stock here: h/t Flying Cuttlefish. I have been busy, I was aware of this, it was absurd on the first reports of 28 people dead. Now they are saying 159 dead. There were over 4000 people in those towers.
Like Lahaina, thousands are missing, and there is no list of those dead, so nothing can be corroborated. Lei does a good job of throwing out visual notes on her video, analyzing number and demographics. Within minutes, all 7 towers were engulfed. So that is obviously ARSON.
She compares it to other widely known tower fires. Grundfeld, a single 24 story tower, had a 24% death rate. They are claiming 159 deaths out of 4000 or so. So say 6%. That does make no sense.
Hong Kong Hung Fu Court Fire – Lei Real Talk Episode Summary
Goldfish Sound-Bite Summary
In this episode, Lei revisits the November 26 Hong Kong fire at the Hung Fu Court estate, where seven 31‑story residential towers burned almost simultaneously. While authorities report 159 dead and 31 missing, she argues this is physically, statistically, and historically impossible. Using Hong Kong census data, she estimates about 2,600 people were inside the seven towers when the blaze erupted, and compares this event to other major high‑rise fires that typically show mortality rates around 25–30%, not the 6% implied by the official toll.
She notes the rapid spread of the fire, failed alarms, sealed windows, and leaked firefighter accounts of many bodies on each floor, plus thousands of missing‑person posts, extra aid supplies being discarded, and the lack of an official victim list. Lei concludes that the real death toll is likely in the four‑figure range and that Chinese authorities are repeating a familiar pattern of minimizing casualties for political reasons, while some analysts even frame the disaster as part of a larger, superstitious ‘ritual’ by the regime.
One-Page Summary
Lei’s livestream focuses on the massive residential fire at Hong Kong’s Hung Fu Court on November 26, where seven of eight 31‑story towers caught fire in a level‑five disaster. Authorities claim 159 deaths and 31 people missing, but Lei argues that this figure is not simply suspicious, it is mathematically impossible.
Using the Hong Kong government’s 2021 census, she notes that Hung Fu Court housed about 4,643 residents, roughly 580 per tower. Seven towers burned, so about 4,060 residents lived in the affected buildings. Given the time of the fire—2:51 p.m. on a Wednesday—and the unusually high proportion of elderly residents, she estimates that about 58% of residents were home. After adding workers, caregivers, delivery people, and visitors, she calculates roughly 2,600 people were inside when the fire erupted.
She then looks at historic high‑rise fires: London’s Grenfell Tower (about 24% mortality), a 1995 Taipei high‑rise fire (31%), and a 2017 Brazilian apartment fire (33%). In extreme events, she says, mortality can range from 25–50%. Applying these rates to the estimated 2,600 people trapped in Hung Fu Court yields an expected death toll of 650–1,300 or more, not 159. Given Hung Fu Court’s flammable external foam, scaffolding nets that acted as fuel, total failure of fire alarms in eight towers, sealed windows, and rapid ‘chimney effect’ spread, she argues the true number should be at the high end of that range.
Lei bolsters this argument with circumstantial evidence: photos showing extreme destruction, reports of Hong Kong’s official ‘care team’ discarding large amounts of donated supplies they claimed were ‘not needed,’ and the fact that only about 2,000 of an estimated 5,000 displaced residents used government shelters. She points to thousands of missing‑person posts online versus authorities’ much smaller official missing count, and notes that, unusually, the government has not released a public list of the deceased—something that is standard in comparable disasters abroad.
Citing alleged firefighter leaks that there were five to ten bodies on many floors, Lei suggests real fatalities could reach 1,600–2,000. She frames this as part of a broader Chinese Communist Party pattern of under‑reporting casualties in disasters, referencing the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the 2021 Zhengzhou flood, where citizen investigations argued that real deaths far exceeded official numbers.
In the latter part of the stream, Lei discusses more speculative, metaphysical interpretations. A Chinese numerologist and feng‑shui (‘funray’) masters describe the seven burning towers as ‘seven incense pillars’ in a sacrificial ritual to prolong the regime’s life. She notes parallels to a Hong Kong film depicting seven of eight buildings burning, and ancient prophecies about a ‘white bird’ marking the end of a dynasty. She then ties in the recent death of a famous white crested ibis named Pingping at Beijing Zoo, whose name, color, and symbolism Chinese netizens link to Xi Jinping and see as an ominous sign.
