, stable, safe and hospitable place to live in.

His philanthropy also got me wondering why Hong Kong hasn't seen much large-scale philanthropy. Sure there are people who donate to have buildings named after them. Hong Kong people are also quite generous with donations for disaster relief. However, there hasn't been much vision in the giving. Just imagine if one of Hong Kong's top property developers were to devote their time and energy to solving some of China's social problems. Instead, many landlords here are doubling or even tripling rents, profitable bus companies won't even increase their workers' saleries by 2% even though inflation is much higher, etc. Is it cultural? Radio commentators this morning were commenting that Chinese cultural values see families creating wealth for the family and keeping it within the family. But I don't think this is such a distinctly Chinese value. Although I do believe that philanthropy is part of the capitalistic American Dream: every person has a chance to make good for himself, but once wealth is acquired, there also comes responsibility, because wealth is always acquired through the support of others, whether its the community or society as represented by investors, shareholders, employees or clients. So to those whom much is given, something is expected in return. Wealth, in its greatest form, is a philanthropic tool. How much wealth one creates in a lifetime is not solely measured by the numbers at the end of a bank statement, but rather by how much good is done. Buffet is the ultimate investor and creator of wealth.

Interestingly, I had a very inspiring visit by a woman name Quan Li, the founder of Saving China's Tigers. She was introduced to me by Dickson Yewn, one of my favourite jewellery designers (since 2002, he has opened several Life of Circle boutiques in Hong Kong), and also a great animal lover with vision. Quan Li has always been a lover of big cats. After a safari trip to Africa, she inspired to act on her love of big cats, in particular the endangered Chinese tiger. There are fewer than 100 Chinese tigers left in the world, and less than 30 of those living in the wild. As Dickson explained to me, the tiger, rather than the panda, is the real mascot of China. The tiger is very much an important part of Chinese heritage and culture and it's important for Chinese people to recognize the importance of saving these tigers. Quan Li and her husband, an investment banker, have so far used more than US$10 million of their own money to buy land in South Africa to set up a private reserve to reintroduce captive tigers to the wild (currently, three tigers live at the reserve: Cathay, Tiger Woods and Madonna. Sadly, Hope died this year of a heart attack). Quan Li has also been hard at work looking for land and lobbying provincial and national government officials to support her initiative to establish a tiger reserve. Today, there is a press conference launching the "I support the Chinese Tiger" advertising campaign with Jackie Chan being the first celebrity in a long scheduled line-up to show their support for the effort. Quan Li hopes that the awareness raised about the plight of the tigers will bring more support to her private reserve project. Already, two sites, one in Jianxi and the another in Hunan province, have been shortlisted as pilot reserve sites. Quan Li is trying to drum up an investor willing to acquire the operational rights and invest in the infrastructure and management of the reserve for around US$20 million. She envisions a reserve management similar to those in South Africa. The investor could then lease rights to other operators within the reserve. It is her hope that the tigers currently in South Africa can be successfully repatriated to their new home in China by 2008, in time for the Beijing Olympics.

What struck me when meeting Quan Li was her passion. All of this started when Quan Li asked the simple question after her first African safari: Why doesn't China have something like this? And China has many wonderful wilderness sites with amazing wildlife that need protection and preservation from encrouching human populations. She also has the sense to realize that such an initiative needs the support of businesses, because the government cannot support something like this for the long-term and saving tigers is a long-term effort. I hope Quan Li's philanthropy yields great returns. It would be a benefit for China, as well as the rest of the world, to realize the benefits of protecting its own environment.

Personal Trainers on the Go

AW, BL and I were pigging out over lunch at a sushi restaurant yesterday when we decided we needed a bit more motivation to shape up for the summer. So we decided to make it a bet. Each person has to set a fitness goal to be reached in 2 months' time. Our gym has an InBody 720 body composition analyzer. They've all had their readings done, but I've been avoiding getting mine done. We're all supposed to set our own target body composition measurements based on current readings. Those who don't reach their targets have to pay up to those that do. If we all do, then we've already won beautiful bodies and nobody pays out anything to anyone. The signing ceremony is supposed to be tonight when we all get together to sign off on our targets.

