As recently as two weeks before Mr. Robert H. N. Ho began his journey to the Western Pure Land, the philanthropist remained in regular touch with a Seattle-based gentleman called Siu Lu Sin. Siu demurred from characterizing himself as part of Mr. Ho’s inner circle. Nevertheless, from his description of how frequently he conversed with Mr. Ho for the last decade of the latter’s life (often every day until the last two to three years, which still saw calls twice a week), he was certainly what most people would characterize as a very close friend. Mr. Ho also spoke at length with two close professional confidantes: Prof. Lee Chack-fan GBS, JP and Ms. May Lau. Both assisted Mr. Ho in his philanthropic ventures from the mid to late 2000s onwards.

Prof. Lee, Lau, and Siu all share a close bond thanks to the work of Mr. Ho bringing them together. But in some way, they represent the many philanthropic sides of Mr. Ho that co-existed with each other effortlessly. Siu saw Mr. Ho’s editorial management of his newspapers up close; Lau was in regular touch with Mr. Ho about Buddhist matters; and Prof. Lee helped with Mr. Ho’s management of his Tung Lin Kok Yuen charities and also projects related to Buddhist Studies and Dunhuangology.

During Mr. Ho’s later years, all three came to be of service through his philanthropic interests: the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation’s early days (Siu), and Tung Lin Kok Yuen (Lau and Prof. Lee) and Tung Lin Kok Yuen, Canada Society (Prof. Lee).

The picture that emerges in conversations with these three friends of Mr. Ho is one of a multifaceted, generous, and unembellished person of many sides, all marked by gentlemanly uprightness, generosity and social concern, and passionate interests. All three recall that he was a relatively quiet person, though not of the stern and dour sort. He not only rarely lost his temper, but he also loved a good laugh, doing crosswords, and reading the comic strips in the papers. He was a man of much depth and many dimensions.

A lover of work and leisure

“Mr. Ho was a journalist at heart,” Siu told me, a veteran of Hong Kong’s freewheeling, rambunctious press days in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. In an echo of his mastery of the journalistic craft, he reminisced about Mr. Ho with human warmth and personal gratitude, but also clinically and unsentimentally.

At the height of his career, Siu worked in the editorial management of Kung Sheung (he left the paper in 1981) as well as being an executive at RTHK, before retiring in 2005. The Kung Sheung Daily News, along with its sister paper The Kung Sheung Evening News, were iconic newspapers that were managed by the father-son duo of General Ho Shai-lai and Mr. Ho. General Ho would manage the nightly news while Mr. Ho, as an early riser, directed the editorial agenda in the day. The papers were incorporated under the company of The Industrial and Commercial Daily Press Limited. It ceased the circulation of The Kung Sheung Daily News on 30 November 1984, and wound up its papers altogether and ceased operations on 26 December 1996.   

“You have to remember that before his philanthropic phase, Mr. Ho breathed journalism. Being a reporter, an editor, a man of the media, was in his bones. Journalism was his calling, and he had the accomplishments to prove it. He covered the Vietnam War and was White House correspondent for National Geographic. Before he joined his father in the managerial echelon of the umbrella company, he was in the fray with The Kung Sheung Daily News as chief reporter,” he told me. “In his old age he continued to care deeply about global affairs, China issues, Hong Kong, what was happening in Taiwan; essentially everything. He loved watching TV.”

One lesser-known but extremely important side of the philanthropist was the solace and fun he found in sports. “He loved tennis, basketball, and hockey. In his younger days he really loved tennis, and his wife Greta Ho was a tournament champion in her day. He would always play at his house on the Peak, which had a court. I wasn’t always able to keep up with his sporting interests, but our calls largely reflected news items he shared over emails, or what he’d seen on TV or read in the papers. And he loved watching shows about animals and nature documentaries.”

Sports was one of Mr. Ho’s undying passions when sitting in front of the box. When he lived in Hong Kong, Mr. Ho loved British football. But he also developed a love of American football and was an avid supporter of the Seattle Seahawks (a professional NFL football team based in Seattle, Washington). “Interestingly, in all my years of knowing him, he never seemed to care much for horse racing, despite it being a traditional Hong Kong pastime. Perhaps it reflected his dislike of gambling and his enjoyment of a regimented, regulated lifestyle. I also have no recollection of him liking mahjong, either.”

