He was known as the "most familiar stranger". Familiarity is because from the Shaw Teaching Building in the university, the Shaw Library to the numerous SOAP operas on TVB, to the classic, nostalgic Shaw films, he is always inadvertently interspersed in our lives; strange, because we can only hear about him, but rarely see him in person.
He is Run Run Shaw, a Chinese entrepreneur from rich to noble to elegant, a "great benevolent man" who has created a legend with 107 years of life.
Run Run Shaw grew up in a business family, and his father was Shao Xingyin, the owner of the Shanghai Jintaichang Pigment Company. Later, his father's frustration in the mall made Run choose to follow his brother to Singapore to develop the Nanyang film business.
Since then, Run Run Shaw has developed a great interest in filmmaking. At the end of the 1950s, Hong Kong's economy began to grow rapidly, and Shaw, who saw this, gave up his career of more than 30 years of hard work in Singapore and went to Hong Kong alone.
Soon after, Run Run Shaw set up his own company in Hong Kong, Shaw Brothers Limited. When the company first started, in order to quickly expand the market, Run Run Shaw chose to make films with popular and entertainment themes, which is also the strongest theme of today's Hong Kong films. In the years that followed, Shaw made nearly a thousand films, which were released in dozens of countries and regions, and were widely acclaimed.
In 1971, hong Kong set off a stock market boom, and the shrewd Shaw immediately announced the listing of Shaw, which was also one of the earliest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. However, at a time when the Hong Kong film industry was highly sought after, Run Run Shaw chose to reduce his investment in movies and switched to TV dramas, becoming tvb's largest private shareholder. After that, the decline of the film industry and the rise of the television industry proved Shaw's unique business vision.
Shaw's ability to become a successful Chinese entrepreneur is inseparable from his "careful calculation" and "dictatorship". In the entertainment industry, Run Run Shaw is famous for his "careful calculations", and the directors who have worked with him in his early years have all experienced it. Among them, the more widely circulated is the fact that Bruce Lee was underpriced.
At that time, Bruce Lee was only an eighteen-line small actor, in a film involving Shaw, Bruce Lee hoped that Shaw could give a salary of $10,000, but Run Run Shaw refused his request without much consideration, and lowered the salary to $2,500.
In the early years, Run Run Shaw was actually quite "authoritarian", from the script and photography to the selection of directors and actors, as well as makeup and editing, he had to participate personally, and he did so in the hope of seeking the greatest benefits at the smallest cost. To this end, he also deliberately established a film "Dream Factory" that can be called the largest film in Asia, using the Western assembly line production mode and strictly controlling the entire process of film investment, production and distribution.
At that time, there was a saying that "I am very popular, but I am particularly poor", and a large part of the reason for such a sentence is caused by the "monthly salary system" implemented by Run Run Shaw. It is reported that all the stars who signed with him at that time had to accept the monthly salary system and also needed long-term cooperation. Even David Jiang and Dillon, who were very popular at the time, were no exceptions. It is also this management method that has allowed TVB to develop rapidly and dominate the TV industry in Hong Kong.
Although Shaw is a traditional set in doing business, he has done charity very generously, donating a total of HK$4.75 billion over the past 20 years, and most of it has been to the mainland. If his influence in Hong Kong comes from his film and television kingdom, then it is because of his charitable donations in the mainland.
As early as 1957, Run Run Shaw established the "Shaw Foundation" in Singapore, and then in 1973, he founded the "Hong Kong Shaw Foundation" in Hong Kong, which is mainly used to support education and welfare in the mainland.
After 1985, the "Shaw Building" and "Shaw Library" throughout the country were built with those funds. During the Wenchuan earthquake, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw donated 100 million yuan to charity, and 5 years later, they once again donated the same amount of charity to the region.
As of 12 years ago, he had donated a total of HK$4.75 billion to education in the mainland, with a total donation of more than 6,000 projects, and it is no exaggeration to call him a "great benevolent person" based on this alone.
Run Run Shaw, who has been in the film and television industry and the business world for decades, not only owns the two major companies of Shaw Brothers and TVB, but also has a large number of properties in Singapore, with a total asset value of more than 10 billion Hong Kong dollars. However, such a large amount of family property, in the last years of his life, faced the problem of no one to take over, and even after his death, the children were still unwilling to inherit.
Shaw married two wives in his lifetime. His wife, Huang Meizhen, was known to him in his youth, and the two fell in love at first sight, and then quickly entered the palace of marriage. After marriage, Huang Meizhen not only gave birth to 2 men and 2 girls for Run Run Shaw, but also made great contributions to his career. But it was such an excellent woman who was betrayed by Run Run Shaw.
Although Shaw often has some scandals with his female stars on weekdays, they are harmless, but his interaction with Fang Yihua has made the situation of Huang Meizhen in Singapore very embarrassing. Fang Yihua was a very popular female singer at that time, and after associating with Run Run Shaw, she chose to give up her career and concentrate on assisting Run Shaw to ascend to the throne of the godfather of Hong Kong entertainment.
Later, in order to better interact with her, Shaw chose to send his 4 children to Singapore. For the 4 children, they did not like their father to associate with Fang Yihua at all, to be precise, it was hatred. Before Huang Meizhen died in the United States in 1987, she spent 50 years with Shaw.
The death of their mother made their children feel heartache and had no intention of taking care of their father's career anymore, and in those years, they gradually faded out of Shaw's management. After their father married Fang Yihua, they severed ties with their father, fled away, voluntarily gave up the inheritance of their father's film and television empire, and even after their father's death, they were unwilling to take over.
Six years ago, after Run Run Shaw's death at the age of 107, his wife, Fong Yi-wah, temporarily took over his company. Nowadays, Run Run Shaw's tens of billions of net worth are all managed by professional financial institutions.
Run Run Shaw's life can be called the most typical and legendary inspirational drama filmed with the strength of TVB, but unfortunately, the end of this drama shows the unexpected side of Run Run Shaw. He was legendary, but also mortal.
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