So I was really excited when I read about downloadable programs by personal trainers in the NY Times. Without a personal trainer, I rarely venture into the weights section (except to look for friends). I feel I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing. If I had a trainer showing me exactly what I should be doing that would be perfect. There are three sites mentioned in the Times article that offer downloadable workouts. Podfitness.com (For some reason, it won't support Mac OSX until July. The sample workout did not sound very motivating though.) and iTrain.com are mainly audio workouts, but I have an iPod video and iAmplify.com offers video, as well as audio, workouts, yoga lessons and other special interest programs ranging from astrology to finance to travel. So far though, the video offerings are slim, but I'm hoping that as portable video player become more pervasive, they'll be more programs to choose from. Or imagine your own personal trainer, yoga or pilates instructor giving you a personalized video workout program every time you travel. That would really be cool!

Uncle Moustache Private Kitchen

I had a delicious meal at a private kitchen run by Uncle Moustache over the weekend. It was a 10-course meal with 9 wine pairings for HK$600, a real steal. Uncle Moustache also runs a wine distribution business during the day and the wines on the menu are from his stable. Apparently, the chef used to work at the now-defunct Classic Passion. The one on the Peak used to be one of my favourite Chinese restaurants. And their signature strawberry spare ribs (paired with Willow Point Sparkling Shiraz) was the last course before dessert on this menu. Among the other courses, my favourite were a crispy rice with salty egg yolk and seafood broth, crab with glass noodles (paired with Ankena Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2004) and deep fried shrimp ball with a Champagne and wasabi sauce (paired with Merryvale Starmont Chardonnay 2004).

Uncle Moustache was definitely one of the few private kitchens I have tried of late that hasn't disappointed. I must say, I was a bit sceptical about going out to Chai Wan for another private kitchen experience, but this one was good value for money. While the decor was not much to write about (during the day, it is an office for a company that does fashion trading as well as the wine biz), the food and wine were great and Uncle Moustache was very hospitable. Our main complaint was that serving size was too small, which meant we all thought the food was good enough to ask for seconds.

Uncle Moustache Private Kitchen
Suite 1801, Chai Wan Industrial City Block 2
70 Wing Tai Road
Chai Wan, Hong Kong
T: +852 2898 9787

Hong Kong Restaurants for a Visiting Chef and His NYC Tips

For some reason, I have a reputation among my friends of not liking Chinese food. This really isn't true. What I don't like about dining out at Chinese restaurants has more to do with ambiance than food -- the noise, the thoughtlessness of the decor, the clutter and hygeine levels (too many stories of cholera found in the fish tanks of Hong Kong's Chinese-style seafood restaurants). But when there are visitors in town, it just makes sense to take them to Chinese restaurants.

I recently got an email from MH introducing me to SP, a chef who would be in town for a week and would like to sample what Chinese cuisine has to offer. So I had a think and came up with the following list with the goal in mind of showing that Chinese food is not just about fried rice, spring rolls, sweet-n-sour dishes or peking duck (even though Hong Kong does have the best Peking Duck):

1. Xi Yan Sweets -- I picked this for dinner, because it was just the two of us so we wouldn't be able to go to Xi Yan. But at least SP would get a taste of Jacky Yu's cooking style. I love the dan dan noodles here; the texture is perfect, nice and chewy.

2. Hutong -- This one's great for out-of-towners, you get the stunning view of Hong Kong island and if you get there around 8pm, you'll catch the Symphony of Lights show, where the Hong Kong Island office buildings perform a laser and light show. I love asking guests to try their shark's lips as well as "Jade" vegetable in ginger oil, crispy de-boned lamb ribs Hutong style and their dumplings.

3. Bistro Manchu in SoHo (lots of great, little restaurants around here as well) serves up great northern-style dumplings at 33 Elgin Street (T: 2536 9128).

4. Victoria City Seafood Restaurant in either 5/F CITIC Tower, 1 Tim Mei Avenue (T: 2877 2211) or the one in Repulse Bay (T: 2803 1882) for dim sum.

5. Bo Innoseki -- For a sort of Ferran Adria meets Chinese food experience.

6. Crystal Jade -- For Shanghainese noodles, dumplings and other dishes. Lots of outlets including Hong Kong Station (T: 2295 3811) and Harbour City Shopping Mall on Canton Road (T: 2622 2699).

7. Happy Valley wet market (top floor) for a great local food stall experience. The chicken with fried garlic at Sheung Kee (T: 2882 2994) is awesome.

8. Moon Garden Tea House -- A great place to sample all sorts of Chinese teas and snacks at 5 Hoi Ping Road, Causeway Bay (T: 2882 6878).

