Legend Fok Ying-tung: The super-rich started his career by selling groceries. In the 1950s, a powerful figure appeared in Hong Kong's real estate market, Fok Ying-tung. At that time, he once created the real estate myth of selling more than 100 buildings in a year, and thus built the Huo Group worth billions. The installment payment and mortgage housing that everyone is familiar with now were invented by Fok Yingdong. At the peak of the real estate industry, Fok Ying-tung once owned 70% of the construction business in Hong Kong. Most of the more than 60 companies under his name were engaged in real estate business. He was a veritable "land master" in Hong Kong. Today's Hong Kong real estate tycoons Li Ka-shing, Lee Shau Kee, Kwok Bingxiang, etc. all gradually became bigger after him. So, how did Fok Yingdong enter the real estate industry back then? How did he earn his first pot of gold? Maritime transportation, earning the first pot of gold Fok Ying-tung's life is quite legendary. On May 10, 1923, Fok Ying-tung was born in a floating family in Hong Kong. Due to his poor family, Huo Yingdong did not wear shoes until he was 6 years old. When he was 7 years old, his two brothers and his father died one after another. Later, Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese army, making life even more difficult. As the only man in the family, Huo Yingdong dropped out of school and went to work. It was said that he was working part-time, but in fact he was just doing hard work, but Huo Yingdong, who was thin and thin, was not made for hard work. He was fired by his boss after not working for a long time at each job. There was no other way, so Huo Yingdong's mother had to move around to help him open a grocery store. After his life had settled down, Huo Yingdong married his neighbor's daughter, Lu Yanni, and lived a stable and ordinary life. Soon, a decision made by her mother changed Huo Yingdong's entire life. After the war ended in 1945, Hong Kong's economic situation improved. Fok Ying-tung's mother felt that the family could not always keep a grocery store. She thought about selling out the store and opening a small shipping company to do some maritime freight. business. In fact, Fok Yingdong still had an opportunity to work as a clerk in a foreign trade company at that time. The salary was 300 Hong Kong dollars a month. The income was good and easy and stable. However, he respected his mother's decision in the end. So, they bought several boats and carried out transportation on the sea. As a result, after a few years, the opportunity came. In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, some European and American countries began to impose a comprehensive economic blockade on China, which caused the price of strategic materials to skyrocket. As a result, many overseas businessmen took desperate measures and smuggled "prohibited materials" to mainland China. Because of the huge profits, Fok Yingdong Join this adventure too. He organized a transport fleet, which continuously transported black iron sheets, rubber, tires, cotton, medicine and other important materials to Macau every day for three years, and then found ways to transfer them to the mainland. In fact, wealthy businessmen in Hong Kong at that time, such as Pao Yukang, Stanley Ho, etc., had more or less engaged in this business, but this business was too risky and hard. Only Fok Yingdong persisted the longest. At that time, Huo Yingdong slept at most three or four hours a day. During the day, he had to communicate and load goods, and at night he had to sail a ship to transport things by moonlight. On several occasions, Fok Yingdong almost lost his life trying to avoid being chased by the British Marine Police. In this way, Huo Yingdong worked for three years. Of course, high risks bring high rewards. During the three years of maritime transportation during the Korean War, Huo Yingdong earned the first pot of gold in his life. With a net worth of several million, Fok Ying-tung moved into a mansion at No. 11 Blue Pool Road, Happy Valley, a wealthy neighborhood, and became a new rich man in Hong Kong. Later, relying on this first pot of gold, Fok Ying-tung entered the real estate industry and achieved great success, becoming Hong Kong's top real estate developer. When Huo Yingdong evaluated his actions in his later years, he said: "It would be a lie to say that I did it to support the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea and break the blockade and embargo. I did not have such a high understanding. But at that time, I had no knowledge or ideas at all. , is not a fact. There are many ways to make money, and it doesn’t have to be this way.” After the Korean War, Huo Yingdong already had millions of capital, and no longer needed to fight through ups and downs. Dead. But this does not mean that Huo Yingdong is ready to "quit the world" and spend his life guarding money. Money is necessary to make money and make investments, but what projects are good to invest in? Huo Yingdong's mind started to spin again. The first installment payment business strategy In the early 1950s, Hong Kong ushered in a wave of immigration. Statistics show that in the six years from 1947 to 