Lau, who is a retired communications executive, met Mr. Ho in 1972. She had just joined The Kung Sheung Daily News as a reporter, and would not have a chance to relate to Mr. Ho in a closer way until 2007, when she had retired. “Our relationship at the beginning was very much one of boss and subordinate. I was a junior cub reporter, fresh out of reading communications, when I met Mr. Ho. I often saw him in the office, but I was never in the same room with him at editorial meetings.”

One of Lau’s earliest and most striking memories of Mr. Ho’s professionalism and humanity was during her reporter days. “I recall how I mistakenly used paper that was supposed to be for reporters’ notes to wipe my work desk. The managing editor at the time would periodically distribute a manual for staff and scribbled in mine was the editor’s observation that Mr. Ho advised me that reporters’ paper was a precious resource representing our hard work. I was so embarrassed!” But Mr. Ho was not only observant of mistakes. But Lau also recalls with pride how a later manual had another scribble from the managing editor: “Mr. Ho is aware of how hard you work and the late nights you put in at the office. Well done and keep up the good work!” Lau’s evoking that moment indicated a moving and vivid memory of a firm but fair boss-turned-friend and Dharma brother.

Philanthropy as a calling and vocation

Mr. Ho and Lau’s communication had grown more frequent over the last three to four years, with Lau being one of the individuals that Mr. Ho would share news items with. “Apart from him being a visionary, having founded Buddhistdoor and also supported Buddhist Studies in universities around the world, my greatest impression of him was that he had a vast mind and big heart. He always cared about his former employees at The Kung Sheung Daily News, long after it ceased operations,” she shared.

“There was a core circle of colleagues that he particularly watched out for. In 2023, I told him that one of our old colleagues, Uncle Man, had turned ninety. Mr. Ho not only vividly remembered and rejoiced at his birthday, but also instructed his family office in Hong Kong to prepare a large red packet that I delivered to Uncle Man’s daughter in Macau.”

It wasn’t until after he had moved to Canada in 1994, that he began to initiate new charitable projects for Buddhism. “2007 was the year, after my retirement, when he approached me, suggesting that we work together to support Buddhist initiatives since I had been involved in communications and was a Buddhist. He helped me set up a foundation to support and finance Buddhist projects,” said Lau. She would come to advise him on various projects over the years.

As it turned out, Lau, Prof. Lee, and Siu would all converge on the common cause of helping him with philanthropy, which came to touch many corners of the world and encompass immensely diverse interests and causes. We cannot even discuss in this article the more Canadian side of philanthropy that Mr. Ho built, which was often focused on hospitals, healthcare, and science. There was also his deep involvement in American giving, including to his alma maters of Colgate and Columbia. That was another aspect worth its own extended discussion.

One of Siu’s post-retirement commitments was to help Mr. Ho in the initial years of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation’s establishment, from 2005. “I didn’t know much about the Buddhist angle, and I stopped actively assisting the Foundation after several years. But I was there for some of the earlier grants the Foundation provided, including the collaboration with the British Museum in 2007 and The World of Kunqu in 2008. Furthermore, Mr. Ho was always extremely proud of working with The Prince’s Charities Foundation (China) to present the documentary film, The Emperor’s Secret Garden.”

Siu retold how Mr. Ho visited Juanqinzhai, a unique building inside the Palace Museum in Beijing with some of the finest architectural interiors and decor of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign (r. 1736–96). “He was really happy to be able to personally fly to Beijing see the restored Juanqinzhai, and invited the vice-chancellor of his alma mater at Colgate at the time to join him, along with other doyens of Asian art and culture from the US.”

Travels along the Silk Road

Prof. Lee came to assist Mr. Ho in his philanthropy slightly earlier. Prof. Lee is a distinguished professor of geotechnical engineering. He served The University of Hong Kong as Chair Professor, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), Pro-Vice-Chancellor (University Relations) and Director of HKU SPACE from 1994 until retirement in 2015. But another great passion was his directorship of the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, which was founded in 2003. In the 1990s, Prof. Lee had been helping  Jao Tsung-I, the grandee of modern Chinese studies, with building Hong Kong-China ties. “Prof. Yao was training a new generation of Dunhuang scholars and inviting scholars from the mainland to Hong Kong. The idea was for them to conduct joint studies with our own humanities students and publish research. My part was to find office space and other resources for these visiting scholars,” Prof. Lee told me.

