The secret holiday destination of Hong Kong's super matriarchs is out. While the taipans are busy cutting the deals that shape Asia, their wives foxtrot down to fading British resort Blackpool for a spot of discreet ballroom dancing.
Competitors at the British Open Dance Championships, held in the town's scruffy Winter Palace, would have been thrown off their step to learn three of the spectators were from families worth an estimated $200 billion combined.
Ivy Wu Kwok Sau-ping, who is married to Gordon Wu Ying-sheung, the billionaire boss of Hopewell Holdings, stayed in the Tudor Rose Guest House, an 11-room $250-a-night bed and breakfast. Katherine Cheng, whose husband Henry Cheng Kar-shun runs New World Development, splashed out slightly more on a $600 room at the three-star Blackpool Hilton hotel. And Helen Kwok, married to Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, who with his brothers runs the Sun Hung Kai empire and together have a Forbes-estimated worth of $75 billion, really splashed out: she stayed in Blackpool's Imperial Hotel for $1,000 a night.
But despite the potential culture clash of tai tais among the chip shops and cockle stalls of Blackpool's grey and windswept 'Golden Mile', the women seemed to have fitted in well. A manager at the Tudor Rose, who confirmed Ivy Wu had also stayed there for last year's dancing championships, described her as a 'charming and gracious woman'. When told she was from one of Asia's richest families, was the Hong Kong Red Cross' key fund-raiser and had recently visited war-torn Afghanistan to help with food and international aid, he said: 'You must be pulling my leg.'