Jing Daily’s Top Posts for the Week#
In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of Jing Daily’s top posts for the week of January 24-28:
Pilot Program In Tianjin Offers Shares In Chinese Art, Solidifying Place As Investment Class
Today marked the launch of a new art exchange in Tianjin, with shares offered for two traditional Chinese paintings, one valued at 6 million yuan (US$912,000) and the other at 5 million yuan ($760,000). Ownership was divided into one yuan per share. According to Wang Mingda, an official with the exchange, trading was impressively active on its first day.
This concept begs the question: will the exchange only offer shares in traditional art? Or will it follow the lead of Shenzhen Artvip and Minsheng Bank and venture into Chinese contemporary art investment opportunities? Definitely an area to watch.
Jing Daily Exclusive Interview: Wang Qingsong, Contemporary Chinese Photographer
Last week, the artist Wang Qingsong, one of China’s top contemporary photographers, had a very busy week in New York. Launching his first New York solo exhibition, “When World Collide” at the International Center of Photography and taking part in an Art Salon at the China Institute, Wang received a warm welcome during a very China-centric week.
Prior to the opening of “When Worlds Collide,” the Jing Daily team sat down with Wang to discuss his recent work, his new exhibition, and his future plans. Conducted in Mandarin, our interview shed light into the societal changes shaping Wang’s work, his thoughts on younger artists, and his observations on the Chinese art market as it climbs back towards a “second boom.”
Adidas Gets In The Chinese New Year Spirit With Limited Edition Basketball Shoe
Hot on the heels of Nike’s localized Air Jordan packaging and China-only Zoom Kobe VI comes the BTB NXL CNY limited-edition basketball shoe by Adidas. Sporting red-and-black and red-and-white colorways with a textured upper reminiscent of ancient Chinese scholars’ rocks, the BTB NXL CNY features gold accents in the top eyelet and a bounding rabbit embroidered on the heel. Additionally, the Chinese pagoda-inspired packaging includes 12 lace buckles in a range of color schemes, embossed with the Chinese character for “rabbit” (卯).
The limited-edition BTB NXL CNY baskeball shoes retail for 720 yuan (US$109), and are in stores now throughout mainland China.
News Roundup: Prada In Beijing; Coach’s China Plans; Fake Wine Flood; NYU In Shanghai
Although Chinese wineries are fighting to be taken seriously as makers of high-quality icewine (a segment dominated by Canadian vintners), the reputation of icewine in general is at risk in one of its most lucrative markets, as insiders now estimate up to one-third of this category is counterfeit in China. As the Drinks Business wrote this weekend, unscrupulous fraudsters are using techniques such as harvesting grapes early and freezing them, using bulk icewine juice that doesn’t meet regulation standards, adding sugar and food coloring to low-end sweet wine, and counterfeiting labels from well-known producers.
While counterfeiting is a problem across all wine categories in China, as a relatively new wine segment in China, icewine’s reputation is far shakier. Producers, quite reasonably, see this problem as critical, particularly as they have seen great success so far throughout East Asia and want to continue to expand into emerging markets like mainland China.
Rupert Hoogewerf: “Although China’s New Rich May Be Wealthy Or Powerful, They May Not Have Taste”
Admittedly, the luxury awareness levels of China’s wealthiest is changing. It used to be that they’d always give cigarettes as gifts, expensive brands like Panda, but now the proportion of cigarettes given in this way has significantly decreased. It used to be that the nouveau riche simply wouldn’t choose brands they weren’t familiar with, so they figured if they bought the most expensive item available, they couldn’t go wrong. So there was no awareness of whether it was suitable or not. Since they had no taste, they were constantly worried that they’d choose the wrong thing and become a laughing stock.
The proportion of this type of nouveau riche is decreasing, but there are still a great number of them. For example, many Chinese people now drink Chateau Lafite. In fact, this brand is not the best red wine. For people who actually understand wine, 1982, 1985, 1986 and 1990 Chateau Lafite is good but other vintages are considered mediocre. But China’s got a lot of nouveau riche who enjoy drinking red wine and they’ll always gravitate towards Lafite. And those nouveau riche who like the idea of drinking red wine as a lifestyle choice have only a superficial knowledge of wine. They don’t know anything about the history or terroir of a particular vintage, or whether it’s better to cellar or drink it.
Of course, this is to be expected. If people don’t put in the work to learn, they’ll just blindly conform. If everyone says Lafite is good, the thinking goes, you can’t go wrong by choosing Lafite.