Dancing the dreary decades away
Shanghai's prerevolutionary ballroom is again the venue for light-footed old-timers . . .

SHANGHAI-- Rose Tang is the last of the Old Shanghai aristocrats. At the age of 81, wearing an elegant ensemble and gold heels, she waltzes and foxtrots across the dance floor of the sole surviving ballroom from the glory days of the 1930s.

Her partner is a suave 24-year-old hired dancer, dressed entirely in black, his hair slicked back in Rudolph Valentino style. At a price of about $75 a session, he is a modern version of the sophisticated "taxi dancers" of Shanghai's hedonistic prerevolutionary years.

Then, clutching her gold high-heels, she slips into a taxi and disappears into the Shanghai night.   - by Geoffrey York   THE GLOBE & MAIL  22 December 2006 
 
CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS: Shanghai's skyline glitters from the top of a Pudong skyscraper

ESSENTIALS: Population: 13.52 million GDP (2004): $89.76 billion TV households (2004 est): 3,449,000 Adspend (2004): $2.39 billion* Adspend (2003): $1.67 billion* Year-on-year increase: 42.5%* Adspend as a percentage of GDP (2004): 2.7% Avg. min. viewed per day per viewer of all channels (aged 4+): 166.8 Basic cable subscription cost (per month): $1.57 *based on published rate card

Shanghai properties draw pension funds

Overseas pension funds and insurers may become main buyers of premium office and commercial properties in Shanghai as shorter-term investors could sell due to falling yields, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) said last week.

Overseas pension funds and insurers may become main buyers of premium office and commercial properties in Shanghai as shorter-term investors could sell due to falling yields, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) said last week.

Property investors with a relatively short-term investment horizon, such as banks and private equity firms, may have achieved their return targets and consider selling, especially when investment yields are being compressed, it said.

'Some of the opportunistic and value-added investors will now be looking to sell because they have met their IRR (internal rate of return) targets,' the property consultancy said in a press release.

'Consequently, we believe that the number of core assets up for sale will rise as these funds realise their investments,' it said, adding that long-term investors such as pension funds and insurance firms would likely become the buyers.

Several long-term investors last year bought major projects, including the US$188 million acquisition of a Shanghai office property by German pension fund SEB, it said.

Greg Hyland, a JLL director, told reporters he didn't expect an immediate wave of investment from foreign insurers and pension funds in Shanghai's property market - partly because China is trying to cool its property market and some of the recently introduced measures would complicate cross-border transactions.

Rents and capital value of Shanghai office and commercial properties are expected to rise, but growth would be 'less explosive' than in 2000-2006 when rents rose 14 per cent annually, JLL said.

Opportunistic investors, who typically hold properties for three to five years, have already been hunting for property projects in second-tier Chinese cities for higher yields, it said.

Foreign investors, including Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have poured billions of dollars into Shanghai properties over the past few years, partly driven by China's currency appreciation.

Strong price rises in Shanghai and other major Chinese cities such as Beijing have driven down rental yields.

Gross yields on Shanghai office property fell to below 8 per cent in 2006, although they are still higher than the around 5 per cent in Hong Kong and Singapore and 4 per cent in Tokyo, and most fixed-income products, property consultancy CBRE has said.

JLL said that Shanghai's office property market is becoming attractive to long-term investors because of the steady demand from international corporations and the growing supply of grade-A office towers.

The occupancy rate of high-end offices in Shanghai may stay at around 90 per cent over the next three years, with investment-grade office supply likely to peak in 2010 - when total space should reach 6.2 million square metres, JLL said. - 2007 September 25   REUTERS

Shanghai to curb property buying by foreign firms

China's biggest city plans to tighten controls on purchases of property by foreign companies to help cool surging real estate prices, a newspaper report said yesterday.

'We no longer encourage foreign companies to purchase en bloc properties rather thandevelop their own,' the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily quoted Liu Jinping, head of the city's Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Commission, as saying.

'Stricter requirements are applied to the approval of such acquisition deals to prevent prices from being pushed up by speculative investors,' Mr Liu said.

The report gave no details on what further restrictions might be imposed.

The government has already imposed special taxes and other controls, including a requirement that overseas institutional investors with investments in China totalling more than US$10 million hold at least half the investment as registered capital in a China-incorporated company, the report said.

Real estate purchases accounted for 4.4 billion yuan (S$884 million), or nearly half, of all acquisition deals between local and overseas companies in 2006, up 44 per cent over the previous year, according to the report.

