The 43-year-old deputy chairman of Hong Kong,listed hat maker Mainland Headwear has a long-standing , and apparently effective , corporate policy to keep wayward male staff in line: “If they take a mistress and I find out about it, they’re fired!”
In the past decade, as China has gradually opened its markets to outsiders, entire villages of mistresses have sprouted up around foreign-owned factories in Shenzhen (where Mainland Headwear employs 2,000), across the border from Hong Kong. For as little as 3,000 yuan ($362) a month, a Hong Kong man can keep a so-called er nai in Shenzhen. “How can any of my managers be focused if they’re thinking only about their mistresses all day?” asks Ngan.
Her zero-tolerance policy seems to be working: So far she hasn’t had to fire anybody for philandering. One employee she doesn’t need to worry about is her husband, the company’s chairman, Ngan Hei Keung. “He assures me, and I know this for a fact, that after he finishes up work at the factory, he heads straight to the [company] dormitory.”
She should know. Ngan has set up a rigid system where staff at all levels keep an eye out for wrongdoing and report suspicious behavior to supervisors.
“Temptations are tremendous in China, especially with all of these young, pretty things flocking to rich foreign men,” says Ngan, who herself emigrated from Fujian province to Hong Kong in 1980.
