Chapter 154: Heart of Greed

Since I'm here, I shouldn't leave empty-handed. I heard that Jiamutang custom-makes furniture for clients, utilizing collected antique pieces, reworking them with traditional mortise and tenon joints and fresh polishing, giving them a new lease on life.

Though quite pricey, it is still much more cost-effective than buying directly at auctions. After all, since I am not a professional collector and have already missed the golden era, this approach offers the best value for money.

I ordered four round-backed armchairs, costing a little over ten million in total, meant to be placed in the study. Sitting in them, I couldn't help but think:
Time to break them in!

This calls for a celebration. For dinner, I'll head to Yung Kee to taste the legendary flying roast goose so highly recommended by Chua Lam.

The storefront is imposing, with the bold golden characters of "Yung Kee" dominating the entire facade, making it easy for diners to spot. Entering the lobby, rows of European-style small round lights illuminate the entire hallway.

An array of solid rosewood hollow-carved chair backs and minimalist white dining tables exude understated elegance. Having started as a humble dai pai dong selling roast meats, Yung Kee was selected by Fortune magazine as one of the world's top fifteen restaurants as early as 1968, remaining the only Chinese restaurant to ever be included on that list.

It once flawlessly recreated the Heaven-Sword and Dragon-Saber Banquet from Louis Cha’s novels. The Chief Executive, the city's richest tycoons, and award-winning actor Chow Yun-fat have all been guests of honor at Yung Kee Restaurant.

It is called "flying roast goose" because many foreign tourists, after tasting it, feel the experience is still incomplete and order extra roast goose to take with them onto their flights home.

It is extremely crowded, and I had to wait half an hour for a table. Picking up the menu, a whole roast goose is six hundred and fifty dollars, which is quite reasonable.

After ordering all the signature dishes, I sat in full anticipation. When dining in the region, one must always patronize the time-honored brands, and it has to be the flagship store for the flavors to be truly authentic. Not far away, an entire glass display cabinet holds rows of tempting, crispy roast geese hanging on hooks, while chefs busily load them one by one into the ovens.

Chua Lam often says that Cantonese roast meats are the most famous, and Hong Kong has refined the ultimate roast meat category down to the roast goose. Compared to duck, goose has richer fat and firmer meat, making it indeed the superior material for roast delicacies.

This place has always been his favorite, recommended countless times, and he was decades-long friends with the late owner, Kam Kwan-sing. Unfortunately, his old friend has passed on, and due to his own health reasons, he shouldn't consume too much grease, so...

The freshly baked roast goose is served, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Its surface shines with a glossy coat of oil, and the thin, crispy skin seems barely able to contain the plump goose meat beneath, as if it is about to burst open at any second!

Abundant goose fat and juices continuously well up from the cut. Beneath the skin lies a layer of translucent, gelatinous substance, glistening and tender. When the tip of your tongue pierces the crisp and tender goose skin, the rich and mellow goose fat immediately envelops your tongue, delivering waves of culinary attacks that make it impossible to stop in pure bliss...

Dipped in the sweet and sour plum sauce, the sweetness rises to a whole new level. While remaining tender and refreshing in flavor, the dish wins immediate praise from Johnston, living up entirely to its legendary reputation.

The pickled ginger and preserved eggs are also a wildly famous specialty. The crisp, tender ginger slices, pickled over a long period, complement the preserved egg wedges perfectly. The fresh sensation stimulates the taste buds, while the protein texture of the preserved eggs makes the entire dish shine brilliantly.

According to Chua Lam, every single preserved egg has a molten yolk center. The egg white is immensely elastic, while the yolk is half-solid and half-liquid, offering first-class texture.

The pickling cycle lasts from 28 to 30 days, ensuring that guests can enjoy the exact same perfection every day, no matter when they visit.

Next comes the Grand Gold Award-winning Liyunzi Stuffed Prawns in Pastry. A plate of six fresh sea prawns, each stuffed with liyunzi (freshwater crab roe), asparagus, and shredded carrots, wrapped in bean curd skin, and then deep-fried. The fresh sweetness of the liyunzi blends the seafood flavors of both shrimp and crab in seamless perfection—crisp, sweet, rich, and delectable.

