Jade emperor

Stephen Chow Shue-tong may be the second generation of a jewelry group family, but he has forged his own path as a collector of rare jadeite, agarwood and other treasures.

"Rare jadeite and agarwood are the most valuable in my collection," he said.

Chow's love for agarwood and jadeite came from his parents. A pious Buddhist, his mother would recite scriptures in the morning while burning agarwood in a small incense burner.

"We children loved to poke our heads in and look at the burner, but our mother would tell us to sit quietly, listen to the scriptures and enjoy the fragrance," he said. "It was mentally comforting place to be."

As the sons of a traditional Chinese family, Chow and his brothers were allowed to run and play in the Chow Tai Fook store on Rua das Estalagens in downtown Macau. Chow would look at jewelry and rare gemstones, which over time became a significant influence in his appreciation of the beauty of rare treasures.

But his love for heritage jadeite would not have been able to blossom without his father's vast collection, left to Chow's younger brother in the hope that the brothers would continue learning and expanding his collection.

That is why the brothers started the Fook Wing Tong company, derived from characters in the names of his father's company (Fook), his brother (Wing) and himself (Tong).

While modern jadeite is often admired for its translucence and extracted through mining, heritage jadeite like Chow's are naturally found in a riverbed near the ancient Chinese-Burmese border and are rare nowadays due to years of extraction.

Heritage jadeite has a different standard for appreciation, and in Chow's opinion, has a more lasting cultural value than its modern counterpart.

However, even though he learned to appreciate the finer treasures from a young age, he was not interested in taking over the family business and instead left it under the care of his brother-in-law, billionaire tycoon Cheng Yu-tung.

Chow was a student at the department of building of the Hong Kong Technical College - the predecessor of the Polytechnic University.

Getting a tertiary education and professional qualification was no easy feat back in the day, so after his graduation, he went to work in an architectural firm for several years.

When his father's health began to deteriorate, Cheng, his brother-in-law urged him to heed his father's wishes and go back to work for the company.

"My initial reaction was that I had already spent so many years studying and working in architectural firms, and now I have to go back to selling jewelry?"

"But Cheng said: 'No, you should be using your expertise.' So we started Chow Tai Fook Land Development and he left me in charge of it."

That division of the group went on to become New World Development.

After lending a helping hand at the company, Chow moved to Canada, where he stayed for over two decades and started his own real estate development business. It was not until his mother fell ill that he decided to return to Hong Kong.

His collection was always a hobby, but it started to grow in earnest on his return in the 1990s. It then became his main focus in the 2000s, when he found semi-retirement boring.

"All my life, I've liked to keep moving," he said. "Asking me to sit at home and just watch the sun rise and set is very difficult."

To keep himself busy, he even began exploring another passion - space - after chatting with an old friend at NASA and realizing the importance of space technology.

He started supporting the China Space Foundation, which launched its first unmanned craft, the Shenzhou 1, in 1999.

"We placed a parcel containing over 10,000 items like coins and stamps in the ship capsule" and 21 years after its successful launch, Chow is auctioning off these items and donating 70 percent of the proceeds to the foundation.

He is also looking to sell some of his agarwood and jadeite pieces to support the cause.

Chow poetically expresses in the auction brochure: Life is short, so we should keep an open heart with no worries. My heart belongs to space and my country, and the brilliant sun shall bless our divine land.

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