'A herculean task'

When Fok speaks of his grandfather, his tone is filled with nostalgia and reverence. "He decided to initiate the development of Nansha's coastal city late in his career. It was a very challenging task for him in his seventies given that Nansha at that time was known as the 'Siberia of Panyu', eclipsed by Guangzhou and Shenzhen which were being developed," Fok says.

Transforming the "no man's land" was a herculean task. "I fondly remember he would go to Nansha every Wednesday no matter what," Fok says. What kept his grandfather's Nansha commitment and fervor alive? It's the faith that we should "give back to where we came from", which is imprinted in Fok's mind.

Eric Fok sees his grandfather's prophetic views about Nansha's potential to morph into an international city. But an "international city", which has been ubiquitously used to brand a modern city of today, seems to be lost in translation.

"Look at every major international city in the world — Hong Kong, Singapore, London, New York, where the common denominator is the deep sea port," he says. And Nansha, in the middle of the Pearl River Delta and in a coastal city close to Hong Kong and Macao, is endowed with the natural elements necessary to become a cosmopolitan world city.