MUCH OF ST GEORGE'S Building in Central suggests another era. Overshadowed by the gleaming chrome and glass of the district's newer skyscrapers, its low-ceilinged lobby is modest and unostentatious by today's standards.
On the 24th floor, the offices of Sir Elly Kadoorie & Sons have a lived-in feel. Visitors are greeted by 1960s'-style lettering, soft carpets and a faintly musty smell.
Outside his corner office, where he works surrounded by framed images and mementos of his forebears, the head of the Kadoorie family empire stands with an arm extended in welcome to his visitor.
Hong Kong, as a city governed by the commercial imperative of getting ahead, has never had much time for the past, but it runs like a current through Michael Kadoorie's veins.
Asked to speak about his background, he launches into a fluent 10-minute recital of the family history, eventually pausing somewhere in the inter-war period to ask: 'Shall I continue in this vein?' He agrees that he sees himself as the inheritor of a tradition. 'Very much so. I think that each generation has privileges and obligations, and a role to play.
'The first generation clearly made the fortune. There's an old saying that the second generation consolidates it and the third generation loses it. Well I, as you know, am third generation, so I have to be twice as careful in terms of maintaining the consolidation and, of course, looking for new developments.'
The Kadoorie legacy is part of the fabric of Hong Kong history. Powerful industrialists and revered philanthropists, they grew wealthy from the city's economic rise and gave much back.