Maria Lee (李曾超群): Hong Kong’s Queen of Cakes - A Biography

The biography of Maria Lee Tseng Chiu-kwan (李曾超群, Hong Kong's Queen of Cakes.

Maria Lee Tseng Chiu-kwan (李曾超群; born 1929), is a Hong Kong entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded Maria's Bakery in 1966, one of Hong Kong's first Western-style bakery chains. She is known in Hong Kong as the "Queen of Cakes" (西餅皇后), and was once described by The Washington Post as "the Martha Stewart of Hong Kong"[1]

At its peak, the business operated over 70 outlets across Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and mainland China, with annual turnover of approximately HK$800 million.[2][3] Following the chain's liquidation during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, Lee reinvented herself through e-commerce, private dining, and continued her studies well into her eighties.[4]

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Early life

Maria Lee was born in Shanghai in 1929 into a prominent family with a lineage traceable to 1537 as merchants in Ming dynasty China. Her father, Tseng Kwong-chik (曾廣植), was a banker in the Chinese Nationalist Government's Postal Savings Bank. Her mother, Rosie Tseng (陳鳳瓊), was a well-known socialite who attended the elite McTyeire School in Shanghai, where her classmates included Soong Mei-ling, who later married Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Rosie Tseng is also credited as one of the first Chinese women to publish a cookbook in English.[5]

Lee was born with a congenital heart defect that caused arrhythmia. Four doctors predicted she would not live past 15 years of age. As a child she was banned from exercising, and was carried upstairs by servants to avoid putting strain on her heart. She later recalled being taunted by another child for still being carried despite her age. She subsequently rebelled against these restrictions, taking up sports including running and swimming. "If I was going to die anyway, I wanted to try playing soccer and swimming before I died," she said.[6] Her health improved, and she competed in running events during her primary school sports day.

Her mother taught her cooking, singing, and piano from a young age, and by 14, Lee could bake biscuits and cook a range of Chinese dishes.[7] Her mother also trained her in deportment, teaching her how to sit, walk, and even sleep without moving - habits Lee maintained throughout her life.[4]

Lee has two brothers. Her younger brother, Tseng Chiu-yeung, later became Dean and Professor of Political Science at California Lutheran University. Lee remained close to them throughout her life, both travelled frequently to Hong Kong for family events and maintained strong ties with her during her career. [8]

Education

Lee's early education was shaped by the upheavals of the Second Sino-Japanese War. She spent her early childhood in Nanjing, where her mother hired private tutors from 1932 to 1935, believing that local kindergartens failed to provide adequate preschool education. From 1935 to 1941, she studied in Hong Kong at Lingnan Primary School and Ling Ying College.[6]

Following the Japanese attack on Hong Kong in December 1941, Lee's schooling became severely disrupted. She moved to Macau, enrolling at Pui Ching Middle School, before relocating to Hezhou in Guangxi province from 1942 to 1943, where she attended a wartime joint school formed by the merger of Pui Ching and Pui Ying Middle Schools. During wartime, she volunteered as a nurse, helping to inoculate patients and dress wounds. Because of her speed administering injections, she was nicknamed "Flying Needle".[6]

In 1943, she evacuated to Guilin, Guangxi, to escape the Japanese advance, walking across the border to mainland China. Ling Ying College had also relocated to Liuzhou in Guangxi, and she enrolled there to continue her studies. By 1944, she had completed only two months of study before being forced to relocate again to Guangzhou due to the Japanese advance on Liuzhou, where she enrolled at The True Light School.[6]

In early 1946, Lee travelled to Shanghai to enrol in a university preparatory programme at Shanghai Hu Jiang University, where she studied sociology.[6] She returned to Hong Kong prior to completing her studies at her father's request, due to political upheaval in China. She subsequently completed her sociology degree at the University of San Francisco between 1949 and 1950.[5]

