The Great Family

The Great Family is one of the representative works in Hong Kong writer Liang Fengyi's "Financial Fiction Series" and the opening installment of her "Great Family" story cycle. Centered on the Yung family, one of Hong Kong's top financial dynasties, the novel revolves around the immensely wealthy Yung Bit-chung and his household: his first wife, Chong Yuk-yu, on her deathbed leaves a will dividing her estate equally between their children Yung Yu and Yung Chau; the two siblings, long resentful of their father's one-man rule, plan to form a separate board of directors to strip Yung Bit-chung of real power, but the appearance of a supplementary will upsets their calculations, and the family's battle for equity escalates. Behind this seemingly suspenseful family affair lie the cold realities of father-and-son business warfare and the tangled web of obligations, interests, and emotions within a wealthy clan. Drawing on her own experience in Hong Kong's business and financial circles, Liang Fengyi embeds financial details—corporate takeovers, equity allocation, boardroom maneuvering—into the characters' relationships, using a tycoon family's saga to show how urban people choose among money, power, and kinship. Fast-paced and densely plotted, the book combines business suspense with romantic tension and was one of the most widely circulated works in the 1990s Hong Kong "financial fiction" boom; in 1997 it was adapted into a television series of the same name.