Among major deals was the purchase of a downtown office building by investment bank Morgan Stanley for 1.96 billion yuan.  - AP   2007 August 23

• Shanghai World Financial Centre
• Jin Mao Tower
• Mr. Shanghai - Hong Kong's Vincent Lo
• Xiantiandi
• Three On the Bund
• Core Investment
• Small World of New Towns
• Shanghai - Then and Now
• Blackstone still aiming to complete deals

Shanghai Rising

Benjamin Wood swings his bulky frame over the saddle, straps on his helmet, and settles onto a vintage motorcycle with sidecar. The American architect kicks the engine into life with a single thrust and pulls into the rush-hour traffic coursing through Shanghai's trendy Xintiandi district. He soon steers down a narrow street and enters another world. While Xintiandi is all luxury shops and outdoor cafés, in surrounding neighborhoods the sidewalks are full of people playing mah-jongg in their pajamas, washing dishes at outdoor taps, or popping dumplings into bubbling oil. Life goes on much as it has for the past half-century.

As the bike gathers speed, Wood's white silk jacket flaps in the wind. Passing between some of the fast-disappearing courtyard houses of Shanghai, he waves at locals making dinner. "They know me pretty well in this neighborhood, because I like to ride through here a lot," he says, raising his voice to be heard over the growling motor. "What they don't know," he adds with a hint of regret, "is that I'm also the guy who is going to make this way of life disappear."

Although few might recognize Wood, virtually anyone who has spent more than a day or two in Shanghai will know Xintiandi. The rebuilt neighborhood is Wood's first and best-known work in China, a collage of cobblestone streets, narrow alleyways, and graceful tiled roofs. Xintiandi, which translates as "New Heaven and Earth," has become one of Shanghai's top tourist destinations. Foreigners love it because it evokes the colonial era and is one of the few neighborhoods to escape the wrecker's ball, while locals are drawn to the bistros, bars, and boutiques that lend it a Western cachet.

Wood's work at Xintiandi has become a symbol of the changing aspirations China has for Shanghai. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping declared that Shanghai would be "the head of the dragon" pulling the country into the future, and the Chinese have poured tens of billions of dollars into rebuilding the city after a half-century of neglect. The pace has slackened after a a scandal over municipal pension money spent on questionable real estate deals, but the city is still booming.

Problem is, Shanghai has long preferred megaprojects that blindly ape the kind of high-rise developments that scream "modernity" but have little to do with traditional Chinese culture. Until Ben Wood, that is. Xintiandi represents Wood's signature style: Instead of calling in the bulldozers, he imagines a rundown neighborhood as something refreshed. He refurbishes old buildings, saves the facades of others while gutting their interiors, and designs new structures that blend in.

That graceful melding of old and new fits Shanghai's ambitions as it steams toward its third decade of hypergrowth. Like Renaissance Florence, London in the 1800s, or New York early in the 20th century, Shanghai aims to muscle its way into a top spot in the global economic order—a role it played back in the 1920s. Today, Shanghai is the mainland's most populous city, with 18 million residents. It's home to the Asia headquarters of more than 150 global corporations, including General Motors, IBM , and Alcatel-Lucent. And multinationals are boosting their commitment. GM today employs some 1,800 white-collar workers in the city, 60% more than in 2004, while Citibank now has 2,000 employees there, up from 80 in 1999. "Shanghai has very visible ambitions to be a major financial center in the region and perhaps beyond," says Richard Stanley, CEO of Citigroup China.

Expatriates love Shanghai's nightlife, while skilled young Chinese and migrant laborers have rushed to cash in on the city's surging economy. Shanghai is growing at 12%—even faster than the 10.7% expansion that China as a whole saw in 2006—and the city's gross domestic product was $136 billion last year. That's less than half of London's, but Shanghai's growth is three times as fast the British capital's. And Shanghai has attracted some $120 billion in foreign direct investment since 1992, including commitments of $14.6 billion last year, or 23% of China's total fdi for 2006. "You are witnessing the greatest transformation of a piece of earth in history. It's mind-boggling," says Greg Yager, vice-president of Baltimore design firm RTKL Associates, which has done planning work in the city.

The opportunities in Shanghai have attracted scores of foreign architects, who have helped craft one of the world's most extraordinary skylines. In the financial district of Pudong, which until two decades ago was little more than rice paddies and small factories, the 88-story Jin Mao Tower (designed by Chicago's Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) is home to GM, Credit Lyonnais, and IBM. Next door, the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center (from New York's Kohn Pederson Fox Associates)—originally planned as the world's tallest building, but now eclipsed by Taiwan's Taipei 101—is about three-quarters completed. Across the Huangpu River, the 66-story Plaza 66 (by Atlanta-based John Portman & Associates) houses General Electric, BP, and KPMG. And the once-dilapidated Bund, the erstwhile Wall Street of Asia on the riverfront, has been re-energized with packed nightclubs, tony boutiques, and trendy restaurants. "Shanghai is a dynamic, exciting, increasingly multicultural city," says Robert Pallash, president for Asia at auto-parts maker Visteon Corp., which moved its regional headquarters to Shanghai from Japan in 2003. One reason the city won out over Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Singapore: It's an easier sell for expats. "It's very important to attract people from the global organization," Pallash says.

