Their decision was sparked by the rapidly changing nature of life in Hong Kong: not the crowds, traffic or expense of living here, but the fact that so many of their friends had moved on. 'This is the most exciting, brilliant and dynamic place in the world to live when your work is the most important thing in your life. But when that stage of your life is over, you need to move on to gentler climes.' Granted, Hong Kong is in essence a transit point: young people arrive on a visitor's visa and go from being a bartender to a broker and then return home with a more impressive list of credentials than they will otherwise have.
But there are also countless stories of people who intended to stay 12 days and remained 12 years, who married, had families and made successful lives for themselves because Hong Kong allows you to do so.
And on the cocktail party circuit now there are also stories of harder times, shrinking allowances, crumbling marriages, and lower boredom thresholds. There is disillusionment, disappointment, frustration and tales about traffic jams, rent increases, loneliness and corporate cut-backs. Living in Hong Kong has become so prohibitively expensive that even the well-to-do are curbing their habits.
If you are not originally from Hong Kong and you get to the top, you soon realise there are not many places to go and not much to see from up there. The only thing left to do is jump off and start again somewhere else.
That is the intention of a number of successful and prosperous people in Hong Kong who have made the territory their home for years. They are leaving not because they couldn't make it here, but because they did. And when they look at what they spend compared with the amount of contentment it brings them, it doesn't quite tally.
FELICIA SORENSEN ASK Felicia Sorensen why she wants to leave Hong Kong and live in Sri Lanka and the so-called Queen of Curry says she wants to 'really live like a queen'. Perhaps it's no great surprise then, that the $3.5 million, six-bedroom apartment she has just bought in Colombo is in Queen's Court, on Queen's Road - one of the most prestigious areas of the city ('in a good Hong Kong residential area, you can't get a toilet for that').
'Where else should one live, darling?' the effervescent culinary consultant asked. 'I'm going to walk into my home in Colombo with a suitcase and a smile on my face. I don't want to leave Hong Kong sad and grumbling.
'I have been in Hong Kong for 30 years, and for the money I'm paying for a flat here, hustling and working, I can live like a queen there. I want to move to have quality of life instead of hustling to make ends meet.' While she has not set a leaving date, she is already looking forward to the move. An anti-Hong Kong feeling had been growing for a while and when she received orders to vacate her home of 13 years in Bowen Road because the building was being torn down, the decision was made for her. 'I had worked out my finances to see how long I could last. To move into a flat the same size as my old one would cost me at least $50,000 a month and I wasn't prepared to go to a dump, to lower my standards. I wouldn't feel motivated to work.' Shifting bases will not dramatically change her work situation. Sorensen will continue to act as a consultant for restaurants and hotels in the region - including a three-year contract to set up new restaurants for the Colombo Hilton - but once she leaves Hong Kong, the catering side of her business will end.
'One of the best pleasures I get out of life is cooking for others. But [there will be] no more cooking for business. I have rented out another flat in Sri Lanka, so with that as my additional income, I'll be fine.' Apart from rising costs and the deteriorating quality of life in Hong Kong, Sorensen also now yearns for hearty Asian hospitality. 'In Sri Lanka if I get sick and call someone they come running. In Hong Kong, one friend is at a meeting, another at a Rotary Club lunch. Very few will drop everything. In Sri Lanka, people have time for people. But more than that, Hong Kong has become one of the most expensive places to live. The quality of life isn't what it used to be 10 years ago. We were a bunch of friends who did various fun things, and it doesn't seem to be like that any more. Everyone is in a mad rush to make a buck. It's all about crowds and pushing. It's all thinking, dreaming, sleeping money.' Like many who had left, until last year Sorensen said she would stay in Hong Kong, no matter what. '1997 has nothing to do with it. I used to say there was no place like Hong Kong, nowhere where you can make contacts as quickly. I said I'd never leave. But I've lived the best that I can here. And now I'm leaving.' KIKI FLEMING 'IT'S a waste. That's the word for it: a waste.' Kiki Fleming was hard-pressed to conceal her disenchantment with the cost of living in Hong Kong. It displeased her to not like Hong Kong any more, after all it had been home for most of her life, the place in which her choreography and fashion show production business had thrived for 30 years.
