Application received
Your reference number is
CB-00000
What happens next
- Your application is now with Marcus Feng in Changsha, who will confirm the desk, check the spelling of your family name (twice), and assign your ayi. In parallel, Duncan Pemberton-Smythe will review your billing details from Borough and post your welcome pack. Allow 2–3 weeks, depending on Marcus's caseload and the WiFi situation at Duncan's WeWork.
- You will receive an office activation letter by post (and, for Gold and Platinum, by email) confirming your office address, your ayi's name, and the schedule for your photographic updates. The letter will be on Crestbridge letterhead. It will look extremely official. It is extremely official. It simply does not, strictly, mean anything.
- Once activated, your family office is live. You may, from that moment, say the sentence. We recommend practising it once or twice in private first, so that it lands with the right weight at the dinner party. I have a family office in Changsha. There. You can already feel it.
- If anyone asks what your family office does, the recommended response is: Wealth preservation and strategic positioning in the Chinese market. These words mean nothing, which is why they work. If pressed further, say the operations are discrete and long-term, then change the subject. Nobody has ever pressed further.
A note on your ayi
You will not meet her. She will not write to you. From the moment your office is activated, she will sit at your desk, in your name, in a UNESCO City of Media Arts, and she will be there. That is the arrangement. That has always been the arrangement.