Attracting locals is equally important. The legions of migrants flocking to Shanghai are filling Visteon's factories, as well as those of Intel, Philips, Honeywell, and scores of other multinationals. And the city's universities are churning out thousands of engineering grads every year, which provides a steady supply of researchers for labs run by corporations from around the world. At its facility in Zizhu Science Park, 18 miles southwest of the center, Intel Corp. now employs 1,000 people, up from about 40 in 2000. A decade ago, "it was difficult to find a high-quality office building," and qualified workers were scarce, says Wang Wen-hann, general manager of the lab. Today, "all these factors have matured," he says.

OVERSTRETCHED INFRASTRUCTURE
In neighborhood after neighborhood, though, eight-lane expressways and steel-and-glass behemoths crowd out gracious townhouses and tenements dating to the early 20th century. The city has doubled its housing stock over the past two decades, but most of those new homes are in soulless skyscrapers. And many of Pudong's towers stand alongside the 100-yard-wide Century Avenue, a thoroughfare that's nearly impossible to cross and lacks so much as a kiosk selling newspapers, let alone a sidewalk café. The district represents "a failure to create a livable urban environment," says Tom Doctoroff, the chief executive for Greater China at ad agency JWT Co.

That's a problem for a place with mega-ambitions. If companies find that Shanghai has become too pricey or too congested for the kinds of employees they want to attract, it may quickly fall from the global hot list. Top-quality office space today costs more than in Midtown Manhattan, and expatriates typically pay $5,000 to $10,000 or even more in monthly rent. The air can be unbreathable, and the highways are clogged much of the day. "You have a city whose infrastructure is totally stretched," says Steve Mullinjer, managing partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles in Shanghai. "It's like a wild horse...with no way to rein it in."

Controlling that runaway horse is Job One in Shanghai, and how Shanghai grapples with that issue is important for all of China. Hundreds of millions of migrants are likely to move to the mainland's cities in coming decades, and much of the rest of the country looks to the city for cues. So if Shanghai bulldozes its history to build highways, you can bet that many other cities will follow suit. Since 2000 the number of cars on the mainland has tripled, and Shanghai and Beijing are already ringed with single-family homes and new communities accessible only by car. With 1.3 billion people, the mainland can ill afford the kind of suburban culture that many seem to want. "The government is now more aware of quality-of-life issues," says Daniel Vasella, chairman of pharmaceutical giant Novartis and head of the International Business Leaders Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai. "They realize that if you can't deliver [a good standard of living], people won't want to live there."

Perhaps that's why the Chinese have taken so readily to Ben Wood. The 59-year-old architect, whose white beard and ruddy complexion make him seem more like a good ol' boy from his native Georgia than a hotshot designer, was drawn to Shanghai's street life and the crowded tenements known as shikumen. These two-story buildings, a mélange of Chinese and Western styles with carved stone details, had remained largely untouched since the Communists took over in 1949. But when Wood arrived in Shanghai in 1998 to design Xintiandi, they were rapidly being razed.

At the Xintiandi site, Wood suggested saving the structures and creating a walking district that would preserve the sense of community of old Shanghai. That was a revelation to the city fathers, who until then had struggled to find an alternate way of expressing Shanghai's newfound confidence and affluence. Having proved it can replicate the West in districts such as Pudong, the city was looking for a second wave of development that wouldn't just import styles wholesale, but could give shape to its aspirations as a world-class metropolis. Wood "understands the relationship between new and old buildings," says Wu Jiang, deputy director of the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau.

If Wood has been good for Shanghai, Shanghai has been equally good to Wood. He kept a relatively low profile in the U.S., but in China he's a true star. Xintiandi's success has spawned countless imitators on the mainland, and Wood has received more than a dozen major commissions. Today he runs a studio of 30 draftsmen and designers, and inquiries from prospective clients roll in almost daily. He is working on a mountain resort, a development similar to Xintiandi in the western city of Chongqing, and another in Hangzhou, a lakeside city 120 miles southwest of Shanghai. Wood "is totally different from other foreigners practicing in China," says Ma Qingyun, a Shanghai architect and now dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. "He is quite into the human side."

