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 March 12-16: Why Chateau Lafite’s New China Vineyard Could Be A Brand-Builder With China’s taste for imported wine increasing by the year, and the country’s thirst for French wine in particular making it the world’s top importer of Bordeaux in 2010, in recent years the likes of LVMH and Les Domaines Barons de Rothschild have turned their attention to developing land within China to produce wine made in China, for China. After announcing plans to develop a vineyard in Shandong province back in 2008, finally Domaines Barons de Rothschild, the parent company of Chateau Lafite, has broken ground on its Chinese winery in Penglai, working alongside local partner CITIC. The Shanghai Restoration Project Returns To New York’s Asia Society Following his successful performance last November, Chinese-American pianist Dave Liang returned to New York’s Asia Society last week for a performance by his Shanghai Restoration Project. Renowned for their unique blend of Chinese instrumentalism, hip-pop and electronica, the Shanghai Restoration Project put on a performance attended by members of the Jing Daily team. Joining Liang was jazz singer (and Jing Daily interview subject) Zhang Le, along with Brooklyn-based electroacoustic musician Jamahl Richardson, adding a dash of hip-hop to the event. Event Watch: Shang Xia “Culture Object II” (April 18, Shanghai) Marking the second installment of its yearly “Culture Object” exhibition series, the Shanghai-based Chinese luxury brand Shang Xia will launch its “Human and Nature” exhibition on April 18. A wide-ranging show 18 months in the making, “Human and Nature” follows Shang Xia’s second clothing and housewares collection in highlighting the contrasts between humanity and the earth, and how the two can coexist. “Human and Nature” also marks a shift from last year’s “Pass it On” exhibition. Whereas “Pass it On” focused on found items and souvenirs, along with very personal stories and photographs, “Human and Nature” is more expansive, including videos, photographs, portraits and collector’s items collected from a wide range of Chinese provinces. Crowd-Pleasing Song Dynasty Bowl Could Fetch $10 Million In Hong Kong Chinese collectors are expected to bid up a storm on everything from Chinese contemporary art to wine at the upcoming spring auction series in Hong Kong, but one piece of rare pottery in particular has attracted their attention in a big way on its pre-sale tour. As the Hong Kong Standard reports this week, the rare imperial ceramic bowl, which dates back around 900 years, could fetch upwards of US$10 million (HK$78 million) when it goes under the hammer next month. Following a showing in Shanghai, where it attracted huge crowds, Sotheby’s decided to pull back a planned public showing this weekend in Beijing, instead opening the bowl up for view only to potential buyers. Chinese Art Lover Budi Tek Taking Place Among World’s Top Collectors One of the world’s most influential buyers of Chinese contemporary art, the Chinese-Indonesian collector Budi Tek has spent the last several years amassing a collection of some of the most important works by the likes of Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing and Zeng Fanzhi. Like other ethnic Chinese super-collectors from Indonesia, Singapore and elsewhere — among them Woffles Wu and Barry Lam — Tek has been instrumental in furthering the growth of the Chinese contemporary art market, buoying it through tougher times in 2009 and pushing along its ongoing “second boom.” Next year, Tek plans to open his first private museum in mainland China in Shanghai, which the Art Newspaper noted in 2011 will be designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and “boast 8,000 sq. m of exhibition space, with two-thirds for a display from Tek’s permanent collection, while the remaining space will house rotating exhibitions.”