In the late 1990s, Jao was approached by Mr. Ho, who wished to offer his resources to the support of Chinese culture, including Dunhuangology, which Jao was a pioneer in. He would host Prof. Yao for lunch on 30 November 2015, exactly ten years before his passing this year. It was through Jao that Prof. Lee and Mr. Ho would become friends. Their collaboration would overlap in many areas related to the core scholarly interests of the Chinese humanities: the Silk Road, Dunhuang, restoring access to Buddhist scriptures that had been taken out of China, and Buddhist Studies. In time, Prof. Lee would be made chairman of Tung Lin Kok Yuen after Mr. Ho moved to Vancouver.

Mr. Ho was very interested in Dunhuang and, more broadly, the northern overland silk routes that connected northern and central China, in particular Gansu and Qinghai. Over the next few years, into the early and mid-2000s, Mr. Ho would travel with Prof. Lee and his wife, Dunhuang writer and Chinese cultural aficionado Mrs. Mei-yin Lee, to locales across the northern silk routes, including the Gelug heartland monastery of Kumbum, reputed birthplace of Tsongkhapa. It was striking how Mr. Ho not only admired and supported scholars, but himself demonstrated a strong affinity for all schools of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana.

“He always liked to travel,” said Siu, affirming Prof. Lee’s own observations. “He was always less concerned with style and more with substance.” Mr. Ho’s non-sectarian devotion was reflected in the mission he bequeathed to Buddhistdoor Global, which is to maintain balanced and faithful coverage to all three Vehicles of the Dharma. It was also during this period, at the turn of the new millennium, that Siu recalls Mr. Ho talking much more enthusiastically about Buddhism.

“I remember The Kung Sheung Daily News reporting on certain major events at Tung Lin Kok Yuen in Happy Valley, but the newspaper and the temple were not connected at any deep level,” he told me. “We did have an editor who would publish a periodical on Buddhism, but my impression was that the ‘Buddhist’ part of his life overlapped with his post-journalism, post-proprietor life; notably after his move to Canada. Specifically, it was tied to his sense of giving back to society, to really expanding his philanthropy.”

Happiness and cheers

Over time, one of the most distinctive qualities that Prof. Lee detected in Mr. Ho was the latter’s terrific sense of humor. “He was always cracking jokes,” said Prof. Lee, smiling. “He could always lighten up a situation with a witty quip.” Lau reflects on something similar, and adds that he was actually quite good at nurturing his inner child, that little boy or girl in all grown men and women. “At one point he sent me a photo of himself in his wheelchair, wearing with delight a pair of very quirky glasses that his nurse had given him,” she told me. Lau was always struck by how at home Mr. Ho was with his own positivity, including this childlike innocence and sense of fun that seemed in complete harmony with the grand things he was doing all throughout his life.

“‘People shouldn’t assume that I’ve had an easy life,’ was something that Mr. Ho would say in half-jest,” recalled Siu. “‘I was trained hard by my father.’” Despite his lofty background as scion of one of Hong Kong’s great merchant families, he preferred to join his colleagues at Luk Kwok in Wan Chai (nowadays Gloucester Luk Kwok) for lunch, which was famous for its char siu roast pork and char siu bao (buns). Mr. Ho would leave what was then three Hong Kong dollars as his share of roast pork and rice. “It wasn’t always Mr. Ho who footed the bill, but rather the last fellow to leave the table. It might sound counterintuitive, but he always saw himself as one of us, a member of the team and not lording down on the paper from a loftier place. We appreciated that,” said Siu.

A warm memory Siu has of Mr. Ho—watching British and American movies to screen for the Gregorian holidays (Christmas, Easter, and so on) with his wife Greta in one of their three family-owned theaters—invokes a sense of camaraderie and warmth that is difficult to overstate. There were, specifically, three: Prince’s Theatre; Princess Theatre, now The Mira Hong Kong; and the notoriously-rumored-to-be-haunted East Town Cinema.