She was eagerly looking forward to the day - in early March - when she would pack her last bag, ship out her last crate and get on a plane to Zurich, pick up her new Audi four-wheel drive and make the seven-hour journey to her new home in Umbria, Italy.
News of Fleming's impending departure came as a surprise to the territory's fashion industry. She had long been a fixture in the ever-changing world of high fashion and society, a woman who loved and wanted to be in Hong Kong so much that, until very recently, she told all her friends she would stay here forever.
She can't quite place what changed her mind. Perhaps it was the lure of 'space, sunshine, a beautiful view and a big house, lots of greenery around me, good fresh food that costs me nothing ... a sense of inner peace'.
A few years ago, Fleming found all those elements in an exquisite 700-year-old fortress atop a sunny slope in Umbria, two and a half hours from Rome. She had been hiking there with a friend, spotted the house and said: 'I am buying that.' Renovation started in 1993, and by the time the work is completed - the property comprises two large houses side by side - she will have seven bathrooms, four kitchens, four reception rooms and 'a lot of bedrooms. I haven't counted'. She will have a lot more room to manoeuvre than she had in the 'box in Arbuthnot Road' for which she paid $17,000 a month.
But whispers of sadness appear in Fleming's conversation as she talks about leaving. 'I was born in China but brought up here. My mother was born here and so were my children. It was not easy to make the decision to go, but once I made it, there were no regrets,' she said. 'I had become disillusioned. I had thought I was going to always be in Hong Kong, but then I fell in love with Italy.' The edginess set in about three years ago, a 'general claustrophobia', and a need 'to have another place that wasn't Hong Kong as my home'. That sentiment intensified as the months wore on: the mood in Hong Kong was changing too fast and not necessarily for the better. 'You work hard, you become well-known, and then people want to get what you have and you have to fight to keep it. Then you become more and more materialistic and everybody is conscious of things that are not that important in life. You forget your values.' The Peak home her father bought in 1947 was sold two years ago for $80 million and subsequently razed. The space is now temporarily being used as a driveway for the Chinese-owned mansion next door. Fleming's father died last November, and with his death and the loss of the family home Fleming realised she didn't recognise Hong Kong any more.
Her happiest memories of Hong Kong are of the 'boom time' from 1975 to 1989. 'It was a place of opportunity if you were young and hard-working. Living conditions were good, rents were affordable, there was a good social and night life. It makes me sad to see how far we've come from that, from when people had time for other people, when Hong Kong was a kinder and more gentle place.' Many of her closest friends started moving out of Hong Kong a few years ago, and she sees uncertainty in the eyes of many people she talks to. 'People are unsettled here. There's lots of tension in Hong Kong and people are questioning what the point is of living here when costs are so high. You spend everything you earn on rent, unless you are prepared to drop your standards and live in a shoe-box with cockroaches scuttling around. Hong Kong has less and less to offer.' In her last few months in Hong Kong, Fleming worked on major fashion shows with Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo and Leonard. Now she has effectively 'retired', but says if she is made an exceptional offer by a European fashion house who needs expertise for a Hong Kong show, she may consider it. 'But it would have to be really good,' she said.
Instead, she will spend her days painting in a spacious corner of her new home looking out over the valleys below. 'I don't really think I'm going to worry about being alone or having nothing to do,' she said. Her mother will live right next door, her closest friend a few minutes away. And at the end of March, Fleming will have three collages featured in her first Italian exhibition, in San Sepolcro, Tuscany, as part of a larger group show.
'It's funny. As I think about it now, I feel like I'm going home, not leaving one. Hong Kong has changed that much.' MAITE VILLARREAL THE folks at Giorgio Armani, Chanel and Manolo Blahnik are going to feel the pinch the most. Because Maite Villarreal, an inveterate shopper with an incurable love for expensive goodies, is trading in her high-heeled pumps, Prada bag and power-suits for sneakers - suede, of course - a knapsack and short denim skirts.
'I've traded in Giorgio Armani for Banana Republic,' declared the French-Spanish-Filipino bank executive who is about to leave Hong Kong after nine years. She is selling everything apart from her favourite furniture, including all her designer clothes. At 38, she is poised to wind down.
