The clamor of Victoria Harbour carried through the thin wooden shutters of a cramped Kowloon apartment. The high-pitched calls of ferry horns mingled with the guttural roar of diesel engines; the air itself was heavy with a briny stink, salt and smoke braided into the lungs of anyone who lived here long enough to forget it.
Alexander Wong did not forget. For him, every scent, every sound, every streak of morning sunlight bouncing off the harbor carried a weight that no twelve-year-old should bear.
Because he was not twelve.
He sat up in the narrow bed, his young chest heaving, his fingers clutching at the cotton sheet as though it were the last handhold of sanity. His reflection in the chipped mirror on the wall was a stranger—soft cheeks, untamed black hair, and eyes unclouded by decades of scheming. But inside that stranger, there was something far older.
He swung his legs to the floor, instantly noticing how they were shorter, the bones not yet hardened. His heart thumped as he reached for the folded newspaper lying near the window. The paper was yellowed with humidity, ink smudged by sweaty hands. He smoothed it carefully, forcing his trembling eyes to focus.
"South China Morning Post, April 2, 1978."
The words spun before his eyes.
1978… It's real. I'm here.
He closed his eyes and let memory crash through him like a tidal wave. He recalled, with searing clarity, the skyscrapers he had once looked upon as an old man in 2025: glass and steel monoliths defined the skyline, their neon crowns blazing against the night. He remembered November 2008, when the world stopped at the collapse of Lehman Brothers. He remembered the protests of 2014, seas of umbrellas filling Admiralty and Central. He remembered how, as age bent his spine, illness corroded his lungs, he died alone in a luxury apartment overlooking the harbor … believing he had wasted all his chances, that he had been smart but not sharp enough, bold but never ruthless enough.
And then—rebirth.
When his eyes blinked open yesterday, the damp ceiling above him told a different story. His mother humming softly in the kitchen told an even stranger one. And now the paper, dated before the world had become recognizable, confirmed the impossible: fate had rolled back, shoving him into the fragile body of his twelve-year-old self.
Instead of panic, something colder crept into Alexander's heart: resolve.
He knew the future. Not the fine details—those were misty events of daily life—but the grand strokes, the milestones history would strike like a gong. The rise of Shenzhen, then mainland China's economic storm. The handover of Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997. The dot-com bubble, the casino boom in Macau, the Asian financial crisis, the birth of tech titans like Tencent and Alibaba in the mainland, the slow but steady shift of global capital eastward. He knew the timeline like a navigator carrying a map of dangerous seas.
And this time, he would not merely float with the tide. He would command it.
He walked to the balcony and pushed the wooden doors open. The morning hit him like a wave of history. Victoria Harbour sprawled, dotted with junk boats bearing red triangular sails alongside lumbering cargo ships. Cranes loomed in the distance; the skyline of 1978 was modest—far smaller than what he remembered. Only a handful of towers reached upward, casting short shadows compared to the steel forests of his adult memories.
At street level, the world buzzed with life. Trams rattled by on the island side, ferries cut across the waves, and ordinary Hong Kongers swarmed the alleyways with baskets of vegetables, sacks of rice, and bottles of soy sauce. The British policemen in khaki uniforms paced stiffly, while neon signs in both English and Chinese flickered above tea shops and pawn brokers.
To everyone else, this was simply Hong Kong in its usual chaos. To Alexander, it was the beginning of empire.
Hong Kong was on the cusp of what would become its golden age—the years when it would transform into the beating heart of Asia's finance. Real estate values would soar skyward, nearly every family fortune would be built on property, and money would flow through its port faster than anywhere else on earth.
Alexander gripped the rusty railing of the balcony until it trembled under his small hands.
I can change everything. But carefully. Every move must be careful.
"Ah Lek!" His mother's voice stabbed at his reverie. Nobody called him Alexander here. In this era, in this family, he was Wong Ah Lek, the second son of a tailor and a noodle seller.
