From rags to riches ... the entrepreneur who valued lessons of the past
Entrepreneur Po Chung proudly claims he was the first person to receive an American Express card issued in Hong Kong. The year was 1972. He needed money to set up a Far East division of expanding air courier firm DHL. He learned that one of his US partners was using an American Express card to finance cash flows. 'Get me one too,' he said.
Huge success with DHL, followed by years of public service and philanthropy, were a far cry from Mr Chung's impoverished early childhood.
At seven he was weaving nets in Macau, where he was born and where his family survived by fishing off the beach on Coloane island. His father, a former department head at British American Tobacco, had lost everything twice: once in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong during the second world war and again in Guangzhou with the communist victory. On Coloane the family even lost all their nets in a typhoon, as well as their sleeping cots, which vanished after another householder gambled them away.
When the family moved to Hong Kong in 1953, Po Chung failed seven out of nine subjects in grade four and failed again in grade five. 'I'd spent two years on the beach so the concentration, focus and a lot of what I knew had evaporated,' he said.
A Eurasian teacher (the mother of Exco member Ronald Arculli) helped him catch up and Mr Chung finished his school years at St Stephen's College, where he won several prizes including for English. He later moonlighted as a dubbing scriptwriter for Bruce Lee movies, translating from Chinese to English.
Fish remained part of his life. He graduated in the US with a bachelor's degree in fisheries management.
Mr Chung stepped back from the day-to-day running of DHL Asia Pacific in the mid-1990s and began preparing his succession. The 1997 handover was approaching. 'I needed some space to deal with that,' he said. Years of work-related stress had also exacted a physical toll.
He said it took him 18 months to put everything down. He also started taking an inventory of his life and dealing with negative emotions. These included lingering shame that, as a child, he one day took a dollar from his mother's purse to rent a bike and buy cakes. 'I found out it was the only dollar she had. Sometimes forgiving yourself is not enough. You must tell it so others can forgive you also,' said Mr Chung.
This transition inspired his efforts to help others navigate the passage to retirement. Along the way he took up calligraphy, which he enjoys with his wife, Helen, and became an accomplished Chinese landscape artist with a master's degree in fine art.
In 1992 Li & Fung Group chairman Victor Fung Kwok-king challenged him while playing golf. 'He said: 'Po Chung, you are an entrepreneur. Why don't you figure out whether we can teach entrepreneurship?'' It led to the MBA course Mr Chung teaches at the University of Hong Kong.
He describes his busy life today as 'rich', not full. 'I only do the things that I love to do. That's taken off a lot of pressure,' Mr Chung said.
