Nina Wang's struggle to hide cancer revealed
The younger brother of late billionaire Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum gave a glimpse yesterday into her sad and secretive life as terminal cancer took hold.
In an effort to avoid people seeing her, Wang would take a rarely used back staircase of her building even when she could barely walk, Dr Kung Yan-sum told the Court of First Instance, where his sister's former fung-shui adviser Peter Chan Chun-chuen stands accused of forging a will that left her fortune to him.
Kung, a medical doctor, told how he had advised Wang to remain in the city to receive treatment but "she said she did not want everyone to know about her cancer. She said it would be impossible to keep it secret if she saw doctors in Hong Kong."
Instead, Wang, who was diagnosed with cancer in January 2004, flew to Boston and Singapore for treatment up until mid-October 2006.
By then, she had started to develop oedema, in which the body swells with fluid, and her mobility was deteriorating.
When he saw her on the morning of October 16, 2006, she was lying in her bedroom in her flat at the Chinachem headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui. "She looked very ill. She used to be a person who cared a lot about her appearance. But on that morning, she did not seem to have changed her clothes," Kung said.
She agreed to see a doctor at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital that evening but was so frail that he had to put on her shoes for her. "We left the Chinachem building together. She had to lean against me," he said.
Kung said his sister started to believe in fung shui and spiritualism after her husband Teddy Wang Teh-huei was kidnapped in 1990.
He said she introduced him to Chan in the 1990s. The second time they met was at the Sanatorium and Hospital. "Mr Chan was in the corridor near my sister's ward. It was after 11pm, or even nearer midnight," he said.
A few hours after Wang died in April 2007, Chan showed up, claiming he knew what she wanted for her funeral arrangements.
Chan, 53, denies forgery and using a false instrument.
The trial continues.