Much like Tai Shi cuisine or Tan family cuisine, generations of the Kam family have been notoriously picky eaters. In his youth, Kam Kwan-sing invented a bowl of "Crown Prince Lo Mein." He would make a cut on a freshly roasted goose thigh, let the natural fats drip down, and use that clear oil to toss a bowl of noodles.

The tossed thin noodles are glossy and chewy, perfectly absorbing the aroma of the roast goose without losing a fraction of it, coating every single strand. Even Chua Lam would flush with excitement and give it two enthusiastic thumbs up after tasting it.

The first-generation patriarch, Kam Shui-fai, was even more particular, favoring only a single dish of fermented bean curd in his later years. According to Chua Lam, those white cubes were silky smooth, not excessively salty, and possessed an intense fermented aroma. Unfortunately, this dish of "Chairman's Fermented Bean Curd" wasn't something just anyone could eat; it required being a close friend of Elder Kam.

The shumai are served next. The filling uses purely lean pork hind leg meat, yielding a tender texture with rich gelatin that is easy to whip into a paste. However, unlike traditional minced pork fillings, the pork here is cut into chunks, and fresh shrimp pieces are mixed in by hand before being beaten until slightly sticky. The steamed shumai feature distinct chunks of meat with silky-smooth muscle fibers.

Even a simple piece of Malay sponge cake boasts three layers of air pockets, with the pockets intersecting horizontally and vertically in every layer—how could it possibly fail to be soft and fluffy?

Johnston put down his chopsticks with a look of pure bliss. No wonder Chua Lam praised it endlessly: after a hearty meal of these delicate little dim sum baskets, when you are accustomed to such treats, compared to the heavy satisfaction brought by fats and thick sauces, these clean, sweet, and crisp bites are all the more enchanting!

Well-fed and content, he thought of a TVB drama he had once watched, *Heart of Greed*.

As someone born in the 1980s, various television series are filled with memories of growing up. They say drama comes from life, but life is far more dramatic than any TV show.

After the founder of Yung Kee, Kam Shui-fai, passed away, his younger children refused to accept the eldest son holding the reins of power, leading to open revolt. After all, this was not a modest household, but an estate worth over a billion.

One and a half years after Kam Shui-fai's death, his wife and four children held 100% of Yung Kee's shares. The eldest and second sons held 35% each through offshore companies, while the third son Kam Kwan-kei, Mrs. Kam Shui-fai, and Kam Mei-ling each held 10%.

Thinking this distribution was fair—with the two sons managing the company each holding 35%, and other relatives enjoying equity dividends without participating in operations—it nevertheless planted the seeds for a "crucial minority" crisis.

The 30% equity held by the other three relatives eventually became the fuse for the battle over control between the two brothers.

As expected, when the third son passed away, his 10% stake went to the second son, and Kam Mei-ling also gifted her 10% stake to the second son. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kam Shui-fai gave her 10% stake to the eldest son, leaving Kam Kwan-shing and Kam Kwan-lai with 45% and 55% respectively.

Until the eldest son passed away last October, his billion-dollar estate remained unresolved, and his descendants hoped to carve out their own path under the banner of the Yung Kee lineage.

To give credit where it's due, the grandson showed real ambition, simply striking out on his own to establish Kam's Roast Goose, which was awarded a Michelin star the very year it opened. Now, it boasts endless lines and is hailed as an anomaly in the barbecue world.

Not just here, but even Fook Lam Moon, which he had just visited, is the same. They calculate things even more meticulously: the storefronts of the two establishments are worth six hundred million, and their annual net profit is multiplied by roughly 10 to 15 times.

Valuable assets like dried seafood, combined with cash and goodwill, bring the total value to around 1.2 to 1.4 billion. The corkage fee is 10%, meaning that for a wine priced at eighty thousand dollars a bottle, just opening it costs eight thousand.

Joseph Lau spends around four million at Fook Lam Moon every year. After three years of lawsuits that finally settled, he is now ambitiously preparing to go public—not a single rich person is a fool.

A fortune of tens of billions cannot buy a truly sincere lover—the Nina Wang multibillion-dollar estate battle;

A femme fatale turning biological brothers into bitter enemies—the Sun Hung Kai Kwok family power struggle;

A septuagenarian father suing his son for assets, turning father and son into foes over what?—the Tse Sui Luan son-lawsuit;

Not to mention Stanley Ho, the gambling king, and his epic multi-billion-dollar clan brawl;

One can only sigh: Entering high society is as deep as the ocean!