It was 1pm on April 30, 1928. Lee Hysan, one of the best-known businessmen in Hong Kong, was having lunch at the Yue Kee Chinese Club on Wellington Street, Central, when three shots rang out, shocking members of the club and, later, the whole city. Lee had been killed, leaving a host of unanswered questions and a business that was to become one of the most prominent Chinese family-run enterprises in Hong Kong.
Today, Lee's killing remains a mystery. After his death, his son, Lee Ming-chak, never went to Macau. Nor did he allow his children to go while he was alive. He gave no reason. And questions about it were forbidden in the family, until that is, Vivienne Poy, a granddaughter of Lee Hysan, sought to break the taboo.
'There are many questions in every family,' she said. 'There are things that children don't understand. There are answers that you want to have. If you ask the adults in the family, and if they can't give you the answers, you have to look for them yourself. I'm a historian, a researcher. I love researching, digging out, finding out the truth.'
The mystery over the death of Lee Hysan at the age of 47 and the origin of the family name 'Lee' - rare among Chinese - has prompted Mrs Poy, since the 1990s, to revisit the lives of her ancestors. Her research was recently published in a book, Profit, Victory and Sharpness: the Lees of Hong Kong, the fourth of the Hong Kong Life Stories.
In one chapter, Mrs Poy pieced together the story of how her grandfather was embroiled in a court case over the Yue Shing firm's opium licence from the Macau government. Formed as a sole proprietorship by Lee Yue Sing, Lee Hysan's older brother, the firm had the monopoly on opium since 1924. Lee Hysan was the general manager.
The licence was terminated following an edict from the Portuguese government in the wake of an international agreement on opium trading in 1927. One year later, Lee Hysan took the Macau government to court after he found that the licence had been given to another company. Mrs Poy wrote that her grandfather received death threats and warnings that 'bombs would be thrown at my parents' wedding'. The threats remained just that - until the shots were fired in the club.
