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Hidden Oasis: China Tee Club, Hong Kong Situated in the heart of Central, Hong Kong's busy business and premier shopping district, the China Tee Club is located on the first floor of Pedder Building, welcoming its guests with high sweeping ceiling fans and traditional Malaysian interior. The venue made for nostalgia seekers gives refuge to everyone seeking to escape the hectic life around and relax in an atmosphere difficult to find anywhere else in Hong Kong. Crammed in between flashy skyscrapers, the Colonial style stone building is the very last survivor of the old pre-war office buildings that once lined either side of Pedder Street. Built in 1923, the original walls were finished with Shanghai plaster, a now obsolete mixture of cement and sand. When the building was given a face-lift in 1993, it proved impossible to find artisans who could work in this medium. Unlike many newer buildings, Pedder Building has a covered sidewalk, enabling pedestrians to keep on the move in spite of occasional cloudbursts. This year, Fiducia's traditional Christmas cocktail party will be held in the China Tee Club. Hidden Writer: Jiang Rong, winner of the 2007 Man Asia Prize How do you win the first Man Asia Prize? Contrast the relationship between wolves and Mongolian herdsmen with the conservative bent of modern Chinese culture and environmental destruction and view it all through the eyes of a young intellectual who's living in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. That is what the writer who goes by the pen name Jiang Rong did and his work has sold 2 million legitimate copies since it was published in 2004. The book that is compared by some critics to Tolstoy's "War and Peace", has been used in TV shows and is now being made into a film. The book is also used as a motivational tool by business leaders such as the CEO of Haier, who sees the wolves' nature as that of natural military leaders. The English-language publication rights were sold in 2005 and set a Chinese record for the highest sum ever paid for foreign language rights to a Chinese novel. The English-language translation is done by renowned translator Howard Goldblatt and will be published by Penguin in March 2008. It is expected to sell up to 2 million copies. Despite all the attention, Rong hardly appears in public and did not attend the Man Asia ceremony in November. All that is known about him is that he is a 61-year-old retired academic based in Beijing. His English and Chinese publishers said that the author is currently in ill health which is why he did not attend the ceremony. "I spent 30 years thinking, and six years writing "Wolf Totem" and my only hope was to produce an appealing story." Rong said in a statement read by his Chinese publisher at the Man award dinner. If all the publicity behind the novel is to be believed, Jiang Rong has achieved this goal. Hidden Prodigy: Zhang Shengliang, piano "wunderkind" China has bred world-renowned piano stars such as Lang Lang and Yundi Li, and now a special talent looks ready to join them. Nick-named Niu Niu, Zhang Shengliang is originally from Xiamen in Fujian province, but now studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he has built a reputation as one of China's top piano players. Remarkably, Niu Niu is only 10 years old. During his brief career, he has played all over China as well as in the UK. But Niu Niu became a name known by millions of Chinese when he played on CCTV's Chinese New Years Eve Special last year. He is also scheduled for recitals at New York's Carnegie Hall. With this list of accomplishments it is easy to forget Niu Niu's age, but the teddy bear which he keeps on his piano acts as a constant reminder. According to freelance arts writer Richard Turnbull, Niu Niu's talent comes from his ability not to just quickly memorize some of the most difficult pieces by composers such as Mozart, Chopin, Poulenc and Shostakovich, but understand them and play them with an ability of someone with much more experience than him. Niu Niu's skills will grow as he does and one day he will be sure to share the stage with the likes of Lang Lang and Yundi Li. Hidden Agenda: Yue Minjun, contemporary artist Yue Minjun, who was born in 1962 in China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province, is best known for his paintings showing himself in various settings frozen in laughter. He moved with his parents to Beijing where he worked in China's oil industry before beginning art studies in 1983. The figures in his work are usually stretched to an enormous, exaggerated grin, which reduces the eyes to narrow slits, draws back lips to reveal a huge number of even, bright white teeth, and a gaping hole of a mouth. Yue was inspired by another Chinese artist's self-portrait, Geng Jianyi, who used a deformed smile to express the opposite of what it normally means. Yue is part of the Chinese "cynical realist" movement and his paintings have recently received considerable attention. One of his paintings, "Execution" (1995), where critics argue whether it was inspired by the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, sold for US$5.9 million in 2007 at an auction at Sotheby's in London, which makes it the most expensive work ever by a Chinese contemporary artist. His work has been shown in Belgium, China, Germany, Singapore, Poland and Switzerland to name but a few countries. If you are wondering what the smile on his pictures is about, check out Fiducia's 2008 picture calendar where Yue Minjun's art is featured in the months of February, June and October.
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