TRICKY POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
To keep Shanghai's growth from tearing apart its urban fabric, the city is building nine new communities on the periphery that are expected to house a total of a million or more newcomers by 2020. These projects, called "One City, Nine Towns," were planned as self-sufficient satellite cities where residents can live, work, and shop, without having to travel into central Shanghai. Each was also designed thematically to resemble the cities of other countries or cultures—a notion some dismiss as frivolous. In Fencheng, for instance, a Spanish group is creating streetscapes inspired by Barcelona's Ramblas promenade. Albert Speer, son of Hitler's favorite architect, is the brains behind Anting, a community modeled after small cities in Germany and home to the Shanghai Formula One circuit as well as Volkwagen's joint-venture auto factory. And Thames Town looks like an English village with cobblestone streets, half-timbered Tudor buidings, red telephone boxes, and a statue of Sir Winston Churchill. "It's farcical," Wood says. "Why pretend you are living in some fantasy land?"

Wood's contribution to the nine towns effort is less garish. In Qingpu, on the southwestern edge of Shanghai, he is working on an 830-unit residential complex that draws its inspiration from the area's ancient canals, bridges, and walkways. His aim, he says, is to create buildings on a human scale that relate to their environs. "The biggest problem in China is that the Forbidden City is burned into every brain," says Wood. "It's symmetrical, monumental, and out of scale."

China's modern-day mandarins can be equally intrusive. In 2004, Rockefeller Group International, the New York-based property development arm of Mitsubishi, hired Wood to plan a 30-acre site the developers call Rock Bund. The project will incorporate a 1928 art deco theater and more than two dozen colonial-era buildings. Rockefeller seemed to have everything going for it, including the support of Shanghai Communist Party Secretary Chen Liangyu.

But in a city changing as rapidly as Shanghai, you never quite know when you might end up building on political quicksand. Last September, Rockefeller executives got a disturbing call from their lawyer, saying, "Our friend is in the slammer." The friend was Wu Minglie, the chairman of New Huangpu Group, a Chinese company that was working with Rockefeller. He had been detained and accused of misappropriating city pension funds for property development. Shortly thereafter Secretary Chen was sacked in what many believe was a power struggle with China's central leadership in Beijing. Rockefeller Group executives declined to comment on the record about the affair, which a company spokesperson calls "extremely delicate." Though most projects have been delayed since Chen's ouster, there's no indication that Rock Bund is in danger of being scuttled.

Despite the headaches, Wood isn't one to shrink from a challenge. A latecomer to architecture, he didn't start practicing until he was 36. By that time he had flown fighter jets with the U.S. Air Force and founded a mountaineering school and a French restaurant in Colorado. At 31, he enrolled in a graduate architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He soon started his own firm with Ecuadoran Carlos Zapata and broke into the big leagues in 1998 with a commission to rebuild Soldier Field, the Chicago Bears' stadium.

When Wood was in the middle of the Soldier Field project, he got a call from Hong Kong. Would he pick up a business-class ticket waiting for him at the airport and come ASAP? Two days later, Wood was being whisked by limo to the offices of Vincent Lo, chairman of property group Shui-On. The meeting lasted five minutes. "He told me, I want you on the next plane to Shanghai and back here tomorrow morning,'" Wood recalls.

After a few hours wandering the dilapidated neighborhoods that would become Xintiandi, Wood returned to Hong Kong to make his pitch. He cited Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace and mountain villages in Italy as potential models. As luck would have it, Lo was a fan of the Boston development and had spent time in Tuscany. "After half an hour, I said, This is the man I want to work with,'" says Lo, who gave Wood the job over three competing architects. Within six months, some 1,600 families had been relocated to new developments far from their old homes—not always happily, despite having indoor plumbing and their own kitchens for the first time. "We did things like take off their roofs to speed up the process," Wood says.

The irony of Xintiandi's success is that surrounding blocks have been bulldozed for luxury developments, spelling the end of the local charm that attracted Wood in the first place. Lo now wants to turn adjacent property into a theater district that will rival Broadway or London's West End. Although a few handsome brick buildings will be saved, the expanded site will also include four theaters, a 68-story office tower and high-end apartments. The outdoor dining, meanwhile, won't be at dumpling stands, but at upscale restaurants. "The real tragedy is not the disappearance of the [old buildings], but of life on the streets," Wood says.