Return to Hong Kong and early career

Lee returned to Hong Kong and married Dr Lee Ming, a civil engineer.[9] In the early 1950s, she volunteered to teach cooking at the YWCA. "As a hobby, I taught cooking there for three or four years," she later recalled. "When I started teaching cooking at the Y, I taught everything – Western, Chinese, everything, as well as cakes and pastries. I learned cake and pastry making from the States." She also taught at the Women's Welfare Association and later at the Town Gas and the HK Electric Co.[7]

During a visit to her mother in the United States lasting four months, Lee enrolled at an institute to study cake baking, decorating, and garnishing. "I found it very interesting. So when I got back to Hong Kong, I started to teach," she said.[7] After opening her first bakery, she also attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. "I like to keep learning more so I can invent more cakes," she explained.[7]

Lee established her own private cooking school, Maria's Culinary Arts School (超群烹飪研究學院). By 1978, the school enrolled 500 to 600 students per month, with classes of 30 to 40 students. It offered a three-month course with nine compulsory modules covering Chinese (dim sum, Northern Chinese, Szechuan, Cantonese), French, European cooking, and cakes and pastries. Students who completed all nine courses received a diploma. Lee said the school was run "something like Cordon Bleu".[7]

It was her cooking students who encouraged her to open a bakery. "My students said they liked and appreciated my cakes very much. So they said, 'Why don't you open a cake shop?' I thought that was a very good idea," Lee recalled.[7]

Maria's Bakery

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Founding

In 1966, Lee established Maria's Bakery on Prince Edward Road in Kowloon with a loan of HK$100,000, declining investment from her husband. As a Western-style bakery, it introduced products such as fresh cream cakes, cartoon character cakes, and Swiss rolls to Hong Kong. Despite her ability to make good cakes, she had limited business experience, and within six months the bakery was struggling. Her husband urged her to give up, but she insisted on continuing. "I told him I had not tried my best yet," she later recalled.[9] She sought additional loans, studied business practices, and through trial and error, relaunched successfully.

Growth and expansion

Over the following three decades, Maria's Bakery expanded both locally and internationally. By the late 1970s, Lee had developed 350 varieties of cakes, of which about 30 were available at any one time. Her most famous creation was the mango cake, with other favourites including the chestnut cake and the strawberry-walnut cake. The bakery also produced specialty cakes for children's birthdays – with Snoopy, rabbit, and car cakes proving particularly popular.[7]

During the early years, Lee introduced tongs to allow customers to select their own baked goods, and established uniform orange chequered branding across all Maria's Bakery outlets.[6]

Lee's business partner was Fung Lau Shun-kwun (馮劉順群), a former cookery student who became vice-president and vice-managing director of Maria's Group. The two women worked closely together for decades, with Fung taking on operational responsibilities while Lee was the public face of the brand.[9][10]

Between 1967 and 1984, Lee hosted a weekly cooking show on Rediffusion Television (later ATV), and also appeared on several shows for Taiwan Television Corporation in 1975.[7] In partnership with her daughter May, she ventured into publishing, producing Maria's Journal, an English and Chinese magazine on homemaking. "The Journal got started when my daughter got back from journalism school," Lee explained. It began as a quarterly selling for HK$5 before becoming a monthly publication at HK$3.[7]

The business also diversified into catering, fast food, and restaurants, including a coffee house opened in 1971 and a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong in 1988.[7]

By 1994, the bakery had annual turnover of approximately HK$800 million and employed some 600 staff in Hong Kong alone, alongside 300 in mainland China.[3]

Cake voucher system

Maria's Bakery operated a cake voucher system, in which customers could purchase vouchers at HK$18 each, redeemable for cakes at any outlet. The vouchers were commonly bought in bulk, particularly ahead of weddings – which require large quantities of cakes in Chinese tradition. At one point, the total value of outstanding customer vouchers was estimated at HK$10 million.[11]

The vouchers were popular because they could be redeemed at any point in time, at any Maria’s Bakery branch. This made them an easy gift, and given they had no expiry date, they effectively functioned as a long term store of value.

