Xi's Purge Ends Hui Ka Yan's Shocking Life: $930M Mansion, Fake Divorce & 1,133 Party Branches

From private elevators and hundred million dollar mansions to a glass of wine traded for 20 billion yuan. Hui Kai-yan, the real estate king, didn't just spend money. He spent it in ways that would make ancient emperors bow in admiration. Once a celebrated figure, honored twice with invitations to the Tiananmen Rostrum by the Chinese Communist Party, Hui Kai-yan fell from being China's richest man to its most indebted. He now stands as a living symbol of a Chinese dream shattered by the intoxication of power. Think you know his story? Think again. Today, we reveal lesser-known chapters of his legacy. Stay with us until the end, and don't forget to share your thoughts. Thank you. At his peak, Hui Kai-yan lived in unimaginable luxury. At the height of his power, Hui Kai-yan lived a life of staggering extravagance. It's said that Evergrande once set up a company with over 200 staff solely dedicated to serving Hui's household, from butlers and maids to chefs and personal assistants. It operated like the imperial household department of the Qing Dynasty. The headquarters of Evergrande had two elevators, but Hui had a private one to symbolize his special status and privileges. He spent generously to hire professional fitness trainers from the U.S. and reportedly played a monthly football match with Ding Junhui, paying 200,000 yuan per game, a testament to his focus on health and image. He walked in a cloak, exuding grandeur. With a mere shrug of his shoulders, the cloak would slide off, and a bodyguard behind would promptly catch it, a choreographed move to elevate his elegance and noble air. When smoking cigars, someone was always on hand to catch the ashes, He took up football, gathering top players from across China, demonstrating both his influence and financial muscle in the sports world. He even launched an internal magazine where his face was always featured on the cover, a clear signal of his control over Evergrande's media narrative. An internal Excel spreadsheet showing Evergrande's lavish hospitality expenses once went viral online, shocking the public. But to Evergrande's staff, it was business as usual, and Hui's land, sea, and air modes of transport utterly jaw-dropping. Luxury yacht, market price of $60 million, custom-built in the Netherlands. After Evergrande's collapse, it sold for only $35 million, nearly a 50% loss. Luxury cars, two Rolls-Royce Phantoms, each worth 8 to 10 million yuan with vanity plates The latter matching Evergrande's stock code, 03333. Private jets, four in total, including Airbus ACJ 330 and ACJ 309 models. The ACJ 330 alone cost $220 million. Beyond vehicles, Hui Qian splurged on real estate around the world, properties that symbolized both over-the-top wealth and alleged efforts to hide assets or avoid accountability. In central Hong Kong, he bought the most expensive residence ever sold, priced at $930 million in USDs, a record-breaking deal. The 1,700-mile-square mansion featured a private garden, pool, elevator, and garage situated in Hong Kong's most elite neighborhood. In Los Angeles, he purchased a $150 million estate spanning 12,000-mile-squares with 28 bedrooms, 36 bathrooms, 5 swimming pools, a cinema, bowling alley, tennis courts, and other extravagant amenities. In London, he spent £210 million on another mansion. In Beijing, near the core area of Xisha Hai, he owned a riverside villa next to Jack Ma's. Its gate, made of golden rosewood, alone cost 150 million yuan. Even back in his hometown of Zhouku, where a nationwide tomb-flattening campaign once shocked the country, Hui's ancestral tomb, worth over 10 million yuan, and occupying 12 mu of farmland, remained untouched. He even erected a merit monument dedicated to himself while still alive. Evergrande was also a top customer of Guizhou Mao Tai, having co-branded at least five exclusive lines of premium liquor. A former employee revealed that Hui's wine cellar in Hong Kong was so extravagant it exceeded the value of his private jets, and that the number of Evergrande's global wine cellars was beyond imagination. In what's been called the most expensive toast in history, one glass of wine shared between Hui Kaiyan and Zhang Jiandong of Suning reportedly led to Zhang investing 20 billion yuan. Another furniture mogul, desperate to land a strategic partnership with Evergrande, drank 20 shots of liquor in front of Hui, and ended up with a perforated stomach. Clearly, Hui Kaiyan lived in an illusion of perpetual celebration, a world of endless banquets, blinding lights, and intoxicated luxury. His life was not just rich. It was extravagance on a scale that even emperors of old might envy. Even hotel stays came with their own hierarchy of privilege. After Hui Kaiyan and several top executives at Evergrande were detained, a leaked document titled Customer Profile for Evergrande Group Executives