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 May 2-6:
Auction News: Christie’s Looks To Beijing As Poly Looks To New York
With momentum in the Chinese auction market continuing to build, following a string of successful sales in Beijing as well as Hong Kong (which is preparing for the upcoming Christie’s spring auctions), international auction houses are considering novel approaches at reaching Chinese collectors while cash-flush and confident Chinese auction houses have their sights set on places a little further from home. Last year, as the Chinese art market sprang back to life, we saw revenue at homegrown Chinese auction houses like China Guardian and Beijing Poly leap ahead, catapulting even higher among global standings.
Over the past two years, Guardian and Poly came seemingly out of nowhere to become true potential rivals to globally dominant leaders like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, with total value of China Guardian and Poly Auction sales skyrocketing from US$284 million in spring 2008 to $1.21 billion last autumn—a rise of nearly 500 percent.
Jing Book Review: “The Horse That Leaps Through Clouds”
Tracing the unforgiving and ragged path traveled one century earlier by Baron Gustaf Mannerheim during his two-year, clandestine journey to investigate the last-gasp reforms of late Qing Dynasty China, Eric Enno Tamm’s The Horse That Leaps Through Clouds (Counterpoint, $30) is a sweeping journey through the patchwork quilt of cultures and contenting histories that is the gray area between Central and East Asia. Having been charged by Czar Nicholas II to secretly enter China and divine the military potential of the Qing shortly after Russia’s unexpected and humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Mannerheim’s journey was one that began with an image of an inscrutable and vast China and one that ultimately ended with a comprehensive chronicle of everything, from education reform to foreign investment, that would shape China’s interactions with the world as well as its modernization in the twilight of the Qing Dynasty.
Looking back at Mannerheim’s day, a point at which Russia’s defeat had sent shockwaves throughout the Western world, causing deep anxieties that laid the roots of the xenophobic idea of the “Yellow Peril,” author Eric Enno Tamm finds inspiration in Mark Twain’s quote that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
New York’s Lincoln Center To Advise New Performing Arts Venue In Tianjin
Artinfo reports today that New York’s famed Lincoln Center has signed a three-year binding agreement to serve as a paid consultant for a new performing arts center to be built in Tianjin, China’s fifth largest city. The arts center, which is due to be built in Yujiapu, the financial center of the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, will open in 2015. According to the New York Times, Lincoln Center will recommend artistic programming, propose an economic model for the center’s operations, establish a design and construction process, and provide staff training.
While the binding agreement has not yet been formally agreed upon, Lincoln Center and the state-owned Tianjin Innovative Finance Investment Company signed a memorandum of understanding at a ceremony last week that included performances by pianist Emanuel Ax and Jie Yuan, a Chinese pianist currently enrolled in Julliard’s masters program.
CVRVE: A Sophisticated Refuge At Shanghai Centre
Evolving out of the two-decade-old Long Bar on bustling Nanjing West Rd., CVRVE goes against Shanghai’s prevailing nightlife model by creating a decidedly upscale scene centered around champagne and sophistication rather than strobe lights and buzz. The 450 square meter space, located inside the historic Shanghai Centre — a sprawling complex that houses nearly 500 luxury apartments, 30,000 square meters of office space, a movie theatre and the five-star Portman Ritz-Carlton — provides a refuge from the breakneck pace of downtown Shanghai, with emphasis on comfortable surroundings, innovative cocktails, and glamorous high tea service.
At CVRVE’s opening event last week, Jing Daily found that the bar succeeds in its focus on being a destination for well-heeled Shanghai locals as well as international professionals, rather than another expat bar or over-the-top “ultralounge.”
Bally Launches Chinese “Online Flagship” To Tap Growing E-Commerce Market
Two companies that are looking to expand in the China luxury market, the Swiss luxury footwear and accessories brand Bally and Italy’s e-commerce powerhouse Yoox, have teamed up for Bally’s first official Chinese-language “Online Flagship,” which launched this week. The new online platform, www.bally.cn, offers the entire line of men’s and women’s Bally products, along with several features that are likely to catch on among China’s notoriously fickle high-end consumers.
Over the past several months, Bally has made a more concerted effort to reach out to Chinese consumers, following the lead of competitors like Armani and adding not only a Chinese-language option to their official website but now working together with Yoox to offer full online shopping functionality to the site.