As Shanghai's transformation continues apace, Wood is likely to be there to watch it unfold and lend a hand where he can. In 2003, he moved full-time to Shanghai, one of the few foreign architects to make such a commitment. On any given evening, you're likely to find him holding court in the dr Bar, a Xintiandi watering hole he designed and owns, or treating guests to grilled salmon and steaks in his two-story penthouse, followed by a soak in the outdoor hot tub with views of the city's ever-changing skyline. Will he ever go back to the U.S.? Don't bet on it. Shanghai's growth still offers plenty of opportunities, especially for an architect who understands that it takes more than tall buildings to make a truly global capital. "If Shanghai is unable to provide the quality of life of a world city like Paris or London, it will never become a major financial center," Wood says. "But the wild west atmosphere is being replaced by more sophisticated development strategies. And this will ultimately be to Shanghai's advantage." -  Frederick Balfour     BUSINESS WEEK    8 February 2007

Ben Wood has neither the theory-ridden vocabulary nor the matte-black wardrobe typical of maverick architects these days. With his gentle paunch, worn leather sandals and grizzly white beard, he comes across as more of a couch potato than a man of action, though the vintage Chinese army motorcycle and sidecar hint at an adventurous spirit.

Still, over the last five years Mr. Wood has transformed himself from a successful Boston architect into a Shanghai powerbroker whose designs translate into billions of dollars in development.

The profession’s big players are flocking to China to compete for commissions. Even the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has raved about the opportunities to be had. But Mr. Wood is one of the very few allowed to build whole neighborhoods without a local associate or a government institute to sign the construction documents. At his occasional public appearances in the United States, architects line up to seek his advice on how to get in on the action.

“I’m trying to change China, and China has definitely changed me,” Mr. Wood said during a recent interview on Martha’s Vineyard, where he and his wife were camping in a safari-style tent. “People have no idea of the scope of the work that’s up for grabs right now. It’s like the Wild West was in America.’’

The turning point for Mr. Wood, now 58, was his 2003 Xintiandi project in downtown Shanghai, a $200 million two-block “entertainment environment” stuffed with modern restaurants, clubs, cafes and boutiques, accessorized with old bricks, stone gates and ornately carved wooden balconies from the dense warren of old courtyard houses that previously filled those blocks. Xintiandi proved so successful a model for urban redevelopment that it spawned at least dozens of duplicates across the country. Developers now use the term “to Xintiandi” when asking their architects for more aspirational China-lite designs.

Critics, however, argue that he has undermined the need to preserve China’s fast-vanishing architectural heritage with a pastiche that is only one photo-op away from Disneyland. In The New Yorker magazine Paul Goldberger described Xintiandi as “a stage set of an idyllic past, created so that people in China can experience the same finely wrought balance of theme park and shopping mall that increasingly passes for upscale urban life in the United States.”

Qingyun Ma, an internationally respected architect in China, said that Xintiandi’s influence “is such that every city wants to have one.”

“Even I myself have done projects that are Xintiandi-ish,’’ he said. “However, this unchallenged embrace of one way is a threat because it abandons other modes of historical practice.”

Mr. Wood has applied his formula to projects all over mainland China, from Chongqing to Wuhan to Hangzhou. In Hangzhou he adapted 10 blocks of a sleepy lakeside area into a resort with pagoda-style roof-scapes, trellis-covered walkways and a high-tech conference center. For his $80 million Cambridge Watertown project in Zhujiajiao, he has proposed narrow canals inspired by China’s 13th-century water-town plans stitched together with picturesque foot bridges and semi-detached contemporary-style condos.

When he ambles through the streets of Shanghai these days, Mr. Wood said, “some still walk up to me because they recognize me, and they are happy and proud of the new life” in their old neighborhood. It sometimes turns out that the well-wishers have been forced out of their homes and into new high-rise apartment buildings elsewhere by Mr. Wood’s projects.

“Wood is a star in China,” said Cliff Pierson, an editor at Architectural Record magazine who manages a biannual awards program for new Chinese architecture. “China needed someone like Wood to show them you can make more money by saving rather than tearing down old buildings. No one had done that before because it was so much easier to work with a blank slate.

“Now there are dozens of copycats. But it’s not so much the number that’s so influential but that Wood has changed the way people with money think about public places.”

In Shanghai, Mr. Wood is now undertaking the next chapter for Xintiandi: a complete theater district with four Broadway-style performance spaces, two of which he promises will be “Andrew Lloyd Weberesque,” with 2,800 seats. For the project, now under way, Kohn Pedersen Fox architects have also designed a futuristic oval-shaped skyscraper, which will be accompanied by at least three other towers, along with a Times-Square-like intersection featuring huge electronic billboards and — a favorite Wood feature — an artificial lake.

A popular open-air antiques row, now home to some 180 dealers, will be dismantled, upgraded and rebuilt in replicate form. About 40 “top dealers” will be readmitted. Underground the whole thing connects to five levels of parking.

Mr. Wood casts himself as a kind of swashbuckling suit. After stints as a fighter pilot, restaurateur, ski bum and contractor, he earned his architecture degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984, when he was 37. He then spent 10 years working for Ben Thompson, the architect and mastermind of something known in the industry as the festival marketplace. Most visible in places like Faneuil Hall in Boston and South Street Seaport in New York, it is an economic juggernaut of arguable distinction wherein the dilapidated gives way to the upscale and the trendy, all with a dash of old-time historical flavor.

