'I'M PSYCHIC, you know,' Leonie Ki Man-fung announces in the muted and matter-of-fact tones generally reserved for far more banal statements. Unfortunately, she is that most annoying and familiar kind of psychic; the kind who can regale you with tales of amazing events foretold, but who can't seem to cough up, say, next week's winning Mark Six numbers. Still, scepticism washes off Hong Kong's former 'queen of advertising' like water off a Mandarina Duck handbag.
'I am psychic. I am,' she insists. 'It runs in my family. For instance, there was a time when I was at a Trade Development Council meeting, and a guy was sitting next to me; I met him for the first time, and suddenly my psychic wave comes in and out of the blue I tell him, 'You're 37 years old.' And he said, 'How did you know?' And I said, 'I just know.' I wasn't guessing. I just spoke, like a medium.' Then there was the strange case of the pregnant mahjong aficionado. 'I had a friend I played mahjong with, and she was pregnant, and I told her not to play, because she was going to give birth today. Her due date was September 11, and it was September 1. I told her she'd have a baby today and it would be a boy. But she went ahead and played. Later that day, she called me from the hospital and said, Leonie, you're so right, I had a baby boy.' The smiling seer's most recent incarnation, after a meteoric rise through the ranks of Hong Kong's advertising world, was as the head of the Better Hong Kong Foundation, a controversy-ridden cabal of movers and shakers who coughed up $100 million in an effort to counter pre-handover bad press about the SAR. After her finest hour presiding over the July 1 fireworks extravaganza, organised and funded by the foundation, Ki says the job ran out of challenges. She quit as chief executive last month. She says the two-year stint with the foundation was a gruelling but rewarding time, which allowed her to give something back to a city that has rewarded her richly.
Ki is something of a contradiction; a hard-headed and ruthlessly ambitious businesswoman with a habit of coming over all cosmic and mystical when the mood seizes her. She says she's not religious, yet peppers her speech with references to divine intervention and miracles. Some of her pronouncements are downright biblical. Ki is also untroubled by modesty or inhibition. Within minutes of meeting, she is apprising me of her stress-induced internal bleeding; the first of three revelations that changed her direction.
For starters, the last few nerve-wracking months before the handover proved too much for Ki and three days before the handover, she developed internal bleeding. Although doctors advised her to go to hospital she refused ('If I found out I had cancer I would totally break down'). There was also too much resting on her, and as commander-in-chief of the foundation there was no way she could miss the big show. If the show failed it would disgrace to Hong Kong and end her career, she said. And thirdly, there came divine intervention. On the morning of the show a black rainstorm warning was issued threatening the extravaganza, but the rain cleared immediately before and after the event.
Ki now says she will look at things in a different way, and intends to be 'a lady of leisure' for the rest of the year. She will travel to China next week in search of a qigong specialist she hopes can cure her curvature of the spine ('I may come back an inch taller!') then she will embark upon an extended shopping spree in Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. 'I have worked very hard and I think I deserve a break. I can walk very tall and upright, because I have done something for my Hong Kong. I had a false alarm with cancer in 1994. I'm kind of a person who's the worrying type, and when you worry you put a lot of stress and tension on yourself. I'm a cancer-prone type I think. I have a friend who just died of cancer. So now I look at life in a different light, trying to relax more.' Ki's words tumble out in breathless bundles of mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs, squeezing past suspiciously perfect, gleaming white front teeth, which sparkle in strange counterpoint to their chipped and crooked lower neighbours. Her hands flutter and flap like courting sparrows, occasionally straying across to alight on my side of the table to reinforce some point. We are ensconced in a quiet corner of the Dynasty Club, the parquetry and brass-swaddled bigwigs' retreat next door to the Grand Hyatt in Wan Chai.
So, has the Better Hong Kong Foundation actually made Hong Kong any better? 'Well, I wouldn't say we have had this sort of impact, but we have been a medium, a facilitator, a communicator,' she says. 'I must say that from the very beginning, everybody was very negative and cynical about the foundation. But during the handover months we organised some functions that were very successful, and people have realised we meant business, that we are impartial and wanted to do something for Hong Kong. There was no hidden agenda.' Hidden agenda or not, the foundation - ostensibly set up after Fortune magazine's infamous 'Death of Hong Kong' cover - was never far from controversy. It seems Ki's psychic powers failed her in predicting the unfolding dramas.
First, there was an uproar over a composite photo showing the 20 tycoon trustees of the foundation, each of whom kicked $5 million into the kitty. The picture showed the likes of Stanley Ho, Li Ka-shing, Sir Run Run Shaw, David Li, Cheng Yu-tong and Peter Woo standing cheek-by-jowl on the sweeping staircase of the Dynasty Club. In fact, the photograph was done over four separate sessions, then fused into a single happy snap with some clever computer work, prompting analogies of Maoist practice from the press.