China notebook
My Chinese week with Elle Macpherson, the Prince of Wales and Tony Blair
David Tang's China Diary
An hour later, at lunchtime, the Prince met a few of China’s new billionaires at Clarence House. This included Madam Zhang Yin who is the richest woman in China and famous for her business in recycling waste paper. She even buys tons of waste from Britain and ships it back to China and makes recycled cardboard boxes out of it. It’s all music to the Prince’s big ears, a sign of longevity for the Chinese. In the evening, as if he had not had enough of the yellow peril, the Prince of Wales came to the newly renovated Royal Festival Hall, together with the newly installed Chinese ambassadress, Madam Fu Ying. For the cognoscenti, this was a welcoming sign of detente. Sitting side by side in the royal box, they watched a video in which Jackie Chan invited the Prince to give him a ring for kung-fu lessons! (I wonder whom he would biff first.) They also presided over the presentation of three Chinese awards, followed by musical performances from a couple of extraordinary Chinese musicians, one of whom, only ten years old, dazzled everyone with Shostakovich’s first piano concerto with trumpet. The Prince of Wales might well have trumpeted his day as a long march with the Chinese.
Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, Julian Schnabel opens a major show of some 36 of his big pieces. It should be a big deal for Hong Kong, as I cannot remember the last time when there was a major exhibition by a well-established living Western artist. But the event does not seem to excite too many locals, certainly not the tycoons nor those in government who pontificate about dispelling the reputation of the territory as a cultural desert. Yet we all understand that for Hong Kong to be an ‘international city’, it has to be anchored by a distinct sense of culture. But the art of making money seems to remain the favourite pastime by far.
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