Allan Zeman was born on 18 July 1949 in Regensburg, Bavaria, to a Jewish family, and is known as the 'father of Lan Kwai Fong' and chairman of the Lan Kwai Fong Group. His father died when he was seven, and he moved with his mother and sister to Montreal, where the family was poor and he began delivering newspapers at the age of ten. He entered the garment trade at nineteen, exporting Hong Kong and Asian clothing to Canada and making his first fortune young. After a business trip in the early 1970s he decided to settle in Hong Kong, and in 1975 he founded the garment trading firm Colby International, sourcing in Asia for North American buyers; the company grew large and was later sold, giving him substantial capital. In 1983, sensing that the city lacked relaxed Western restaurants for doing business outside hotels, he opened a California restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong; the next year he bought the whole California Tower for about HK$32 million and renovated it, gradually turning Lan Kwai Fong from an ordinary back street into Hong Kong's foremost nightlife and leisure district — he still owns about 70% of the area — and later extended the brand to mainland cities such as Chengdu and Haikou. Appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2001, he chaired the Ocean Park board from 2003 to 2014, overhauling its corporate culture and management and pushing the 'Aqua City' expansion; attendance surpassed Disneyland's from 2007, earning him the nickname 'Mouse Killer'. He gave up his Canadian nationality in 2008 to become a Chinese citizen and hold a Hong Kong SAR passport. He has long served on public bodies, including the Urban Renewal Authority and the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, received the Gold Bauhinia Star in 2004 and the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 2011, and in 2021 became an Election Committee member and stood in the Legislative Council's Election Committee constituency.
Zeman turned Lan Kwai Fong from an ordinary back street into Hong Kong's emblematic nightlife and consumption landmark, reshaping Central's leisure and social life and boosting the surrounding dining, bar and tourism trades. As Ocean Park chairman he pushed reform and expansion, with attendance briefly surpassing Disneyland's, and through public bodies he took part in urban renewal and the cultural district's development.
Achievements
- 1983 · Opened a California restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong and later bought California Tower
- 2003 · Appointed chairman of Ocean Park's board
- 2011 · Awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal