This friend of Lai's was named Fei Jianzhong.
Fei Jianzhong smuggled himself into the United States at the age of 18 to make his way in, and by the time he retired at the age of 80, he had created a business empire worth at least US$400 billion and was a legendary presence in the entire North American Chinese community.
However, this man left no trace of himself on the Forbes list.
He is the man who is often talked about in Western high society as a super hidden rich man.
The only people whose money can be counted in the Forbes list are the founders and major shareholders of listed companies, and it is difficult to hide the assets of such people.
For example, Bill Gates, who was the world's richest man for a long time, since his Microsoft has chosen to go public, most of Microsoft's financial information must be open to the outside world, and how much the market value of its business is, the securities market can check the data at any time, and how much Bill Gates himself holds in Microsoft, the securities market has also been publicly disclosed, so it is only necessary to simply do a multiplication and division to know how much the Microsoft shares are worth a lot of money.
In addition, the number of listed companies under his name is also publicly available, so it is easy to find out how many of these companies he owns, count them one by one, and sum them up to get an approximate value.
Anyone who knows secondary school maths can work this out without Forbes.
However, there are still a large number of invisible tycoons in the world who have countless properties, but none of them would choose to go public.
The reason why they do not go public is that they do not want the outside world to know their identity and wealth.
If a company does not go public, it is not obliged to disclose its revenue to the outside world, so there is no way of knowing how much the company is worth.
What's more, most of them have their companies scattered around the world in offshore locations that are as protective of corporate information as Swiss banks, so no one knows how much money they have.
Fei met Lai when he was young and this friendship has lasted for over sixty years.
Fei's success in the business world is due to his own hard work and ability, but also to Lai's guidance.
Over the past few decades, the world has undergone many major changes, each representing a huge opportunity, and Fei has almost invariably reaped the dividends.
This has also made his relationship with Lai Ching-hua even more inimical.
Fei Jianzhong struggled until he retired at the age of eighty, and after he turned eighty, he searched the world in his quest for immortality.
His quest for longevity was not superstitious, but his achievements in this life were so glorious that he could not bear to leave, let alone have the courage to face death.
In fact, many entrepreneurs who are as successful as he is are doing everything they can to pursue longevity.
Only, the way they pursue long life is very different from the ancient emperors who sought immortality and medicine.
Most of these entrepreneurs still start from science in their pursuit of longevity.
For example, a certain Chen, once the richest man in China, invested billions of dollars in researching the human brain.
Many people say that he invested so much money in researching the brain in the hope of achieving immortality for the human brain.
And Fei Jianzhong is definitely better than that Chen, the richest man, in this regard.
Over the years, he has successively invested at least US$2 billion in research funding to one of the world's most cutting-edge organ transplantation research laboratories, in order to explore whether humans can achieve the goal of doubling their life expectancy through large-scale organ transplants.
And in his lifetime, he has undergone many organ transplants for various medical conditions.
In the hands of an ordinary person, after so many major operations, I am afraid that he may not live to the age of seventy.