“Ben Thompson taught me that architecture should be about more than just making buildings that don’t fall down,” Mr. Wood said. He gestured toward a stack of carved timbers from a 150-year-old Chinese temple that he’d seen on the back of a truck in China. He talked the driver into selling them and now intends to build with them on property he owns in Martha’s Vineyard.

The call to go to China came in 1998, when Mr. Wood was running an architecture practice with Carlos Zapata in Boston. (His best-known project with Mr. Zapata was a controversial stadium renovation at Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears.) The two were invited along with several Western architectural firms, including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, to enter a Hong Kong developer’s competition for a two-block neighborhood in old Shanghai. There was a catch: the site had to be cleared of undesirable elements, and the job had to be well under way by May 1999 in time for an official visit already scheduled by President Jiang Zemin.

While other architects suggested tearing out the old rabbit warren of courtyard houses, built by the French in the 1860’s on interlaced narrow lanes, Mr. Wood said he could design around and with them. He got the job.

Working in Shanghai was a revelation. He did not speak Mandarin, and he hiked around the city for miles so he would be able to find his way back to his hotel without relying on a cab. “If you say ‘the Ritz,’ some cabdrivers won’t understand you,” Mr. Wood said. “They call it ‘Por-ta-ma-na’ after John Portman, the architect who designed it.”

To get a feel for the local vernacular, he asked guides to take him to any place that hadn’t changed much for a hundred years or since before there was electricity. He was especially struck, he said, by the street life along the narrow alleys in the older parts of the French Concession. Private life was conducted in public to a degree he had not witnessed elsewhere. “They even walk around outside in their pajamas and underwear if it’s hot,” Mr. Wood recalled.

At Xintiandi, Mr. Wood fostered communal feeling in some notably un-Chinese ways. Despite having been warned that there is no Chinese tradition for alfresco dining, he designed the neighborhood to be chockablock with outdoor cafes. He also created a wide esplanade sweeping along the edge of an artificial lake.

Photographs show a waterfront view with a swath of well-kept lawn, a string of lampposts along a stone path and various high-rises twinkling at night in the background: hardly a traditional vista for Shanghai. But local residents have made it their own, Mr. Wood said, coming down in droves on summer nights to gather for ballroom dancing or to play Canto Pop on their boomboxes. Xintiandi is also a magnet for foreign tourists, who flock to its clubs by night.

To make way for all this, many of the 4,500 people who used to live there had to be relocated to modern apartment buildings; those who did not want to go, Mr. Wood acknowledged, were likely to find their roofs removed. Such forced relocations are frequently criticized by foreigners. Locals, perhaps used to even more radical changes, seem to take them more in stride. Mr. Wood himself simply says that everyone was fairly compensated. As for the old schoolhouse where Mao attended the first meeting of the Communist Party, it has been preserved.

Local land values are now soaring. But Mr. Wood said he was most proud of the way that Xintiandi has attracted small entrepreneurs who are buying and renting shop fronts for their own boutique businesses.

“I was working in unknown territory, and sometimes it was scary,” he said of that first project. “At the same time here was someplace where I could do more in 15 years than most architects do in their entire careers.” So in 2004 he decided to move to China full time.

Two years later he still comes across as a hyped-up romantic who relishes the prospect of living big and does not concern himself overmuch with compromises that a more fastidious architect might refuse.

To succeed he has had to learn fast about a place where the word for “fake” is a compliment, meaning something that did not cost full price. Certain back-alley copy shops, he learned by grim experience, sell duplicates of the computer discs that architects drop off for reproduction. It may be only a matter of hours before a PowerPoint presentation of a new design is available for sale in a pirated edition.

As a result so-called fake firms abound, he said. Mr. Wood said he sometimes interviewed young Chinese designers who proudly show him work he knows was actually done by well-known firms like SOM, Cesar Pelli, Kohn Pedersen Fox or even his own.

Mr. Wood has also learned the finer points of etiquette: how to plan for the procession of V.I.P.’s visiting the construction site in their black cars, or whether to wear a tie to meetings with representatives of the government (which typically has a 10 percent stake in most large-scale construction). The more elite the official is, the less likely he’ll be to wear a tie. To get the job, it pays to show confidence and follow suit.

In spite of such complexities, Mr. Wood said that building in China had an appealing immediacy. “In the United States you are not allowed as an architect to speak to a worker on a construction site, make a suggestion or help figure out a design flaw when it crops up,” he said, lamenting the protocols regarding liabilities and the union regulations that govern most American construction sites. On an American project, “you can’t say anything at all without a lawyer in tow,’’ he added. “In China they often don’t even bother with contracts.”