Lei closes by answering audience questions on Daoism and feng‑shui, Hong Kong’s ‘snake‑shaped’ urban layouts, Taiwanese defense politics, and CCP elite power struggles, while also briefly promoting her gift guide and eye‑care patches. The core message of the episode is that the Hung Fu Court fire is almost certainly far more deadly than the official narrative admits and that both political calculation and deep superstition shape how China’s rulers respond to such tragedies.
Full Transcript (Cleaned and Slightly Condensed)
Hello everyone. Hi. Welcome to Lays Real Talk. Welcome to Lay’s Saturday Night Live. I talked about Hong Kong’s fire last Saturday. So, it’s been a week. Someone asked me about whether the fire was arson, and I said I didn’t have enough information to tell you what it was about.
And it took me a week to believe what I’m going to tell you today. Imagine this. It’s a quiet Wednesday afternoon. Then suddenly seven 31‑story towers erupt into flames almost simultaneously. Residents have less than 5 minutes to escape. The smoke climbs like a black tornado and the fire spreads faster than anything we’ve seen in Hong Kong’s history. But what comes next is even more chilling: an official death toll that defies physics, thousands of missing‑people posts neglected, and a government refusing to publish a victim list, while a population asks one forbidden question: where are the missing thousands?
The fire erupted on the afternoon of November 26 and, according to the authorities, at least 159 people were killed and 31 people are still missing. The moment people heard that seven buildings caught fire at the same time, suspicion exploded. That kind of synchronized blaze is almost unheard of, so some people claim this is arson with ill intention. Lei says she will explain that theory later.
The fire itself was tragic, but the way the Hong Kong government handled it was, in her view, even more tragic. She shows images of memorial messages posted by students at Hong Kong Baptist University calling on the government to address public concerns. The school quickly covered the wall with boards, and when the student union reposted the messages on December 4th, the school made them stop again. Lei asks: what exactly is the government trying to hide? Many believe it is the real number of deaths.
Officially, the government claims 159 dead and 31 missing, but many people, including Lei, do not believe this number. From a physical or statistical perspective, she argues the figure is not just suspicious—it is impossible. She calls it a number invented to cover up corruption, systemic failure, or something possibly more sinister. Post‑disaster photos show charred bodies, melted structures, and devastation, which explains why so many question the official toll.
Because of the doubts, Hong Kong residents conducted independent analyses. One estimate puts the real death toll as high as 1,300, and Lei believes even that may be conservative. Some suggest 2,000 people are unaccounted for and that real casualties are ten times the official figure. She promises to walk viewers through the reasoning so they can judge for themselves.
Lei recaps the event: a rare, extreme disaster spanning seven 31‑story residential towers, classified as a level‑five fire (the highest level). The buildings were wrapped in flammable window‑sealing foam covered by so‑called safety nets that actually fed the flames. Crucially, every fire alarm in the eight towers failed, creating a “chimney effect” as flames shot upward. Residents on upper floors had almost no chance to escape.
A Hong Kong resident used 2021 census data to calculate the affected population. Hung Fu Court housed 4,643 residents, averaging about 580 per tower. Seven of eight towers burned, so roughly 4,060 residents lived in the affected buildings. To estimate casualties, one must know how many people were on site at the time and what mortality rates high‑rise fires historically produce.
The fire started at 2:51 p.m. on a Wednesday. The population was older than average: elderly residents comprised about 40% of the total and Lei estimates that over 90% of them would be home at that hour. Children under 18 represented 10% of the population, with about 60% home since many had already returned from school. Working residents were about 30% of the population, with perhaps 20% home (remote workers). The remaining 20% were homemakers and adult students; she estimates that 50–55% were home. Weighing these groups together, she gets an overall “at‑home” rate of about 58%, higher than normal due to the large elderly population.
Doing the math, she estimates around 2,366 residents were physically in the buildings when the fire began. Adding approximately 250 renovation workers, caregivers, nannies, delivery workers, social workers, and visitors, she arrives at roughly 2,600 people on site when the fire erupted.
