“I’m pretty sure I’m the only person to have written a book on a phone,” laughs Wong as she settles into a chair at her executive search firm Global Sage, in Hong Kong’s Central business district.
“I could have used a laptop or bigger device but it was easier to write notes on a phone at any time and any place: I could be in bed, in the bath … I could be eating or walking.”
The result is Women Who Chase Butterflies, a candid account of a life fuelled by passion and curiosity.
It traces Wong’s time at Harvard business school where, aged 23, she was one of the youngest and among the very few Asian women to graduate from the school, to a career as an investment banker on Wall Street, before embarking on an entrepreneurial journey that saw her establish the first home-grown recruitment firm in China in 1996, Bo Le Associates.
The memoir is also a love letter to her mother, “her rock”, who passed away in 2019, aged 90; and to Hong Kong, the city where she was born on September 21, 1957 – while it was being battered by a typhoon.
But in a city where nepotism runs thick and fast, Wong’s opportunities were not handed to her on a silver platter.
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Like many others, Wong’s parents fled Communist China in the 1940s, joining a wave of refugees who made the arduous journey across the border to Hong Kong that saw the city’s population jump from 600,000 to more than 2 million by 1952.
Born into poverty, Wong spent her early years in the “Walled City”, a crammed residential enclave in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district that was the city’s largest slum, as well as the most densely populated place on earth at the time.
At its peak in 1990, it was home to more than 50,000.
“I was only young while living there, so I have very few memories,” she says. “If I close my eyes, I can remember it being very dark and very smelly – sweaty and chaotic.”
In the book she describes the cramped conditions that her parents and four siblings lived in: “We lived in a small room, about 100 square feet [9 square metres], which is roughly the size of two mid-sized cars.
“Next to our room lived the ‘red ladies’ [prostitutes] and on the other side, the heroin addicts. The monthly rent was HK$30.”
But in this “city within a city” – which was demolished from 1993-94 – where brothels, gambling parlours, gangsters and drug addicts all mixed in with unlicensed doctors and dentists, Wong saw a different side.
In the “City of Darkness” as it was called, Wong saw the light.
“The Walled City has been shaped by stories of crime and poverty but it was also a place of grit, hope and humanity,” she says. “It had a strong sense of community, with determined neighbours who worked hard to pave a better life.”
There were factories for plastics and textiles and you could buy delicious fish balls, she shares in the book, adding that her time there sowed the seeds of her entrepreneurial, “can do” spirit.
“‘Anything is possible if you work hard’ was the Walled City mantra,” she says.
A ticket out came when her parents won a lottery for subsidised public housing. Monthly rent in the new estate was HK$90 and Wong, concerned about the cost, wanted to help: instead of going to nursery school, she worked alongside her sister and aunt in a factory that made plastic flowers.
The work was tedious and often made her tiny fingers bleed. She was only five years old.
It’s the sort of work ethic that repeats throughout Wong’s life. While studying at Canada’s University of Toronto, she juggled three part-time jobs – including cleaning toilets – to pay for tuition.
On the estate, Wong witnessed some key moments in the city, from the 1967 anti-government riots to the deadly flu pandemic the following year. During it all, her parents struggled to feed the family, which had grown to six children.
“Dinners often consisted of hot steamed rice and melted pig’s fat with soy sauce,” she writes in the book.
One day, aged about eight, Wong was chasing butterflies in a park near the estate when an elderly lady shared some advice that would inspire the memoir’s title.
“She told me not to catch them because if I did then they would die,” she says. “‘Just enjoy the moment when they appear,’ she told me.”
It’s a philosophy she leans on during rocky times in both her professional and personal life. In the book, she’s candid about both.
“After Harvard, all my friends were getting married – it’s just what people did back then at that age – so I married a man who was extremely good-looking, very flamboyant and sociable. And I thought, ‘Oh, I can live like that.’
“Then I found out that behind the glamour there was loneliness and self-doubt.”
Wong says she got cut many times while smashing her way through the glass ceiling of a male-dominated industry – a journey along which she was recognised in 2014 with the prestigious Hall of Fame Award by the UK-based industry publication Recruitment International (now part of UK-based recruitment and information firm Talint Partners) and, in 2008, placed on BusinessWeek’s list of the 50 most influential headhunters in the world.
She also recounts the stress of riding out financial crises – the regional one in 1997 and global one of 2007-08 – and the self-inflicted wounds caused by poor business decisions.
But there were also many highs, with her secrets to success including adapting to change, continuing to learn and surrounding herself with a loyal team, she says.
“I also trust my instincts and I’m very spontaneous, which is a good trait when you’re an entrepreneur.”
Starting a business is relatively easy, she says – the burden is what you do with success.
“Do you sell it to the highest bidder and sail into the sunset?” she asks.
Wong is a passionate philanthropist who – inspired by her humble roots – created Giving Hand, a non-profit that provides seed capital and management support to NGO start-ups.
Proceeds from her book will also be donated to Harmony House, a Hong Kong NGO that aims to prevent domestic violence.
“I grew up in a loving family and firmly believe everyone deserves to live in a safe and happy household,” she says.
Wong is also determined to shatter societal stereotypes about being single and childless. “Asian women especially are expected to go down a certain path,” she says.
In China, if an educated woman is unmarried by 27, she is often referred to as a “leftover woman”.
“I want to dedicate this book to Asian women,” she says. “Hopefully it will help them be comfortable with themselves and the decisions they make and to trust their own current self.”
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As she hurtles towards 70, Wong shows no signs of slowing down. But it’s not all work and no play.
Travel is a passion and Wong is mastering the art of solo adventures.
“I travelled to Afghanistan in 2004 and Burma in 1994, when a monk told me, ‘You have a pink aura around you, your destiny is to help others.’
“During the pandemic I went to the Azores, a volcanic island in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean,” she says, referring to a cluster of islands owned by the Portuguese.
She’s ridden a Russian ice-cutter to Antarctica, visited historical palaces in Iran, and in April hung out with Komodo dragons on Indonesia’s Komodo island.
But she also has an appreciation for life’s simple things.
“It can be lonely when you’re an entrepreneur and even more lonely when you are successful,” she says.
“But I look forward to eating soup for dinner and watching my dogs chase butterflies in my garden. That’s very comforting.”
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