Mr. Wood has opened a martini bar, called DR (for Design Research, in tribute to a store founded by Ben Thompson that was a forerunner to Crate & Barrel), in Xintiandi that has become a pit stop for architects and developers visiting from abroad. “It has a definite vibe, part SoHo, part Rick’s Place,” said Mr. Pierson of the Architectural Record. “A lot of expats go there, and Wood loves holding court. He wears that beard, and in China they tend to automatically respect people with white beards.”

Mr. Pierson acknowledged that Mr. Wood’s approach to architecture would not go over well with Western preservationists. “He keeps facades, moves pieces around, adds windows where there were none,’’ he said. “If he were doing that with historic properties in the U.S., I would be more critical. But for China saving even bits and pieces is an important leap. Ten years from now when preservation there has become more sophisticated, they’ll be able to look back and say this was the first important step.”

For Henry Ng of the World Monuments Fund, freewheeling economic development is “ a threat more lethal than razing buildings.” And Mr. Wood’s design approach is appealing to Chinese developers because it shows that “preservation can be profitable,’’ said Mr. Ng, who was reached by e-mail while touring the hutong, or ancient city lanes, in Beijing.

Mr. Wood is dismissive of the complaints that his projects have a theme-park air. “That’s only because they are so clean,” he said. “As for authenticity, consider this: Every sidewalk paver is made of hand-hammered granite. It takes a day to install four of them.”

Preservation, he said, is not his goal anyway: “The real point is not the architecture of the place, but the new life a place attracts. The hutong probably should be torn down. They can’t even accommodate sewage pipes, let alone cables for everything else people need today. That doesn’t mean destroy the kind of place they were.”

Still, the heady days when this corner of the world was a Western architect’s oyster may be winding down. Chinese architects want the commissions for themselves. “I don’t like being confronted at every meeting with a room full of architects staring at me resentfully,’’ Mr. Wood said, adding, “The window is closing quite fast.”

For the next stage in his career he wants to design eco-resorts in Yunnan Province, a rolling mountainous and pasture region near the Tibetan border that was renamed Shangri-La to attract tourism development. He envisions visitors staying in tents much like his own on Martha’s Vineyard.

He has also bought an old Tibetan farmhouse that he hopes to renovate and where he might be able to keep and fly a 1947 Seabee plane he has had restored.

“I’m going to stay in China a while longer,” he said. “There are limits to what I can do in the United States. I don’t fit in with the C.E.O. culture there. But in China being flamboyant is a good thing.” - by Julie Iovine   NEW YORK TIMES  13 Aug 2006

Iconic Peace Hotel to get US$50m facelift
Owners aim to return ageing Shanghai landmark to ranks of world's best

Even a grande dame needs a facelift when a younger rival moves in down the street.

Peace Hotel: First opened in 1929 as the Cathay Hotel, it faces competition from a slew of glitzy outfits including a US$360m Peninsula Hotel being built nearby

The venerable Peace Hotel, an icon of glamorous 1930s Shanghai, is preparing for a US$50 million renovation that its owners hope will put it back in the ranks of the world's best.

Jinjiang International Group thinks the project is needed to help the hotel compete with a slew of glitzy establishments in the booming city, including a US$360 million Peninsula Hotel being built by Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd nearby on the northern tip of the Bund waterfront.

'If we don't upgrade, it just won't do. You can't compete on culture alone,' public relations manager Ma Yongzhang said on Friday. He began work as a room attendant at the hotel as the chaos of China's Cultural Revolution erupted 40 years ago.

Opened by businessman Victor Sassoon in 1929 as the Cathay Hotel, the hotel welcomed Charlie Chaplin and Noel Coward to the city known as the Pearl of the Orient. It was renamed the Peace Hotel in 1956, after the Communists took power.

It hosted Chinese warlords, entertained Shanghai gangsters and survived Red Guard attacks before Shanghai conglomerate Jinjiang refurbished it 10 years ago.

The Italian marble in the art deco lobby gleams once again, but the elevators are clunky and the rooms do not always meet international five-star standards, guests say. Its occupancy rate was a respectable 78 per cent in 2005, but it has slipped this year.

The exact timing and full cost of the hotel's renovation have not been finalised yet, Mr Ma said. But the vision is clear - to recreate a luxury hotel for guests who romanticise the pre-war Shanghai era.

Mr Ma recalled how he and other staff protected the hotel when it was targeted during the Cultural Revolution as a symbol of capitalism.

'The Red Guards came and wanted to smash the dragon and phoenix ceilings of the restaurant, but we told them that would leave the staff and guests with nowhere to eat.

