MARIA LEE TSENG Chiu-kwan's home is a modest flat at the lower end of Jardine's Lookout, but it carries the unmistakeable whiff of royalty. Redolent with dignity, elegance and a hint of hauteur, it bespeaks the kind of taste that new money cannot buy and greatly reduced circumstances cannot erase.
A collection of blue-and-white porcelain is impeccably arranged about a dark timber table. More porcelain adorns the walls; delicate facsimilies of fans embedded in lustrous teak.
On a sprawling sideboard sits a cluster of framed photographs, showing the woman dubbed 'Hong Kong's Queen of Cakes' at the pinnacle of her reign. Here she is meeting Queen Elizabeth II, two sovereigns hobnobbing. Here she is with the Reagans, swapping recipes with Nancy. And isn't that her with Prince Rainier of Monaco, almost obscured by the ruddy-faced rotundity of former Governor Chris Patten in his pre-heart attack gourmand incarnation? A suitably regal interval passes before Lee makes an entrance, sweeping into her salon beneath an immaculate coiffure. Her face is carefully made up and a dark grey skirt and red floral blouse reveal the figure of a woman several decades younger than her 72 years.
'My maid tells me there is a handsome man in my living room,' she proclaims coquettishly. I mumble something self-effacing as a blush threatens to creep up from my collar, and wonder what effect she had on men in her prime.
'You'll have to forgive me, I'm having a bit of a turn this morning,' she explains, as she settles on a couch and applies an ice-filled towel to her neck. She's feeling a bit dizzy. Hardly surprising, giving the merry dance she's been led by life's fickle twists.
Two years ago, her annus horribilis began when she lost a personal fortune of more than $45 million in an ill-fated bid to save the bakery chain which made her a household name. As headline writers had a field day - 'Let them eat cake!' - she suffered in short order a media mauling, a tumble down the stairs resulting in a broken leg, and a move from her beloved two-storey mansion in Kadoorie Avenue, Kowloon Tong.