Taiwan operations

In the early 1970s, Lee expanded Maria's Bakery to Taiwan, initially targeting the wedding market by introducing Western-style wedding cakes to compete with the Taiwanese custom of sending traditional flat cakes containing sweet and savoury fillings.[6] For four consecutive years leading up to 1991, Maria's mooncakes outsold all competitors in Taiwan. In the 1987–1991 period, the bakery sold 260,000 tins (1.04 million pieces) of mooncakes in Taiwan, with demand exceeding supply.[8] At their peak, the 22 Taiwan outlets generated revenue comparable to the 44 Hong Kong outlets.[3] Due to competition from local pastry manufacturer Kuo Yuan Ye (郭元益), the Taiwan branches eventually closed.

North American expansion

Lee first expanded Maria's Bakery to the west coast of the United States, opening three shops in the Los Angeles area as wholly-owned subsidiaries. The first New York shop opened on Lafayette Street in Manhattan's Chinatown on 17 August 1985, employing 120 people. Senator and former astronaut John Glenn performed the opening ceremony. Much of the bakery’s mass production equipment was manufactured in Hong Kong and shipped to New York for the new outlet. Lee subsequently opened another shop in Flushing, Queens.[12]

Although the North American shops were initially wholly owned, they were later converted to franchises with a three per cent trademark royalty. By 1994, Lee had 22 shops in the US and Canada, with a waiting list of companies willing to buy more. Lee said that keeping track of the books and training staff made franchising "more work than it is worth", and vowed that none of her other businesses would go the same route.[3]

By 2002, Maria's Bakery had four stores in the Washington D.C. area (in Fairfax and Montgomery counties) along with a factory in Rockville, Maryland. The franchise had expanded beyond its Chinese customer base, with nearly half of customers at some locations being non-Chinese.[1]

Mainland China expansion

In 1993, Lee expanded the bakery into mainland China with a HK$30 million budget, opening shops in Shanghai and Zhongshan.[13] In Zhongshan, the company owned 85 per cent of the venture, with the town government holding the remainder. A factory was established in Zham Heung village, where labour costs were 95 per cent less than in Hong Kong.[3]

In Shanghai, Maria's obtained the rights to open 18 cake shops in the city's underground railway stations through a joint venture with Shanghai Foodstuff Import and Export Co, in which Maria's held a 60 per cent stake. By 1994, the Shanghai shops had a monthly turnover of HK$900,000.[3]

Lee acknowledged learning about the Chinese market "the hard way". Birthday cakes made up half of sales in China, and she was surprised by the size of orders – customers routinely ordered 2.5 kg cakes, with one order for a 27 kg, four-tiered birthday banquet cake, at a time when average Chinese salaries were around HK$800 per month. She attributed this to the one-child policy and to money flowing into Zhongshan from husbands working overseas, such as ports in the United States.[3]

Maria's products were also sold in supermarkets in Guangzhou, Zhuhai, and Zhongshan.[3]

The 1984 "Cake Run"

In May 1984, Maria's Bakery experienced what the press dubbed Hong Kong's first "cake run", a phenomenon akin to a bank run. Thousands of people formed queues outside branches after rumours [4] suggested the chain was on the brink of collapse. Customers feverishly redeemed cake vouchers, with the total value of outstanding vouchers estimated at HK$10 million.[11]

Lee called a press conference to counter the "wild" rumours, saying: "The way to cope is to supply as many cakes as possible – just like handling a bank run."[11] More than 400 bakers worked around the clock, producing over a million cakes daily: ten times the usual average of about 100,000.[14] Lee also said she had received "numerous phone calls from the press about reports that I'm removing cash from Hongkong to the United States, or that I've disappeared or fallen seriously ill".[11]

The company took out advertisements in 11 major Chinese newspapers to clarify its financial position. Vice-president Fung Lau Shun-kwun reported that the group had HK$8 million in fixed deposits locally and HK$6 million in liquid assets.[11] The cake run subsided within days, and Lee later said: "I think I handled that very well."[3]

The source of the rumours were never proven. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) speculated that it was cause by confusion over the Bakery's pull back from supermarket stalls to focus on their own stores.