1953, Hong Kong's population increased from less than 500,000 to about 1.5 million. With the population booming, there will inevitably be a serious shortage of housing. At that time, the housing conditions in Hong Kong were very poor. The dilapidated wooden houses, rooftops, and even corridors and stairwells were crowded with people. Seeing this situation, the shrewd Huo Yingdong decided to bet all his money on real estate. In June 1953, Fok Yingdong and his wife Lu Yanni founded Fok Xingyetang Real Estate Co., Ltd. with a registered capital of HK$4.65 million, which was a large amount of money at the time. But at that time, the real estate industry in Hong Kong was not considered an industry. Most citizens rented houses to live in. Moreover, Hong Kong was a British colony at that time. The real estate market in Hong Kong had always been monopolized by British consortiums. If the Chinese wanted to get help from them, It is extremely difficult to get a piece of the pie. In fact, when Huo Yingdong first entered this industry, he also considered making money by renting a house. At the end of 1953, Fok Ying-tung spent HK$2.8 million to buy his first building, the Embassy Building, in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, officially entering the real estate industry. At that time, he did the same thing as ordinary real estate developers, buying old buildings with his own money, and then renting out the buildings to make money. However, after renting it for about two or three months, Fok Ying-dong took the account book and calculated it. He found that it would take seven and a half years to recover the capital for the 2.8 million Hong Kong dollars purchased for this building.

So if you don’t rent, how can you get your money back faster? He thought about selling it. At that time, in Hong Kong, houses were bought and sold based on a whole building. However, the annual income of ordinary employees in Hong Kong was less than HK$3,000. Only a few wealthy people could afford to buy a house. Therefore, some buildings were not sold for more than ten years. If someone buys it, it will take longer than 7 and a half years to pay back the capital. How can we make more people afford houses and get greater returns with less investment? After some thinking, Huo Yingdong first came up with the method of selling in layers, splitting the houses and selling them, so that the total price of buying a house would be reduced, and people with a little wealth could afford the house. Then, in order to attract people who only had part of the money to buy a house, Huo Yingdong invented the business strategy of selling off-the-plan properties by installment payment. This method may seem like nothing now, but at the time it was groundbreaking. You only have to pay part of the money to buy something, which was something I couldn't even imagine before. Besides, home ownership is the traditional ideal of the Chinese people. Nowadays, for a smaller house with a lower down payment, you can own your own house with only a few hundred or even thousands. This is very important for ordinary people. The attraction of citizens is too great. People lined up to buy a house, and the deposit alone was too much for the Huo family to accept. "Hong Kong Landlord" Fok Ying-tung was "banned". Several measures by Fok Ying-tung suddenly activated Hong Kong's real estate market. In just over a year after entering the real estate industry, Fok Ying-tung has built more than 100 houses, and most of them have not yet been built. It's already sold out, creating a myth in Hong Kong's real estate industry. (Famous Quotes from Sun) In 1955, he built the 17-story Toad Palace Building, the tallest building in Hong Kong at the time, in Causeway Bay. Within two or three years, Fok Ying-tung earned more than 10 million Hong Kong dollars in the property market and became the largest Chinese real estate developer in Hong Kong. At this time, Fok Ying-tung was only 32 years old and was already the well-deserved leader in the real estate industry in Hong Kong. However, just when Fok Ying-tung was becoming famous in the real estate industry in Hong Kong and was known as the "Hong Kong Land Master", some people began to make things difficult for Fok Ying-tung at every turn. At that time, Hong Kong was under the management of the British Communist Party. In the 1950s, the British Communist Party in Hong Kong had always been resentful of Fok Ying-tung's supply of supplies to the mainland of China during the Korean War. After that, Fok Ying-tung quietly communicated with some people in the mainland. *** Officials have had previous contacts. In 1964, they took a detour to Macau and went to Beijing to participate in the celebrations for the 15th anniversary of the National Day. The Hong Kong British government saw his actions but had no choice but to take action on his most prosperous real estate business. Among them, the one that hit Huo Yingdong the most was the "Starlight Travel Incident". Star Tower is a commercial building built by Fok Ying-tung in 1962. It is located on the seaside of Tsim Sha Tsui and has an excellent location. It was originally mainly used for rent collection. However, in order to suppress Fok