WITH her imposing $70 million house by the sea, three maids, a priceless designer wardrobe and at least four luxury cars, Linda Lee Li-fang is a woman of means. She's the kind of Versace and Chanel-loving beauty usually seen gracing Hong Kong's most exclusive social events. Yet the svelte 26-year-old mother of two with all the social credentials money can buy maintains such a low profile that she is known by few of the territory's elite . . . but now, all that is about to change.
Four years after moving to Hong Kong with her property dealer-turned-'trader' husband, Jimmy Leung Pan, Lee is being groomed to take her place on the social circuit. The Guizhou-born Cinderella, brought up in relative poverty in the backward Chinese province, is about to go to the balls. Of course as in all rags to riches fairy tales, it helps to have a fairy godmother - and Lee found hers the day she bumped into high-flying businesswoman Olivia Davies in a lift. For the naive little rich girl struggling to come to terms with her new and privileged life, the wiser, older Davies was just the friend she needed.
'Her story', says 43-year-old Davies, 'is really a fairy tale come true. I would imagine that there are millions of girls in China who are envious of Linda. The trouble is, she has all this money, and doesn't really know what to do with it. She is simply not used to either the money, or the idea of having the choice to buy.' It's not surprising that the woman whom Davies describes as her 'younger sister' lacks this fiscal knowledge, considering her roots. The first 20 years of Lee's life were frugal, spent growing up in a small apartment and at 18, moving to study traditional dance at Beijing's Central Institute of Nationalities. It was here, at 20, that she met her future husband, a 36-year-old friend of the campus doctor. Shortly afterwards, her dancing in a college competition won her an invitation to study dance in San Francisco. It meant leaving her beau behind but it was to be her first taste of western life.
'America was so strange. It was the freedom that was different. I could do what I liked,' Lee said.
In the summer of 1990, Lee's boyfriend arrived in the United States from Beijing to propose, and soon after the couple were married they left together to start a new life in Hong Kong.
It wasn't easy for the young bride to adjust to the territory. In her first Mid-Levels home, she led a solitary existence. Pregnant, separated from her husband for long periods when business took him to Beijing, and struggling to understand the Cantonese language, it was not a happy start.