Because the estate was under long‑term construction, windows were sealed and fire alarms in all eight towers failed. Many residents did not know a fire had started. The fire did not begin from a single point; it ignited on multiple floors and in multiple buildings nearly simultaneously. Some observers claim that after firefighters arrived at the first burning building, fires suddenly broke out in the other towers, including those further away, in directions that did not match how wind‑driven spread would normally work. This leads some to suspect arson, or at least multiple separate ignition points.
Within minutes, all seven buildings were engulfed. Vertical escape routes filled with thick smoke, and Lei says residents above the 15th floor had almost zero chance of survival. Now she tests the official number. If 2,616 people (using her rounded figure) were inside the towers and 158 died (using one of the official tallies mentioned), the implied mortality rate is about 6%. She compares this to well‑known high‑rise fires: London’s Grenfell Tower in 2017 had about 300 residents exposed and 72 deaths, a mortality rate of 24%. Grenfell was one 24‑story tower. Hung Fu Court was seven 31‑story towers, with worse building materials, faster spread, failed alarms, sealed windows, and scaffolding nets acting as fuel. Lei argues there is “no way in the universe” that Hong Kong’s mortality rate is only 6%; it should be higher than Grenfell’s.
She adds more examples: a 1995 fire at a 13‑story building in Taipei with a 31% mortality rate, and a 2017 apartment fire in Brazil (Valparaíso/Varaso) with a 33% rate. Across history, she says, extreme high‑rise fires cluster around a median mortality rate of 30%, with a conservative low bound of 25% and an upper bound of 50%. Applying these to the Hung Fu Court estimate of 2,600 people trapped, a 30% rate would mean 784 deaths. A 50% rate would mean about 1,300 deaths. Given Hung Fu Court’s conditions, she believes the real number is closer to the high end, and even that may be optimistic, because it assumes half the trapped residents survived a days‑long inferno.
She then points to corroborating signs that many more people were lost. In a Hong Kong Facebook group, people reported that the government’s official “care team” threw away large volumes of donated supplies, claiming “no one needed them” and that the items were “garbage.” Lei finds this implausible, arguing that donors do not send trash and that the more likely explanation is that there were not enough survivors left to use the supplies. If the pre‑fire population of the eight towers was around 5,000 (counting nannies, caregivers, and others beyond the 4,643 census figure), but only about 2,000 people used government shelters, then roughly 3,000 people are “missing” in the sense of not being in shelters or clearly relocated. In cramped Hong Kong, she doubts thousands could all simply move in with relatives or check into hotels on their own dime.
Hong Kong’s major newspaper Ta Kung Pao (she pronounces it “Taongo”) reportedly wrote that residents of the eight towers held 7,600 life insurance policies, implying an occupancy higher than official population figures. Lei infers that if the base population is larger, her earlier estimate of 2,600 people on site is actually low, meaning casualty estimates should be even higher.
She notes that thousands of missing‑person posts appeared online after the fire, with families looking for loved ones. She asks how authorities could narrow the official missing number to 31 when so many people were searching for relatives and friends. She wonders whether all these families have truly been reunited. Most damning, she argues, is that more than a week later the government still had not published a list of the deceased—contrary to international norms. She contrasts this with the 2021 Miami condo collapse, where U.S. authorities released detailed victim and survivor lists by floor and unit.
Lei cites anonymous firefighter accounts claiming there were at least five to ten bodies on each floor of some buildings. If even five people died on each of 31 floors in seven buildings, that would imply around 1,600 deaths; if ten per floor, more than 3,000 deaths. She concludes that, combining statistical analysis, eyewitness claims, missing‑person posts, shelter counts, and insurance data, roughly 2,000 people may have died and that the official figure of 158 is “physically, statistically, historically, and logically impossible.”
She then situates the fire within a larger pattern of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disaster cover‑ups. She mentions the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, where the government reported around 70,000 deaths but citizen investigators believed the real number approached 300,000, including tens of thousands of students killed in substandard schools. Writer Tan Zuoren, who documented victims and criticized “tofu‑dregs” construction, was jailed. She also recalls the 2021 Zhengzhou flood, in which an urban tunnel filled quickly with thousands of vehicles; official figures reported under 4,000 dead and missing combined, but some estimated 20,000–30,000 fatalities. Lei argues that in China, death tolls are political, not factual, and sees the Hong Kong fire as fitting that pattern.