He turned. His mother, hair pinned up messily, thin shoulders stooped from years of labor, held a wok ladle in one hand. "Come eat! School will start soon."
For a moment his vision blurred—not from tears, but from the aching clash of memory and reality. He remembered this woman dying in 1993 of an illness they could not afford to treat. He remembered standing at her simple grave long after he had built fortunes she would never see.
Now here she was, alive, preparing congee.
The twelve-year-old in him wanted to run to her, clutch her tight, promise her the world. The man in him knew he could not. Not yet. He would build that promise brick by brick.
"I'll be right there, Ma," he said, voice catching in his childish throat.
Breakfast was plain—white congee, a scrap of dried fish, pickled vegetables—but to Alexander it tasted different. Every bite was laced with determination.
He did not need to rush. He had nearly five decades of foresight stretching before him. His advantage wasn't a single gamble but the steady certainty of where rivers of money would flow. He had to start small, discreet, invisible. He could not suddenly display wisdom that would terrify his parents or attract the suspicion of others.
But he could plant seeds.
He knew, for example, that in just two years, the tiny fishing village across the border, Shenzhen, would be designated the first Special Economic Zone. Land there, worthless now, would become the foundation of billions upon billions. If he could secretly channel savings—through family, friends, shadow arrangements—into small plots of land before the reforms took shape, he would become a landlord of the Chinese miracle.
He also knew the Hong Kong real estate market was entering an explosive phase. A child could not buy property, but adults could. If he guided his father, subtly convinced him to expand beyond tailoring, even one small flat could triple in value by the mid-1980s.
Every fortune began with the first brick.
Later that morning, Alexander walked with his schoolbag slung haphazardly across one shoulder. The streets of Mong Kok bustled in the humid heat; hawkers shouted over steamed buns, radios crackled with Cantopop songs, and Western bankers—tall men in suits—strode between local shops with an air of superiority.
Alexander looked at them differently now.
He remembered names that would one day tower in towers themselves: Li Ka-shing, the plastics king who would transform into the richest man in Hong Kong; Cheng Yu-tung, the jewelry magnate; Stanley Ho, who would carve an empire in Macau. He had once read their biographies, studied their moves. Now, he would not just admire them. He would compete, maneuver, even surpass them.
He felt a strange fire inside. To outplay men who had once been gods of his childhood… what greater proof that this miracle of rebirth was not a curse but a gift?
That night, as the harbor lights twinkled faintly, Alexander sat cross-legged by the window. His schoolbooks lay forgotten, and instead, he scribbled furiously in a notebook.
Secure first pool of savings. Convince Father to invest in small apartment. Help increase tailoring shop profits.
Prepare for Shenzhen SEZ. By 1980, find method to purchase land discreetly.
Learn British finance. Absorb textbooks on economics, accounting, and English banking practices earlier than anyone else.
Stay invisible. Avoid standing out in school. A boy too clever will earn suspicion.
The pencil trembled in his small fingers, but his writing was sharp, determined.
He flipped the page and wrote down a single sentence in bold strokes:
I am the architect of Hong Kong's second future.
Near midnight, he could not sleep. He walked again to the balcony. The water caught the moonlight like a mirror, the ferries dragging white scars across its surface.
To anyone else, this was simply another warm night in colonial Hong Kong. To him, it was the beating heart of a world still asleep, ready to awaken into decades of wealth, chaos, and transformation.
He felt the strangeness of his position: a child staring at a city older and vaster than him, yet with a mind unveiling every turn it would take in the decades to come. Terror and exhilaration mingled.
He whispered to the water, as though the harbor itself was listening.
"Victoria Harbour… my witness. My stage. My crown."
And deep inside, Alexander Wong made a vow:
This time, he would not squander fortune.
This time, he would outmaneuver all rivals.
This time, he would not merely be a survivor of Hong Kong's storms.
He would be the storm.