I had a great dinner chatting with SP. I had thought he was in town researching for a new restaurant. Turns out, he's a chef that doesn't like the restaurant biz. Which is why he switched to private chefing. He's the chef for a family in NYC. The way he tells it, he's got an awesome job cooking for 2 adults and creating exciting meals for a baby and dogs that also allows him time to explore other business ideas such as a gourmet, organic baby food shop. I think it's a great idea and hope he gets it going soon!! Part of his job is also to try out different restaurants and learn about different cuisines (which is why he is in Hong Kong, to learn more about Chinese food) so that the family he cooks for don't get bored eating the same dishes. His wife is also a chef who apprenticed as a pastry chef at El Bulli. They both worked together briefly at Lumière in Vancouver. Since I'll be in NYC for 2 weeks this summer, I couldn't resist grilling him on the restaurant scene there. Here are just some of the recommendations I remember:

Chef on the rise: Andrew Carmellini. A Voce, on 41 Madison Avenue (T: +1 212 545 8555), is a laid-back, modern Italian restaurant. Carmellini was awarded the Best Chef in New York last year by the James Beard Foundation.

Chef, whose meal can turn a bad day into a good one: Mario Batali

Other recommendations: Blue Hill, Luarent Tourondel's BLT restaurants (SP likes BLT Fish, but there's also BLT Steak and BLT Prime) and Upstairs at Bouley

WANLILU at Louis Vuitton Landmark

It's been a crazy week! Not least because we've got the pedal to the metal trying to get LCB to the printers, but we've also got a lot of summer holiday trips to plan for our clients and we had to prepare a half-hour presentation at the Louis Vuitton store in Landmark yesterday. I'm not particularly a person that likes to get up in front of a crowd and speak, but in this job, you have to get used to it. The Louis Vuitton event has kind of been in the pipeline for a couple years now. We first talked about doing an event around travel, because there's such a long heritage of LV being associated with luxury leisure travel (just think back to the vintag steamer trunks). About 6 weeks ago, SC at LV approached me again about doing an event around summer travel where we would present a few interesting travel ideas and they would select products and fashions to match (for example, the LV ensemble complete with beach bag and sunglasses to be seen in while lazing around on the deck of your chartered yacht while cruising the Greek Islands). We decided to present 3 interesting, and somewhat exotic, itineraries. It was only after I came up with the destinations did I realize how tied they were to LV. For example, the driving tour links to LV's classic car event and the private yacht charters links to the LV Cup, their American's Cup Challenger Elimination series. So subliminally, LV is very much synonymous with luxury travel in my psyche; they put style and glamour into luxury travel. So there's natural synergy between WANLILU and LV!

For the event, we put together a 73-slide power point presentation. And I really have to thank Teresa and Peggy for staying till 1am the previous night working on making it all look impeccable. They did a fantastic job! The presentation illustrated 3 dreamy summer holidays: A gourmet driving tour from Florence to the Lakes (we presented two options: Lake Como or Lake Garda, both of which are stunning) via Bologne (overnighting a little further in Montegridolfo because there's a beautiful 8th century castle property designed by Alberta Ferretti), Modena and Parma. The second featured escapes to private islands or aboard private charter yachts in Fiji (Dolphin Island), Mediterranean (villas represented by Indigo Lodges) and Maldives (Dhoni Mighili and Rania Experience). The third was a golfing and safari tour of South Africa. I chose golfing properties along the Garden Route (Arabella Golf Club and Pezula) while staying at Birkenhead House or The Plettenberg and wanted to introduce safari properties that were not in Kruger National Park: Royal Malewane and Shamwari. During the presentation, models walked around sporting LV's latest summer fashions and accessories to match the feel of the destinations. The models looked great!

The party started at 7pm. I arrived at 6pm to set-up. There was a bit of a scare when nobody knew where the projector was. But in the end, we found it and set it up without a problem. By the time everything was set up, it was around 6:45pm and I was feeling like a drink. So Nadine, ever the life-saver, took me to Fourth Floor at Harvey Nichols for a glass of Champagne. We went back a little after 7pm, and there were already a few people flowing in. We started the presentation around 7:40pm, Nadine was the perfect slide-advancer, but even more amazing was that she also managed to act as official photographer in between advancing the slides! And not once did she miss her queue. All in all, people seemed to enjoyed themselves, with the free-flow of Champagne and talk of stunning destinations with beautiful people and glamourous products to match.