Decline and liquidation

The seeds of the company's eventual collapse were sown in 1989, when ill-advised investments overseas and on the mainland began to drain the business. Over the following years, Lee and her partner Fung Lau Shun-kwun pumped nearly HK$90 million of their own cash and property into the company, trying to keep it afloat. Staff numbers were cut from 1,100 to 600, and the number of cake shops was reduced from 60 to 20.[10]

"We have strong ties to the company and we care for the staff; that's why we kept pumping money to it, hoping we could rescue it finally," Lee said. "But later the burden became increasingly heavy. Both of us are already old and we felt tired. So we decided to sell the company recently. Unfortunately, a deal almost done was smashed by the economic turmoil."[10]

On 7 May 1998, Maria's Bakery was forced into liquidation during the Asian economic crisis.[15] The collapse left more than 400 employees out of work[16] and an estimated HK$20 million in dishonoured cake vouchers. At least 30 interested parties contacted provisional liquidators Ernst & Young (EY), with two-thirds expressing interest in buying the Maria's group.[17]

"I'm not a very sentimental girl. In 32 years of business, I started from nothing and now have come to nothing again. But in between I have done a lot, especially for charity," Lee said at a press conference, while co-founder Fung burst into tears beside her.[10]

Rival bakery St Honore Cake Shop offered to redeem Maria's vouchers at a 57 per cent discount, with Arome Bakery also accepting Maria's coupons.[15] More than 540,000 vouchers were redeemed through these schemes.[18]

During this time, reporters camped outside her home for days. Lee eventually left via a back entrance at 4 am to avoid the media.[4]

The bakery was ultimately acquired by edible oil manufacturer Hop Hing Holdings.[18] Lee did not file for bankruptcy, choosing instead to work to repay all of her creditors, which she successfully completed in 2008.[5]

Post-bakery career

In 2000, two years after the collapse of Maria's Bakery, Lee began learning computing and launched a cookery website featuring her life story, cooking tips, recipes, and interviews with local celebrities, which still exists today (http://marialee.com). She also worked with partners to sell food and lifestyle products over the internet, including her puddings, sauces, and cooking utensils. She sat up until 5 or 6 am, writing 5,000 words per night for her planned online autobiography.[4]

"This is the third chapter of my life," she said.

She published a cookbook with Amy Cheung Siu-han entitled Maria Lee's Chinese Cookery, containing 46 recipes she had created herself. "I started from zero and now I've come back to zero, but I tell myself that I haven't failed because in between I did so many meaningful things," she said at the time.[19]

Lee opened her Mid-Levels home as a private restaurant, offering "designer Chinese banquets" to politicians, celebrities, local guests, and tourists. She designed the dishes herself, then trained her maids to do the cooking.[4] Charging HK$250 per head (or HK$200 for members of her website), she hosted dinners three nights a week, featuring dishes such as "deep-fried eel in special sweet and sour sauce, Chinese doughnuts stuffed with taro and seafood mixture, bamboo pith stuffed with fish paste, crab in special curry sauce, sautéed shark's fin, deep-fried fish garnished with dry seafood sauce, prawns stuffed with minced pork, and Lee's signature noodles with lobster."[4]

The Hong Kong Tourist Association promoted these dinners, helping to drive customers. The venture attracted over 6,000 diners over two years and was booked out months in advance. She also took groups on culinary tours to her villa in Zhongshan, Guangdong.[4]

However, due to noise and traffic complaints from neighbours, her landlord declined to renew her lease in late 2002, and Lee lost both her business and her home in Hong Kong.[5]