The final third of the talk shifts into metaphysical and symbolic territory. Lei discusses a numerologist in London, Miss Zhang Ying, who uses Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star astrology) to analyze the event and concludes it was not an accident but a ritual—seven “incense pillars” offered to extend the life or power of a political regime. The seven burning towers are likened to seven giant sticks of incense. She notes that British psychic Craig Hamilton-Parker had earlier predicted a politically motivated multi‑building fire in Hong Kong. A feng‑shui (funray) master also spoke of geomantic structures involving “nine dragons” and “seven incense pillars” and warned of a “great golden dragon formation.”
She points out an eerie coincidence: the Hong Kong film “City on Fire,” starring Andy Lau, depicted seven of eight buildings burning simultaneously, mirroring Hung Fu Court’s seven of eight towers. The movie was released around the time scaffolding went up at the estate, and although the scene is brief, some viewers find the parallel unsettling. According to Miss Zhang, firefighters initially arrived when only one tower was burning, but as they focused on it, six more towers quickly caught fire. Each was separated by at least ten meters, too far for sparks to leap across under normal conditions. Videos allegedly show fires starting on the sides of buildings farthest from the original blaze, fueling the arson theory.
Lei asks why exactly seven buildings burned and not eight. She quotes Daoist incense‑offering rules that emphasize odd numbers; seven is said to be the maximum incense number in the “human realm,” representing a plea to reverse life, death, and destiny. In this reading, the seven towers became seven sacrificial pillars meant to extend the regime’s longevity. She also relays Zhang’s claim that the official who arranged the ritual betrayed his superior—supposedly Xi Jinping—by siphoning off the “benefit” of the ritual for himself while leaving Xi to bear its karmic consequences. Zhang suggests that Xi’s own chief of staff may be involved.
Lei ties this to a broader “funray” analysis of Hong Kong as a dangerous place physically, politically, and spiritually, with snake‑shaped urban designs that she believes drain good energy from Hong Kong and redirect it north toward Beijing. She says only the CCP‑approved Hong Kong government can approve such designs.
She then introduces another powerful symbol: the death of a white crested ibis named Pingping at Beijing Zoo on December 1. The zoo posted a long, emotional obituary for the bird, which died at almost 40 years old. Chinese netizens immediately drew parallels to Xi Jinping, seeing the obituary as an omen. Lei lists six connections: the bird’s name Pingping echoes Xi’s given name; it came from Shaanxi, Xi’s ancestral province; it is a white bird, and Xi’s surname in traditional form incorporates the characters for “white” and “feather,” leading some to joke that he is a “white feather bird”; the ibis has a red crown and red feet, symbolizing the red regime; Pingping lived roughly the equivalent of 120–150 human years, reminiscent of Xi’s earlier comment to Putin about wanting to live to 150; and the bird’s keeper is surnamed Mao, the same as Mao Zedong, whom Xi emulates. Netizens therefore read “Pingping’s” death under “Mao’s” care as a sign foreshadowing Xi’s downfall.
Because Xi’s name and likeness are heavily censored online, Chinese citizens use such coded symbols and euphemisms to discuss him. Lei says that while speech can be censored, fate and omens cannot. She notes that many people celebrated the passing of the white bird not out of hatred for the animal but because of what it represents. She also cites an ancient prophetic text (often called “Tui Bei Tu,” though she pronounces it differently) that describes five birds crossing mountain peaks, four black and one white, with the white bird dying after striking the mountain. Many now associate this “fifth white bird” with Xi Jinping, China’s fifth CCP leader, and see the Hong Kong fire plus Pingping’s death as signs pointing toward a regime in trouble.
In the closing Q&A, Lei fields questions about Daoism. She argues that genuine Daoist cultivation is solitary and not meant to form an organized religion like Buddhism. She distinguishes higher‑level spiritual practice from lower‑level Daoist “techniques” such as feng‑shui, fortune‑telling, and ritual magic, which she views as worldly and sometimes evil because they can channel harmful energies. She also briefly answers questions about Taiwan politics, Xi‑faction corruption cases, her newsletter plans, duck recipes, and her Christmas gift guide—especially herbal eye patches for eye strain and early cataracts.
The stream ends with Lei reiterating that the casualties in Hong Kong are likely far higher than admitted, that the city has become dangerous on multiple levels, and that omens—from fire to birds—are fueling widespread speculation about the CCP’s and Xi Jinping’s future.