After the presentation, I met up with Corey, Karl and Anne who are in town from San Francisco and Honolulu to research their next film. It's a film about 3 different couples in San Francisco, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Corey and his company Makai Motion Pictures have previously produced the award-winning, The Land Has Eyes. Karl is a novelist (his first novel, The World of Normal Boys, is currently being worked into a film) and is working on the script with Corey for their current project. Anne, who will be in Shanghai for the rest of the month for the Shanghai Film Festival, is co-producer on the film.

I had only met Corey and Karl on Sunday, because a good friend of his asked me to introduce him to some people who could help them get a better feel of Hong Kong. Turns out, Corey knows quite a few people in Hong Kong alreaady and at dinner last night, and it turned out that everyone (including myself and the people I was introducing to Corey) at the dinner somehow knew or had connections to Corey's friends! In Hong Kong, there really are less than 3 degrees of separation. Which made me think that his film should really tie together all 3 of those couples and have their paths or histories cross as well, becuase those 3 cities are really linked in that way.

Asia On My Mind Worldwide Benefit Dinners: Celebrating 50 Years of Asia Society

Last night kicked off Asia On My Mind, the month-long celebration of Asia Society's 50th anniversary with a series of benefit dinners hosted in US and Asian cities. Being an American-born Chinese who spent a few of my early years of education in Hong Kong, I've always appreciated the need for an organization such as Asia Society, which endeavours to increase understanding among Americans about Asia and vice versa. Incidentally, another Rockefeller-founded cultural exchange organization, Asian Cultural Council, is our very good office neighbor.

Of the eight dinners held in Hong Kong, Reel Occasion appealed to me the most, because I'm interested in film and I had had chance meetings with both of the special guests. The dinner was beautifully and expertly hosted by Stacey & Robert Morse (In the place of menu and place card, there was a make-shift film cannister placed at each place setting. The guest's name was printed on the film cannister. The menu unwound on the film portion of the film reel inside.), and featured special guests Barbara Robinson and Nansun Shi. Barbara is the Managing Director of Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia and Nansun is Executive Director of Film Workshop Ltd. (the film production company she runs with her husband, reknowned film director Tsui Hark). Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia has produced international hits such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle, as well as KeKeXiLi, an amazingly moving and stunningly-shot, award-winning film about the true story of a group of volunteer mountain patrols in their quest to stop the poaching of antelopes in Tibet. I had the pleasure of meeting the film's director, Lu Chuan, last summer when I was organizing a corporate retreat in New Zealand where he was invited as the guest speaker. We had had problems getting a film print of KeKeXiLi to New Zealand for the private screening; Chinese authorities would not allow Lu Chuan to bring a print with him. So I emailed Barbara my request (I had her contact from at least 8 years before, having done some film script translation for her, but had had little contact with her since), and both she and Columbia Picture's office in Auckland was amazingly helpful. They sent the film print all the way to a small cinema in Te Anau and then one of their staff met me at the Auckland airport to pick-up the film print on my way back.

I met Nansun when I interviewed with her for a job before I decided to start WANLILU. At the time, I was toying with the idea of going into the film business, so I sent my resume to Barbara, who then forwarded my resume to Nansun! In addition to having met her on that occasion, I also listen to her morning CR1 (Setting off on a Clear, Beautiful Day from 7-9am Mondays-Fridays on FM88.1, in Cantonese only) talk show most mornings on my way to work. I am a also fan of Nansun's tireless efforts to lobby the Hong Kong Government to do more in the realm of creating a better environment for the creative industries. She has great vision and is one of the few influencial people in Hong Kong who can see the big picture beyond the short-term. So when I saw the double billing of two my most admired film baronesses for the Reel Occasion dinner, I could not resist.

Reel Occasion was a hit -- 2 brilliant and entertaining hosts, 2 inspiring and engaging special guests with 20 other interested and interesting guests (on my table were many financiers). There are 40+ dinners remaining for the rest of this month in the US and around Asia. There's an amazing one in Shanghai on 23 June at Jean-Georges Shanghai with Chinese film directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, fashion designer Vivianne Tam among several other special guests.

So if you happen to be in Hong Kong, New York City, Shanghai, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington D.C., Mumbai, Houston/Dallas, Sydney/Melbourne, check out the schedule to see if you can join Asia Society for what will most certainly be a wonderfully engaging and memorable evening! Dinners in Hong Kong run until next Saturday, 10 June. Themes range from a Bollywood Chic Midsummer Night's Celebration hosted by the Harilelas to a discussion on Japanese investment in China hosted at the Consul General of Japan's Residence. Most in Hong Kong are probably already sold out, but it's worth checking for last-minute cancellations (In Hong Kong, call +852 2103 9808).