A play about her life named Bitter Sweet ran at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre from 27 September to 8 October 2000 and raised funds for cancer research.[6]

Property investments

Lee invested in property in New York, developing the US$50 million, 227-room Hotel Maria on 138 Lafayette Street in Chinatown. She had been involved in planning the hotel since at least 1991, discussing its progress with partners in New York.[8]

Opened in 1992, it was the first luxury hotel to serve the district. "Many of my friends complain that when they come here to New York they don't want to stay in the English-speaking hotels in midtown Manhattan and prefer the Hongkong style service," Lee said.[20]

Room rates started at US$125 for a single room and up to US$225 for a suite, significantly less than comparable midtown Manhattan hotels. The hotel featured a Hong Kong-style restaurant called the Pacifica. Many of the 120 staff were Cantonese and Mandarin speakers, and the hotel was managed by professionals from the Peninsula and Omni hotel groups.[20]

Hobbies

Lee enjoyed Cantonese opera and performed alongside the famous opera singer Fong Yim-fun (also known as Katie Yang) on several occasions for charity.[9] Lee and Fong Yim-fun were close friends – Lee described their friendship as "one of mutual respect". "Katie taught me how to appreciate Cantonese opera while she just loves my cakes – her favourite is my banana cake," she said.[21]

Their final joint performance was at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on 14 November 1997. Proceeds were donated to local universities' music departments to fund research and development of traditional Chinese music.[21]

Lee was also a dedicated practitioner of Chinese painting and calligraphy, taking lessons three times a week, which she described as her "only source of relaxation". She studied under Lo Yat Ngam and Chan Kam Wai at the Kwan Fong Charitable Foundation’s art studio.[8]

Later life

Following the loss of her Mid-Levels home, Lee moved to the family summer house in Zhongshan. It was there, while watching the sunset, that she made a painting on which she wrote in Chinese calligraphy: "Sunsets do not have to be dim or void of light."[5]

In 2000, a play about her life, Bitter Sweet, ran at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, raising funds for cancer research, with actress Louise Lee Sze-kei in the title role. 

Between 2006 and 2013, she studied at the School of Professional Studies (CUSCS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, gaining certificates in Basic Chinese Medicine, Chinese Medicine Nutrition, and a diploma in Child Development Therapy. She also obtained a diploma in Integrative Therapy at Lingnan University.[6] "The aim of continuing her studies wasn't for her own satisfaction," her biographer noted. "It was to help her write a cookbook with nutritious recipes for people with allergies."[5]

Personal life

Lee was married to Dr Lee Ming, a civil engineer. He passed away in 1991. They had two sons and one daughter. Their eldest son, Tak, was a Professor of Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London.[8] Their younger son, Che, and their daughter, May, are both lawyers.[19] Lee described the family arrangement with characteristic humour: "It's nice to have a choice of two lawyers in the family!"[8]

Charity

In 1984, Lee and Cantonese opera star Katie Yang Leung Yin-fong (Fong Yim-fun) co-founded the Kwan Fong Charitable Foundation, which provides support for the elderly, the blind, and the mentally and physically disabled.[19][21] The foundation also provided funding for needy families and Asian students studying in the United States.[9]

Lee also supported the Hong Kong Society for the Blind, contributing to the development of an English–Cantonese Talking Dictionary and attending its launch in 1991, and supported the Braille Post, a publication for visually impaired readers.[8]

Also in 1984, Lee donated US$1.2 million to Pace University to be used for the Pleasantville campus library and for the Chinese-American cultural centre at the White Plains campus, north of New York. The university named the high-rise portion of its Manhattan campus Lee Tower.[22]

She also served on the Board of Regents of California Lutheran University in the 1980s.[8]

Lee has donated an estimated HK$46 million to charity over the course of her life.[5]

Awards and honours

Lee received a wide range of honours over the course of her career, recognising her contributions to business, philanthropy, and the culinary arts. These are listed from both primary sources, and Lee's own website.