In our conversation, Lau also recounted that one of Mr. Ho’s most precious possessions was a set of mala beads, which had been passed down to him from his father General Ho, whom himself had been bequeathed it by his mother, Lady Clara Cheung Lin-kok, founder of Tung Lin Kok Yuen. In the war of resistance against Japan, General Ho never suffered a single wound, and he attributed his good fortune to the protection bestowed by the mala beads. Mr. Ho often spoke of Amitabha Buddha, and Lau believes that he passed on with no regrets whatsoever, complete in the knowledge that the difference he made for not only humanity but also the Dharma would last longer than most.

“As a Buddhist, I really believe in the karmic causes and conditions that bring sentient beings together,” she said. “That Mr. Ho and I, two so very different people, could meet and grow close, is thanks to a profound karmic serendipity that is difficult to express in words.”

Prof. Lee, meanwhile, had this concluding thought: “Mayahana bodhisattvas embody both compassion (karuna) and wisdom (prajna) in their practice. Mr. Ho’s compassion is clearly reflected in his reputation as a philanthropist of global distinction. His wisdom is clearly reflected in his foresights in pioneering Buddhist education in tertiary institutions worldwide, and in pioneering the global use of the web in dharma teaching. Mr. Ho is truly a bodhisattva in every sense of the word.”

Conclusion: A life lived to the best

In seeking to put together a picture of Mr. Ho that celebrates his person and deeds, I had spoken to three different friends (two of them having been his former employees in his journalist days), and all three saw distinct and unique sides of the man: Siu saw him up close and personal as the journalist par excellence, while Lau rejoices at how Mr. Ho recited the Buddha’s Name and is now resident in the Land of Bliss.

In James Clavell’s Noble House (1981), protagonist Ian Dunross references how in Hong Kong, people are free to “make money or not make money, to build, expand, go broke, to go or to come, to dream or to stay awake, to live or die as best as you can.” That was, at least in the eyes of Western readers looking into Hong Kong, the world of the former colony-turned-SAR spanning the sixties, seventies, and eighties. It was a world that Mr. Ho would have often reminisced about long after the closure of the Kung Sheung papers and his own emigration.

I may be biased, but I remain convinced that BDG carries on a particularly important and intimate legacy of Mr. Ho’s passion. Because from BDG’s inception in 1995, in Mr. Ho’s beloved home of Vancouver, to all its milestones over the last three decades, the journal has consistently combined Buddhism with media—two of Mr. Ho’s many abiding passions.

If Clavell’s characterization of laissez-faire Hong Kong reflects the ephemeral, impermanent reality in which we live—in which we alone, rousingly yet somewhat dauntingly, are in control of our destinies and karmic fates—Mr. Ho was someone who lived his best life, without question. He was constantly awake and mindful of his strengths and shortcomings, but also dreaming of a better world. He appreciated structure and order as an expression of the right way to live, work, and play. And he loved laughter.

He was, ultimately, a man of principles, and this influenced the karmic manifestation that was his sojourn on this planet. To most of us, from those who worked to further his many noble causes to those who benefited from his generosity, he was a grand presence, an embodiment of beneficence, someone larger than life hailing from the larger than life House of Ho.

But to his closest loved ones and family members, Robert H. N. Ho was simply and unpretentiously, “Bob.” It is perhaps what he’d prefer to sign off of this life as, in his characteristic sense of humor and wit.

Therefore, this article is accordingly dedicated to exactly that person and legacy: the man of munificence and of mirth.

See more

The Prince’s Charities Foundation (China) (Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global)

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In Loving Memory of Mr. Robert H. N. Ho (1932–2025): Philanthropist, Buddhist Benefactor, and Founder of Buddhistdoor Global

Related features from BDG

Buddhistdoor View: Carrying the Light Forward – Robert H. N. Ho’s Legacy in Buddhist Media, Ethics, and Public Life
A Life of Giving and Compassion: The Philanthropy of Mr. Robert H. N. Ho

Commemorative issue: Reflections on the Generous Life: The Legacy of Mr. Robert H. N. Ho