She may be 70, but the founder of Hong Kong's cake empire which collapsed last

THE night before Maria's Bakery closed last April, owner Maria Lee Tseng Chiu-kwan instructed senior staff to tell 400 employees not to come to work in the morning. When news leaked to the press that the 'Queen of Cakes' had toppled from her throne, reporters rushed to her two-storey mansion in Kadoorie Avenue late that night. The fall of Mrs Lee, who in less than two decades turned a humble bakery in Prince Edward Road into a pastry empire that straddled the globe, was big news indeed.

Now, in her first interview since the press conference to announce the company's liquidation last May, Mrs Lee, 70, says she is starting on a new chapter of her life.

She is busy writing an 'alternative' cookbook with best-selling author Amy Cheung Siu-han, and has already obtained the sponsorship of two parties - one a famous restaurant, the name of which she declined to reveal; the other the Hong Kong Gas Company, which will employ her as a cooking instructor.

Her lifelong dream is to write her autobiography which may also soon be in the pipeline.

'Doing business was only a secondary interest,' Mrs Lee said. 'I've lived a fulfilling life and I want to share my philosophy with others.' It might have been difficult to remain so sanguine on the night before the collapse. 'I didn't expect the reporters to know and I wasn't prepared to face them,' Mrs Lee said. 'I asked my maid to tell them I was not at home and we switched off all the lights at 3 am. But more reporters continued to come and camped outside my home.' At 4 am, while the reporters were sleeping in their cars, she called her daughter, who lives on Tai Hang Road, to drive over and sneak her out of the house by the back gate. They succeeded. The press waited outside her Kadoorie home for three more days, not knowing she had disappeared.

Maria's Bakery had been a household name in Hong Kong for the past three decades. Even when I was studying abroad, I would go to the only Maria's Bakery in Alhambra, Los Angeles. On the drive back to San Francisco after the college holidays, I would always buy a box of swiss rolls and chicken pies which I devoured during the six-hour trip.