As a prelude to her departure for Davao City in the Philippines at the end of March, Villarreal closed the book on 17 years at Merrill Lynch. 'It was six days a week, 24-hours a day, juggling flights, client meetings and management training seminars. I started thinking that nothing would be done without my involvement, that I would have to be in on every deal.' She realised that seeing herself as indispensable was not healthy; that 'working, achieving, making goals' had become her life and left little time for anything else. So she sat down and made out a 'wish list'. First, she resigned from her job. Then she flew to Oklahoma City to fulfil a lifelong dream of learning how to pilot a helicopter. Villarreal was certified in the US and Britain to independently pilot a rotor craft and now proudly announces that she is the 'only female pilot in the Republic of the Philippines'.
When on terra firma, Villarreal will live in a 278-square-metre four-bedroom mansion, which she has rented for $3,500 a month, looked after by a staff of five. 'In Hong Kong, it costs me $50,000 a month to live in a 120-square-metre flat with one maid. In Davao City, I'd be hard-pressed to spend more than $10,000 for a luxurious lifestyle. I want to be away from the hustle and bustle of a big city, I want a slower lifestyle. The bottom line is I want a finer quality of life.' Then she will go on to open her own management consultancy in Davao City, working on behalf of companies looking for investment opportunities there and in the rest of the Philippines. But while Villarreal might have the telephone, fax and Internet set up, she still believes life in Davao City will be 'a return to basics'.
'It will be about having fun rather than chasing after planes. Even though business is being done there, the ambience is totally different. There is no need to rush because everyone knows it will get done. There is no need to fight for taxis. And all around there is greenery and sea. This creates an environment where people are friendly, they take time to have a conversation. Tea-time is not a half-hour break and lunches last six hours.' But there are still a few things she will miss about Hong Kong. 'Expense accounts,' she said. 'Hong Kong is a great place to be when you are young and hungry and anxious to achieve. But once you've achieved and start looking to enhance your personal life, you find that going to balls and having a weekend in Bali is no longer sufficient.' Even high-flying executives with thick pay packets and paid accommodation are beginning to find Hong Kong unreasonably expensive. 'And the more expensive it becomes, the more you tend to work, the busier your friends become and you can never call anyone at home because they are never there. The whole point of living becomes to make more money to pay for the rent, the image and the designer clothes.' DOMINIQUE and TRACY LI BLOODSTOCK agent Dominique Li said it took him time 'to arrive at certain realisations about living in Hong Kong'. His work had taken him increasingly to France, Britain and the US and he had found he would occasionally miss a good buy on behalf of a client because he wasn't 'in situ' to check out a particular horse. Then the rent on his flat in Tregunter doubled. But what clinched it for him was when he realised his dog was 'getting tired of peeing on cement'.
On February 28, Li left Hong Kong for his new home in Chantilly, a 30-minute drive from Paris. His wife Tracy follows in mid-March. Theirs was an entirely practical decision: Li punched a few buttons on his calculator and figured he would fare much better using France as his base and visiting his Hong Kong clients every few months, rather than the other way around. So he will be setting up a branch office of his company, Rigby Bloodstock Ltd, in France.
Born in London, educated in Switzerland and the US, and having spent the past seven years in Hong Kong, Li said he doesn't feel as if he is quitting Hong Kong. 'My office is still here and lots of friends and it's not difficult to get on a plane and fly to Hong Kong when I need to.' The Lis have rented a house in Chantilly on the edge of a wood with a pool in hectares of garden. 'Part of the appeal of leaving was the quality of life we could have there,' Li said. 'It is the right time to go and we're very relaxed about it. We have friends there. There have been too many changes in Hong Kong, the pollution and the traffic. Some days, it takes me an hour and a half to get home.
'It is a different way of life in France. People aren't on a schedule like they are in Hong Kong. If you're going to be late for something, you can phone and reschedule or take an alternative route. You can't do that here - everything is too fast-paced. We don't need that pace any more. And now, in France, I feel there are a million and one possibilities. I always used to feel at home in Hong Kong. But because of the changes, I feel at home much less.'
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