surfaced in Chinese media. The level of detail in this file was nothing short of astonishing. According to the document, Hui Kaiyan had over a dozen personal requirements when staying at a hotel. These included, no crowds upon arrival, the elevator had to be empty when he entered, no one, especially men, was allowed to approach him except for his personal secretary, bodyguards, and housekeeper. Even the bottled water had to be the latest batch of Evergrande-branded mineral water. The room had to be equipped with a humidifier set below 50% humidity and must be completely free of any unusual odors. Additionally, the air purifier had to be turned on but remain silent. At night, every single LED light in the room had to be covered with black tape. Absolute silence was mandatory during sleep. He always carried his own cigars, typically Cohiba or Davidoff, and required the room to have a cigar ashtray, cutter, and torchlighter. A full tea set had to be available, and personal care products needed to be clearly labeled in large font. The bathroom had to be stocked with anti-slip slippers, ample clothes hangers, and daily laundry service. As for food preferences, Hui only consumed imported fruits such as Japanese melons, Japanese shine muscat grapes, premium Tianwan watermelons, winter jujubes, and exceptionally sweet mangoes. He liked Liaodong ginseng and fish, but avoided anything spicy, warming, or seafood-related. Hui wasn't the only one with extravagant demands. Other Evergrande executives also lived out what many referred to as the imperial class of Evergrande through their hotel requirements. His second son, Xu Teng, vice president of Evergrande Real Estate, made 25 separate requests, more than double his father's. Among them, he disliked being addressed by his Chinese name and had an extreme preference for Evian mineral water imported from France. The most recent batch of Evian had to be available in precise quantities and placements. Six bottles on the nightstand, six bottles on the tea table, six bottles at the minibar, six more on the tea table in the study, three bottles on the work desk, and six more Evian bottles had to be prepared for him just before checkout. In terms of meals, his breakfast had to be delivered to his secretary first, and only then brought to him by the secretary personally. His menu included lobster bisque, rainbow geoduck clam, and abalone. For drinks, he favored Penfold's 407 red wine, priced between 300 to 500 per bottle, and high-end feitian mute, with a market price of nearly 5,000 yuan. He also traveled with three bodyguards and a personal secretary. Hui Kaiyan burned through billions to build the world's largest football stadium. As Evergrande transformed from a local real estate company into a sprawling multinational conglomerate, Hui Kaiyan's personality and mindset evolved in lockstep with his rising wealth and status. He became increasingly flamboyant, ostentatious, arrogant, and insatiable. Embarking on a series of reckless expansions, he poured staggering sums into one unprofitable venture after another. In 2010, he acquired Guangzhou Football Club. Determined to turn it into a dominant force in Chinese football, Hui invested at least 35 billion yuan, signing a host of world-class players and coaches, including former Brazil national team coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, ex-Italy coach Marcelo Lippi, Colombian striker Jackson Martinez, and Brazilian forward Elkisson, among others. In 2018, Hui spent 450 million euros to acquire a 55% stake in Premier League club Aston Villa, becoming its largest shareholder. Then in 2020, Evergrande broke ground on what was promoted as the largest football stadium in the world, the Guangzhou Evergrande Football Stadium. With a projected investment of 12 billion yuan, the stadium was designed to cover 150,000 square meters of land with a total floor area of nearly 494,000 square meters and a capacity of 100,000 spectators. But the grand project came to a halt as Evergrande's funding chain collapsed, leaving the stadium unfinished, another monument to Hui's excess. In reality, Hui's obsessive investment in football was not just about business or prestige. It was widely believed to be a calculated move to cater to Xi Jinping's well-known passion for the sport. Hui Qian's Cicada Malt 1,133 Evergrande party branches become a laughingstock. Evergrande, with a registered capital of just 3.9 billion yuan, managed in just over a decade to accumulate a mountain of debt totaling 2.58 trillion yuan. Its leverage ratio exceeded 600 times, making it the most indebted real estate developer in history. Among this debt, over 300 billion came from bank loans, 200 billion from commercial paper, more than a trillion yuan owed to suppliers, 700 billion owed to homebuyers, and the remainder—several hundred billion— tied up in financial instruments like trust funds, insurance, and wealth management products. Among