“I am a businesswoman with a heart”
Faye’s business is the wellbeing of animals. Here she tells CLOSER that being part of the Ho clan was not always easy and rosy, and explains how her love for animals helped her to overcome tragedy and find purpose in her life.
What to expect from an animal-rights activist, who owns a veterinary clinic and a pet hotel and on top of these, is the granddaughter of Stanley Ho? Before meeting her personally, I had only ever seen Faye Ho on the cover of glam magazines (looking great) and in a pro-animal rights demo (looking committed).
When I sit with her for lunch, on one of these scorching hot Macau days, she strikes me as down-to-earth and centered, an impression that her youthful, fresh look reinforces. So, between celebrity events, the animals’ cause and the businesses she runs in Macau, where does she stand?
“I am a businesswoman with a heart in the business that I do,” Faye tells me, “I am very much into charity work; it’s a way of giving back to society. So I guess you can say that I have a kind heart. I just love to help people anywhere, but animals are my passion.”
It’s a passion that came out of a personal tragedy. When Faye was six, her parents Suki (a famous model in London’s swinging sixties) and Robert (son of Stanley Ho) died in a car accident. Faye and her younger sister Sarah were brought to Macau to live with their grandparents in Penha.
But the love of Stanley and Clementina, and comfort and security they provided, were not enough to fill Faye’s feelings of emptiness.
“I was raised most of the time by servants, who were worried about my sister’s safety, and mine, so we really weren’t allowed to go out much,” Faye recalls.
In those days, her aunt Deborah had many Saluki dogs and Faye was quickly attracted to their unselfish friendship. The old style-education she received, full of reproach and yelling when she didn’t behave, only strengthened her bond with the animals.
“At six, there was always a question on my mind of why my parents left, so the dogs were my companions. I didn’t have the love that I was supposed to get in the family, so they gave me love and it was something that kept growing and growing,” Faye confesses. “Everyday after school, I would come home and would be up in the cages, just sitting there chatting with those animals, and I found that they were better listeners than human beings.” When she was 13, she got a little Chihuahua who quickly became her best friend.
Despite the tough education, her grandparents made her days happy. She recalls “the kindness” of grandfather Stanley and grandmother Clementina, “a remarkable lady who taught us manners and to respect people, I miss her a lot.”
Boarding School, Real Life
Macau in the eighties was hardly exciting for a teenager. It was at this time that Faye faced a second “earthquake” in her life. She was enrolled with her sister in a boarding school in Surrey, England. It was a shock from day one.
Here was a “spoiled brat”, used to an army of servants looking after her, suddenly in a room with seven girls, ordered to make the bed, and not knowing where to start. A roommate eventually helped her. Dinner came next, with an orange for dessert. “I just sat there for five minutes, not knowing how to open this orange,” she says, laughing, “and my friends just said ‘Why are you not eating?’ ‘I don’t know how to open this’, and they literally laughed at me and said ‘You don’t know how to open an orange? Who does that for you, then? ‘My servants.’ They just looked at me like I was a weirdo or something.”
Boarding school was therefore a day-to-day learning process, both in and out the classroom.
Again, as in previous times in her life, it was hard. She was bullied about her
looks and attitude, but Faye always found the inner strength to overcome it. “Every time someone tries to shoot me down, I just thrive on showing them that I’m not like that; I can be better and better and better,” she says.
It was a life-changing experience that she treasures to this day, and the first time she actually started to have human friends (that she still keeps in touch with), who were not as rich as her, but still happy. “It made me see the world from other people’s level and I liked it, it was normal and carefree,” she reflects.
Vocation found in Macau
After boarding school, there were years of soul searching. As a Ho heir, she was expected to follow in the steps of the other family members and immerse herself in the casino or hotel businesses. She frequented an MA in a business school, but she couldn’t see herself filling that role. A make-up course followed. She enjoyed it, but still there was something missing. It would be upon her return to Macau in 2004, with her husband and two children, that she found her way. Tired of being described in the local social pages as a “housewife”, she decided to change when an article about Macau’s Society for the Protection of Animal, popularly known as ANIMA, gave her the answer she was looking for. She visited the old shelter, a poorly built building with no flooring, causing yet more pain and sickness to abandoned animals.
It was time for her to act. She proposed herself to lead the efforts in repairing the shelter, bringing in more staff and organizing proper adoptions for the animals. She soon became the president of the shelter, a post she stresses, she doesn’t want for self-gratification. “I joined ANIMA, because I wanted the publicity for it, I’m there for the dogs, I’m there to help them to have a better home, a better way of life. And no matter what I need to do, I’ll get ANIMA out there and make people aware of what we’re doing,” she says. And if being the granddaughter of Stanley Ho helps her cause, so be it. She managed for instance, to have the shelter’s dogs on the catwalk with the contestants of Miss Asia 2006, allowing ANIMA’s cause to reach a huge audience.
Every effort counts in a city where, as
Faye points out, one needs to change the law and the mentalities. There is no law against animal cruelty in Macau, making ANIMA’s job much harder. “We are trying pitch the government to set up a law which would basically give a harsh punishment to those people who abuse the dogs,” she stresses. But the most difficult task is to change mentalities and prejudices against animals.
From the pregnant woman who fears that her newborn might get allergies (an idea condoned by some doctors), to the couple who love their dog only until the day they decide to break-up the relationship, every excuse is legitimate for some people to abandoned their dogs. Plus, the older a dog gets, the higher are the chances of being abandoned. On this point, Faye is radical. “You have to able to give treatment to that animal because it is part of your family. Would you give up your son, if he had cancer? No! Why do you give up an animal, then?” she asks.
A Passion and a Business
Despite the odds, she is happy and fulfilled in what she does, to the point of deciding to build up a business in her own right, revealingly enough, based on her past experiences. Her Macau veterinary clinic was an old aspiration from her teenage years when one of her dogs died in the surgery of a local vet. No explanation was given at the time. So she promised herself that that wouldn’t happen again. She has also launched DOG ONE LIFE, the first pet hotel in the city and a reliable answer for concerned owners who have to travel.
An exercising area and 24-hour care are some of the treats of the place. Prices vary between MOP 100 and a maximum of MOP 300 a day. Not cheap, Fay admits, but reliable, she guarantees. Quite popular also is the grooming service for pets provided by a Japanese stylist.
In a way, by returning to Macau, Faye closed a circle, by turning her passions and beliefs into real projects. And she has an appraisal of her grandfather. “If I had to point out a role model in my life, it would be my grandfather because I always see him as a hero,” she says. “The way he made everything from scratch and how he just basically came to Macau to make something new, that’s something that drives me in what I want to do,” she concludes.
She seems reconciled with the past and has naturally passed her love for animals to her children. Like her, her daughter Melanie is crazy about a little Chihuahua. Will they continue their mother’s work? Too soon to say. For now, she’s more worried about giving them a loving childhood.
“I give so much love to my two children because I never really got it. I lost my parents really young; I really didn’t get the love I deserved and so I give them a lot of love and I make sure that when they get older, they can try different things to find their path, to do what they want to do,” she confides. It worked with her.