Hong Kong, China: A bartender-turned-soothsayer fighting for a Hong Kong tycoon’s US$13 billion ($19 billion) estate told her to dig “feng shui holes” to find her kidnapped husband and beat her illness, a court heard Friday.

On the third day of his testimony in the epic court battle, Tony Chan said that he advised Nina Wang to dig feng shui holes in the ground at her properties mainly for amusement.

“Nina and I were together trying to do some tests to see if digging the holes could improve a person’s luck, as a matter of fun,” said Chan, who says he was Wang’s lover.

However, Lawrence Lok, lawyer for Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which has challenged Chan’s claim to Wang’s fortune, said he was lying.

“I put it to you that this couldn’t be for fun. So far you have been trying to belittle the gravity of the digging of the holes. You are not telling the truth,” Lok said to Chan.

Evidence shown to the court revealed that Wang had ordered workers to dig special feng shui holes in the ground at some of the hundreds of properties owned by her company Chinachem shortly after Wang’s first meeting with Chan in 1992.

The practice stopped in 1996, but resumed in 2005, around the time when she had cancer, Lok said.

“You employed this digging of the holes charade to impress Mrs Wang,” Lok said.

The lawyer said that Chan first convinced the tycoon that the digging would help her locate her husband Teddy Wang, who has never been found after being kidnapped for the second time in 1990 and was declared legally dead in 1999.

Lok said earlier that Chan had persuaded Wang to believe that Teddy was still alive – an allegation that he repeatedly denied.

The feng shui master told Wang that digging the holes could also improve her health after 2005, Lok said.

The court was shown items excavated from some of the feng shui holes, including pieces of jade marked with scripts, a voodoo doll, a burnt banknote, and a photo of Wang herself. But Chan said he had only told her to put jade pieces in the holes.

Hong Kong’s High Court will decide whether Wang, who at one stage was Asia’s richest woman, left her entire fortune to Chan when she died of cancer in 2007 aged 69.

Opposing Chan’s claim is Wang’s Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which is now controlled by her siblings, who say a will awarding the huge fortune to the soothsayer is a fake.

The case has filled the front pages of Hong Kong’s media for weeks, with its mixture of wealth, love and feng shui, the ancient Chinese system of channelling energy.

Chan also testified that he visited a Chinese temple with the tycoon in 1992 to ask the deities to bear witness to their relationship.

“After we started to be together, nobody could be our witness. So...we purchased wine to drink in the temple (to) inform the gods that we were together,” he said.

Lok said his account of the event was a fabrication. Instead, he said the real reason behind the visit was that the tycoon wanted to pray for the return of Teddy Wang – an assertion Chan rejected.

Chan told the court Wang addressed him affectionately as “hubby pig” and
“hubby king” at that time, and rarely spoke about Teddy.

Lok accused Chan of going out of his way to flatter the tycoon. Reading from the transcript of another video Chan had recorded, the lawyer said he used the word “beautiful” about 40 times in an extended compliment of her Qing Dynasty costume.

“In fact, you are always so beautiful, sweetheart baby,” Chan said in the
transcript.

The feng shui master said the comments were nothing unusual for a couple in love.