Major honours

• 1975 – Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), awarded by Queen Elizabeth II for charitable service.[4][7][24]
• 1984 – Honorary Doctorate in Commercial Science, Pace University, New York.[22]
• 1988 – Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award, People to People International.[25]
• 1989 – Outstanding Businesswoman Award, presented by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.[6][24]
• 1989 – Paul Harris Fellow, Rotary Club of Chinatown, New York.[25]
• 1991 – Personal and Professional Accomplishments Award, U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency.[25]
• 1995 – Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D), California Lutheran University.[25]
• 1998 – Honorary University Fellowship, University of Hong Kong.[23]

Academic appointments

• 1997 – Visiting Professor, Kunming University.[4][7]
• 1998 – Advisory Professor, Nanjing University.[4][7]

Culinary and early career distinctions

According to her official website, Lee received several early culinary awards, including:

• 1969 – Diplôme d’Excellence, Cours de Cuisine Académie Maxim’s, Paris
• 1970 – Certificate of Honor, Meidi Ya Cooking School, Tokyo
• 1970 – Certificate of Honor, Yamato Cooking School, Kyoto[25]

Community and business awards

Lee’s website also records a number of community and business awards she received in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. These include honours from Asian American organisations, women’s business associations, and New York civic groups, such as:

• The Chinese American Cultural Centre
• The Chinatown Planning Council
• The National Association of Professional Asian American Women
• The Organization of Chinese American Women
• The Coalition of Minority Women in Business
• The Chinatown Neighborhood Local Development Corporation
• Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World (1998)[25]

These awards recognised her contributions to entrepreneurship and to Asian American community development.

Footnotes

Rosie/Rosy Tseng’s Chinese name was Chan Fung king (陳鳳瓊). In accordance with Chinese naming customs, women retain their own surnames, however, she also adopted her husband’s surname for official use in British Hong Kong.

Dr Lee Ming (李明博士) was a civil engineer specialising in water and hydraulic engineering. He studied engineering in the United States at MIT, where he earned his doctorate, and later returned to Hong Kong to work in water infrastructure and municipal engineering. He died in Hong Kong in 1991.

McTyeire School (McTyeire Home and School for Girls) was one of Shanghai’s most prestigious missionary schools. Founded by American Methodist missionaries, it offered an English medium curriculum and educated many daughters of elite Chinese families, including Rosie Tseng, Soong Mei ling and her sisters. In 1952 the school, along with St. Mary’s Hall, merged into Shanghai No. 3 Girls' High School.

Lingnan Primary School (嶺南小學) was part of the Lingnan educational network founded by Christian educators associated with Lingnan University. The Hong Kong primary school operated before the Second World War but did not reopen after the Japanese occupation. Its successor institutions today form part of the Lingnan school system in Guangzhou.

Ling Ying College (嶺英書院) was a private secondary school in Hong Kong active during the 1930s and early 1940s. It closed during the Japanese occupation and did not resume operations after the war.

Pui Ching Middle School (培正中學), founded in Guangzhou in 1889 by Baptist missionaries, opened its Macau branch in 1938. The Macau school continues to operate today as one of the territory’s leading secondary institutions.

Pui Ying Middle School (培英中學) was established in Guangzhou in 1879 by American Baptist missionaries. During the Second World War, its staff and students relocated to Guangxi, where it operated jointly with Pui Ching as a wartime school. Pui Ying schools continue today in both Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

True Light School (真光中學) was founded in 1872 by American Presbyterian missionary Harriet Newell Noyes and is one of the oldest girls’ schools in South China. The Guangzhou campus continues to operate today as Guangzhou True Light Middle School (廣州真光中學).

Hu Jiang University (滬江大學) was a Christian university in Shanghai founded by American Methodist missionaries in 1906. It was merged into East China Normal University (華東師範大學) in 1951 during the reorganisation of higher education in the early People’s Republic of China.