the many creditors, the most tragic are the homebuyers of Evergrande's unfinished projects— people who emptied their six wallets to place a deposit, only to receive nothing in return. Their money vanished like scraps tossed to a dog. Yet they must still make mortgage payments every month. Otherwise, they risk being sued by banks, having their credit ruined, and suffering serious long-term consequences in their lives. As of September 2022, Evergrande had 706 stalled projects in more than 200 cities, with 720,000 undelivered homes, affecting more than 6 million homeowners— people who are left homeless and helpless. One of the most absurd cases is the Evergrande Royal Lake World Project in Xinjiang, Henan. The homes were fully sold, deposits collected, but the only thing Evergrande built was a grand entrance gate costing tens of millions of yuan. Beyond that, not a single brick. It became known as the flashiest unfinished project in history. None of Evergrande's investments brought profit. All resulted in massive losses. And yet Hui Kaiyan continued to borrow, to leverage, to expand across all sectors. Why? On one hand, to keep funneling dividends to himself. On the other, to maintain the political glow of being a red-capped tycoon. From 2009 to 2022, Evergrande issued dividends almost every year, totaling 733.86 billion yuan. Hui and his wife held around 70% of Evergrande's shares, meaning they pocketed at least 500 billion yuan. Even when the company's debt crisis became obvious in 2020, they didn't stop. In 2021, as commercial paper defaults piled up, dividends still flowed. They even manipulated financial reports, inflating revenues by 664.34 billion yuan to justify dividends and extract cash. When the truth could no longer be hidden, Hui resorted to every trick to quietly vanish. First, he moved assets abroad through a fake divorce. Evergrande was listed in Hong Kong through a small red-chip structure. Offshore entities in the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, fully controlled by Hui and his wife Ding Yumei, received most of the dividends from Evergrande China and transferred them overseas before and after the collapse. Through this so-called technical divorce, the money ultimately landed in the hands of ex-wife Ding Yumei overseas. Second, he protected his assets through bankruptcy. After receiving huge dividends, Hui and his wife leveraged Evergrande's U.S. dollar bond offerings, buying up large portions themselves as preferred insiders and earning massive interest. On November 6, 2018, Evergrande issued two USD bond tranches totaling $1.235 billion. Hui alone bought $1 billion worth, with annual yields of 13% and 13.75%. From 2020 to 2021, he purchased three more tranches totaling over $600 million, with yields of 12%. All of this legally extracted tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in bond interest, all from Evergrande. As Evergrande's liabilities far outstripped its assets, Hui filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., hoping to shield all his overseas assets through legal means while shifting Evergrande's liabilities onto Chinese financial institutions that had underwritten the company's debts. Third, he allegedly set up a $2.3 billion family trust for his eldest son shortly before filing for bankruptcy, aiming to preserve family wealth across generations and ensure perpetual access to dividends. Ironically, Hui once declared, Everything I have, everything Evergrande has, was given by the party, the state, and society. We must give back. We must shoulder social responsibility. He even swore, I can lose everything, but Evergrande's investors must not lose everything. In China, there is a saying, workers, peasants, merchants, students, soldiers, east, west, north, south, center. Official data showed that Evergrande had 38 secondary party committees, 27 general branches, and 1,133 individual party branches, with 12,075 registered party members. Now, the cruel irony is that Hui Kaiyuan, once party secretary of Evergrande Group, ended up taking the back door, quietly siphoning massive personal wealth abroad, while leaving behind trillions in debt, hundreds of thousands of unfinished homes, and a social disaster for the same party that once bathed him in glory. In other words, assets privatized, debts corporatized, risks socialized, and the children westernized. Evergrande is a microcosm of China's broader economic model. Hui Kaiyuan's trajectory mirrors that of China's real estate sector. From Xiao Jianhua of Tomorrow Group, to Wu Xiaohui of Anbang, to Hui Kaiyuan of Evergrande, each fallen like dominoes, each proving a simple truth. The closer a business empire is to the Chinese Communist Party's power center, the faster it collapses, and the harder it falls. So what do you think of Hui Kaiyuan's royal lifestyle? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. And thank you for watching. See you in the next episode.