Ying-tung, the British Hong Kong authorities actually came up with the idea of ??asking the telephone company to deny access to the building. Bad phone calls. Then, the U.S. Consul in Hong Kong put Star Shop on the "blacklist" and announced that all tenants of Star Shop would not be able to buy or sell American goods. Under a series of repressive measures, Fok Yingdong was forced to sell Starlight Bank to a British-owned real estate company at a low price. Investing in the construction of the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou Due to the "blockade" of the Hong Kong British Communist Party, Fok Yingdong gradually faded out of the Hong Kong real estate market. After the "Starlight Travel Incident", Huo Yingdong began to set his sights on overseas markets. In 1968, Fok Yingdong led more than 400 people and a fleet of ships from Hong Kong to Brunei and began to build Brunei's port project. After that, he moved to petroleum, department stores, hotels, restaurants and other industries. In January 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee proposed the policy of reform and opening up for the first time, allowing the absorption of foreign investment for economic construction in the mainland. At that time, many wealthy overseas businessmen were still waiting and watching, but Huo Yingdong had already taken action. In 1979, after the Zhongshan Hot Spring Hotel, Huo Yingdong invested in the construction of the Guangzhou White Swan Hotel. This was China's first Sino-foreign cooperation five-star hotel and the first modern large-scale hotel designed, constructed and managed by the Chinese themselves. hotel. On February 6, 1983, the White Swan Hotel officially opened and was fully open to the public. This decision caused a sensation in Guangzhou, and a large number of citizens came to visit. More than 200 rolls of toilet paper were used in the five public bathrooms of the hotel, and the brand-new carpets were trampled to pieces, so much so that some staff went to ask for instructions from Huo Yingdong. Don’t stop opening up. Huo Yingdong’s answer is: full opening up cannot be changed. If something breaks, it will be charged to my account according to the price. Standing in line to visit a hotel seems unthinkable now. But 30 years ago, it was quite difficult for ordinary citizens to enter ordinary hotels. When entering, they needed to register at the doorman with a letter of introduction from their employer, let alone a five-star hotel like the White Swan Hotel. According to the memories of the hotel staff at the time, in the first one or two days after the opening, they could pick up baskets of shoes every day, which were squeezed out by thousands of people who came to visit. Because of the White Swan, people know that there is a big boss in Hong Kong, Fok Ying-tung, but people may not know that what Fok Ying-tung wanted to do most when he was young was not a businessman, but an athlete. Actively helping China bid for the Olympics, Huo Yingdong loved sports since he was a child. What he wanted to do most when he was young was to become a full-time football player. In 1959, he funded the establishment of the Hong Kong Dongsheng Football Team. He is an executive committee member of FIFA and Hong Kong's tennis doubles champion for six consecutive years. He has sponsored many sports projects in Hong Kong. In the 1984 LA Olympics, China achieved a breakthrough of zero Olympic gold medals.

Fok Ying-tung was greatly excited. In order to encourage Chinese athletes to achieve good results, Fok Ying-tung invested HK$100 million in 1984 to establish the "Fok Ying-tung Sports Fund" to award huge bonuses to athletes who achieved good results in the Olympic Games. Hosting the Olympic Games in China was one of Huo Yingdong's biggest wishes in his later years. In 1993, when Beijing applied for the 2000 Olympic Games, Fok Yingdong did a lot of lobbying work with the International Olympic Committee Executive Committee and even promised to donate money to establish a sports foundation in Africa. The first time Beijing failed to bid for the Olympics, Huo Yingdong once said that this was the biggest failure in his life. When Beijing bid for the Olympic Games for the second time in 2001, Fok Yingdong did not go to Moscow to support the event in person because of his advanced age, and his son Fok Zhenting attended on his behalf. After Beijing successfully bid for the Olympics, Fok Yingdong donated 200 million yuan to the National Swimming Center "Water Cube". Over the past 20 years, Huo Yingdong has donated more than 800 million yuan to China's sports industry. On October 28, 2006, Mr. Huo Yingdong passed away in Beijing at the age of 84. After his death, Fok Ying-tung left a legacy of HK$28.9 billion and the huge Fok Group. Huo Yingdong had three wives and thirteen children. According to Huo Yingdong's arrangements during his lifetime, the Zhen family children born to his first wife, Lu Yanni, were the main inheritors of the Huo family's property. As for the other children born to the second wife, Feng Jianni, and the third wife, Lin Shuduan, Fok Yingdong opposed their engagement in business and asked them to develop into professionals such as law and doctors.