Who is Janet Lam? As John Lee secures top job, Hong Kong meets charity event singer who will become ‘first lady’
- Chief executive-elect John Lee thanked his wife Janet Lam for ‘looking after the family’ as he clinched the vote for city’s leader on Sunday
- Lam currently sings in a band with wives of three former and current chiefs of the disciplined services
A mother of two and occasionally an active performer, Janet Lam Lai-sim will soon take up a new role she could have never imagined: the equivalent of first lady of Hong Kong.
Only a few members of the public might have known her as Janet before she was invited on stage to share the “historic moment” when her husband, John Lee Ka-chiu, was voted in as the city’s next leader on Sunday.
“I want to thank my wife very much because, for all these years, I did give [my family] little time due to my work,” Lee had said, his voice trembling. “She really has tried her utmost to look after the family for me.”
00:30
Wife of Hong Kong’s leader-in-waiting performs at a charity event
The soon-to-be “first lady” appeared to have acted as the strong backbone of Lee’s family during the couple’s 42 years of marriage.
Lam disclosed during a media interview in the past that she met her husband during a “joint-school event”, a common social activity between boys’ and girls’ colleges in Hong Kong.
The young couple soon got married and Lam became a housewife to raise their two sons, Gilbert Lee Man-lung and Lee Man-chun, who are both now in their 40s. The older one is a senior bank executive, while the youngest is the director of an educational consultancy in Hong Kong and also heads a firm that operates kindergartens in mainland China.
Norman So Chung-ping, who was the two sons’ principal at Wan Yan College, Kowloon, recalled that Lee would occasionally drive to the school with his wife to pick up their children after class.