Rediffusion Television (麗的電視) was Hong Kong’s first television station, beginning as a wired subscription service in 1957 and launching free to air broadcasting in 1973. It was renamed Asia Television (ATV) in 1982. After years of financial and management difficulties, ATV’s free to air licence was revoked in 2016, and the station ceased broadcasting the same year. It now exists online only.

Hotel Maria was later sold off and rebranded to Holiday Inn Chinatown.

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References

[1] Phuong Ly, "Immigrants Find a Taste of Home", The Washington Post, 22 January 2002, p. B1.

[2] Kate Fiddes, "Mainland challenge adds new flavour to Maria's business recipe", South China Morning Post, 3 November 1994, p. 68.

[3] Kate Fiddes, "Mainland challenge adds new flavour to Maria's business recipe", South China Morning Post, 3 November 1994, p. 68.

[4] "The return of flour power", South China Morning Post, 19 June 2000, p. 19.

[5] Lisa Cam, "Who is Maria Lee, Hong Kong's Queen of Cakes? 'Extraordinary life' of bakery founder told", South China Morning Post, 26 December 2024.

[6] Leung Wai-yin and Ngai Yiu-chi (梁偉賢、倪耀芝), The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Hong Kong's Pastry Queen, Lee Tsang-chiu-kwan (平凡中的不平凡 香港西餅皇后李曾超群), Joint Publishing (Hong Kong), 2024.

[7] Alexander, "What's cooking? Just ask Maria: Women for all seasons", South China Morning Post, 3 December 1978, p. 19.

[8] "Family comes first for catering mum", South China Sunday Morning Post, 1 September 1991, p. 42.

[9] Linda Yeung, "Maria takes the biscuit", South China Sunday Morning Post, 11 June 1995, p. 38.

[10] Rhonda Lam Wan, "Maria's chief tells of business woes", South China Morning Post, 1 May 1998, p. 4.

[11] Jimmy Leung, "Crumbs what a sorry mess! The big cake run mystery at Maria's", South China Morning Post, 19 May 1984, p. 1.

[12] Victor Su, "Maria Lee opens up shop in Big Apple", South China Sunday Morning Post, 18 August 1985, p. 15.

[13] Kent Chen, "Maria's smells sweet success", South China Morning Post, 1 December 1993, p. 64.

[14] "How Maria made her millions", South China Morning Post, 23 May 1984, p. 15.

[15] Ng Kang-chung and Rhonda Lam Wan, "Rival to redeem Maria's vouchers", South China Morning Post, 7 May 1998, p. 1.

[16] Rhonda Lam Wan, "Six-week wait for payouts", South China Morning Post, 30 April 1998, p. 3.

[17] Rhonda Lam Wan, "Companies swoop on Maria's Bakery", South China Morning Post, 2 May 1998, p. 4.

[18] Rhonda Lam Wan, "Maria's finds buyer", South China Morning Post, 4 June 1998, p. 4.

[19] "Maria's recipe for success", South China Morning Post, 25 June 1999, p. 14.

[20] Jon Marsh, "Chinatown hotel fills market gap", South China Morning Post, 26 February 1992, p. 29.

[21] "Queen of Cakes takes to the stage", South China Morning Post, 14 November 1997, p. 22.

[22] "Pace gets slice of Maria's cake", South China Morning Post, 7 September 1984, p. 19.

[23] "Dr Maria Chiu-kwan Lee Tseng", University of Hong Kong Honorary University Fellows, 10 December 1998.

[24] Chiu, Vivian (7 February 1999). "She may be 70, but the founder of Hong Kong's cake empire which collapsed last year is not ready to quit". South China Morning Post. p. 19.

[25] Maria Lee – My Awards, official website, https://marialee.com/My%20Awards.htm (accessed 2026).

Illustrations generated with the assistance of AI, based on original creative direction and reference materials.