Second wind - Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Second wind - Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Second wind - Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants
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should know exactly how much it would say<br />
on the receipt. I was as good as that.”<br />
While doing long additions became second<br />
nature to Fong, a trip to newly opened China<br />
wasn’t as easy. Fong, who joined Arthur Andersen<br />
in 1973, volunteered to go to the Mainland<br />
in the 1980s to set up an <strong>of</strong>fice for the firm<br />
and was faced with a list <strong>of</strong> difficulties.<br />
“The laws and rules were not in order and<br />
you couldn’t hire your own people because<br />
the Chinese government controlled employ-<br />
Nellie Fong<br />
ment agencies. Everything was very difficult,”<br />
Fong remembers. “The hardest part<br />
was we were losing money because there<br />
were no jobs and no work. Every year I had<br />
to explain to management why we were not<br />
making money and appear before the board<br />
to explain that it wasn’t an expense, it was<br />
an investment.”<br />
Eventually, the firm built up a roster <strong>of</strong><br />
clients made up <strong>of</strong> foreign multinational<br />
companies investing in China.<br />
A PLUS<br />
Fong’s decision to pursue her career in<br />
the Mainland changed her life in more ways<br />
than one. After being a member <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Hong</strong><br />
<strong>Kong</strong> Legislative Council from 1988 to 1991,<br />
Fong was appointed by the Chinese government<br />
as a <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong> adviser for the preparatory<br />
committee on the territory’s transfer <strong>of</strong><br />
sovereignty to China. It was during this time<br />
that Fong devised a project that she holds<br />
dear to her heart to this very day. “Provinces<br />
in China were planning on giving us a gift to<br />
mark the occasion so I felt that <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong><br />
should give back to China,” she recalls. “I<br />
came up with a hospital built on a train.”<br />
“We are now training<br />
local doctors to do<br />
cataract operations<br />
and setting up<br />
cataract centres in<br />
local hospitals.”<br />
Fong founded the charity project Lifeline<br />
Express – a train-mounted eye hospital that<br />
travels to remote areas <strong>of</strong> China to provide<br />
free operations to blind cataract patients. It<br />
launched on 1 July 1997, the day <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong><br />
returned to Chinese sovereignty.<br />
With around five million cataract patients<br />
in China and an increase <strong>of</strong> 500,000<br />
patients each year, Fong is working to expand<br />
the reach <strong>of</strong> her trains. “We are now<br />
training local doctors to do cataract operations<br />
and setting up cataract centres in local<br />
hospitals. We call it a Lifeline Express train<br />
that never leaves,” she says.<br />
Fong, who in 2008 received a Global<br />
Initiative Award from former U.S. President<br />
Bill Clinton for her charity work, now<br />
has four trains, 15 training facilities and 17<br />
cataract centres. Rather than using her time<br />
in retirement to <strong>wind</strong> down, she is fully engaged<br />
with the charity’s work, addressing<br />
issues such as the lack <strong>of</strong> senior eye doctors<br />
in China. “I went all over the world, appealed<br />
to international experts to come to<br />
China and help... That’s why I’m very busy.<br />
I’m retired from my accounting career yet<br />
found something very worthwhile.”<br />
Man <strong>of</strong> the match<br />
Taking orders for tea, c<strong>of</strong>fee and sandwiches<br />
was just one <strong>of</strong> T. Brian Stevenson’s duties<br />
while working for an audit group, fresh out<br />
<strong>of</strong> university in Scotland. “It was a masterservant<br />
relationship, that’s how it was,” re-<br />
November 2012 23