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SCMP Reporter

The relationship between Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum and Tony Chan Chun-chuen  was like that of the empress dowager and an imperial eunuch, the late billionaire's sister Kung Yan-sum  told the Court of First Instance in tears yesterday. 
Ms Kung drew the comparison after saying she was not convinced her sister and the fung shui master had been lovers or even close friends, despite intimate pictures, videos and recordings put before the court.
Sobbing in the witness box as she gave evidence for the second day at the probate trial over Wang's huge estate, she said looking for Wang's kidnapped husband Teddy Wang Teh-huei  had been the most important thing in  her sister's life.
Asked by Jonathan Harris SC, for Tony Chan - who is battling the Chinachem Charitable Foundation for the estate - if he thought Wang and Mr Chan were merely fung shui master and client, she said the relationship was not that 'simple'.
'I have viewed the videos, I think the status of Mr Chan can never match that of [Teddy Wang] in my sister's heart,' she said '[The relationship] was like the emperor's mother and the imperial eunuch.'
She added: 'I do not mean to offend Mr Chan.'
Explaining her tears, she said: 'Sorry I am a bit emotional today ... It is so sad to relate what I am thinking because I have witnessed the life of my sister and my brother-in-law and there was joy coming out from their hearts.'
Ms Kung said she remembered seeing Wang get out of bed in the middle of every night and pray to Buddha after Teddy Wang was kidnapped and vanished. She said Wang would take out his shoes, and wipe  and clean them before a statue of  Buddha.
The court also heard that Wang had told her siblings that cloning technology could be her best chance to have a child. 'She even mentioned to us that it was a time when human beings could clone,' Ms Kung  told the court. 
Ms Kung's comments came as she denied that Wang was trying to have a baby with Tony Chan. But the tycoon had wanted a child with her husband before his kidnapping in 1990, Ms Kung said. 
Wang was in her fifties when Teddy Wang was kidnapped. 
The property tycoon was unable to have  children due to ill health so the couple also considered using his younger brother's sperm, Ms Kung said. 'She mentioned that she'd like to have a child, but she was already  advanced in age,' Kung said. 'That's why I didn't take her seriously. But she and my brother-in-law [Teddy Wang] really wanted to have a child - I heard it with my own ears.'
Mr Harris asked Ms Kung about a statement, read earlier in court, in which she said her sister had high doses of oestrogen because of her desire to have a child at the  age of 60.  He asked why she would have done this if not to have a baby with Mr Chan. 
'My sister had said it's a good treatment to keep one's youth and that I should try it myself,' she said. 
She also denied knowing who regularly sent bouquets of white lilies to Wang at her Chinachem Group headquarters. 'She did say that she did not like the fragrance of white lilies,' she  added. 
Ms Kung disputed suggestions that the pair had been long-time lovers, as Mr Chan claimed. 
'You find it very difficult to accept that Tony Chan and your sister could be lovers, don't you?' Mr Harris said. 
'It's not that I could accept it or not accept it, but I don't think that's the case,' Ms Kung said. 
'But it's offensive to you?' Mr Harris said.
'My only feeling is that actually they are not [lovers],' she  said. 
Mr Chan's legal team gave pictures of the pair together for Ms Kung to view at home. She was expected to be cross examined about those pictures today. 
Also yesterday, Ms Kung said her sister had approved a plan to have her and  two siblings appointed as governors of the Chinachem charity. She said Chinachem director Joseph Leung Wing-kong approved the  appointments.  
Under cross examination, Mr Harris questioned whether the terminally ill woman signed off on the plan. 
'I suppose it was under her direction,' Ms Kung said.



The empress and the eunuch