'So we said we'd smash it ourselves, and instead we covered the whole ceiling with papers, and protected it.' - SINGAPORE BUSINESS TIMES   2006  July 3 

Owners plan a makeover for Shanghai's Peace Hotel

The Peace Hotel, an aging colonial icon on Shanghai's scenic waterfront, will be renovated under a deal signed with Fairmont Hotels and the Swiss watchmaker Swatch.

Jinjiang International Hotel Management, China's biggest hotel operator and current owner of the Peace Hotel, announced plans to join with the two foreign companies in a notice posted on the Web site of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Plans call for the owners to keep the hotel's historic design and art-deco highlights.

Jinjiang and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a Saudi-controlled luxury hotel group based in Toronto, are setting up a joint venture to renovate and manage the best-known northern wing of the hotel, located at the corner of Shanghai's Nanjing Road shopping street and the waterfront Bund, the notice said.

The 78-year-old hotel closed this month, with construction work expected to last about two years, it said.

The southern wing of the Peace Hotel will be renovated and managed by a joint venture between Jinjiang and a unit of the Swatch Group of Switzerland, Jinjiang said.

That wing, to be known as the Shanghai Swatch Art Center, will be transformed into an art center and also house flagship stores for international-brand watches, it said.

Jinjiang, the largest tourism conglomerate in China's biggest city, owns some of Shanghai's choicest historic hotels. But the state-run company has been struggling to acquire the international managerial expertise it needs to compete with the dozens of top-flight global hotel operators setting up operations in China.

It faces competition along the Bund from some of the biggest names in retailing - many other colonial buildings have already been revamped into fashionable boutiques, restaurants and galleries.

But the company's decision to join with foreign companies in upgrading the Peace Hotel has raised some eyebrows.

"South Wing: Artists Only Welcome," said a headline in the local newspaper Oriental Morning Post.

The Peace Hotel opened in 1929 as the Cathay, built and owned by the Iraqi Jewish tycoon Victor Sassoon, who resided in a pyramid-shaped rooftop penthouse that has inspired the look of scores of modern Chinese skyscrapers.

The 12-story main building was the place to stay in the Shanghai of the 1930s and '40s, attracting famous guests like Charlie Chaplin, General George Marshall of the United States, and the playwright Noel Coward, who completed his famous work, "Private Lives," while staying at the Cathay.

Following the Communist takeover in 1949, the hotel nationalized and renamed to drop perceived colonialist overtones. -    ASSOCIATED PRESS   17 April 2007

Shanghai's legendary Astor Hotel

It's the first of its kind in Shanghai, and has been applauded by young student tourists. - By Lu Chang, Shanghai Star  ; South China Morning Post      

  

Shanghai office rents close to overtaking NY

The cost of renting high grade offices in Shanghai is close to overtaking that of downtown New York, according to a new survey which underlines China’s rapid economic growth.

The Pudong district in the Chinese city is now the 41st most expensive place to occupy in the world, just behind lower New York at 40th.

For the first time, China has three districts in the Global Market Rents Top 50 compiled by CB Richard Ellis, the property agents, which measures prime A-grade property across the world.

These are Pudong (41), Shanghai’s new business district, Puxi (48), the city’s more established commercial area, and Beijing (50).

The trend reflects China’s emergence as a global economic power.

China’s trade surplus with the US is now running at around $160bn a year. For 2004, its gross domestic product increased 9.5 per cent while industrial production was up 16 per cent.

This growth has been accompanied by an explosion of construction, especially in China’s biggest cities, whose population has mushroomed due to an influx of rural labourers.

However, the speed of property development in China has raised fears of a bubble that could burst if demand slowed down. In Puxi, for instance, vacancy levels are running between 25 per cent and 30 per cent.

“Although Beijing and Shanghai are oversupplied at the moment, that supply is of questionable quality and aimed at the local market rather than international investors,” said Michael Haddock of CBRE. “The space that is built to suitable specifications and appropriate for international occupiers is limited, pushing up the price.”

China-based property experts said demand for prime office properties in Shanghai, and especially Puxi, was strong late last year. While Shanghai’s residential prices and rents have fallen since early 2004, office prices and rents have continued to rise, according to property researchers DTZ.

David Hand, managing director for Jones Lang LaSalle in Beijing, said that compared with a decade ago, China’s larger cities were not at risk of witnessing a major price correction since the volumes of both supply and demand had risen sharply since then, making for a healthier market.

But he nonetheless pointed out China’s property market remained “embryonic” in many respects.

“We still have to get to the point where there is an active secondary market,” added Anna Kalifa, the head of research for Jones Land LaSalle in Beijing.

Mr Hand also noted that multinationals generally preferred to lease expensive office space while Chinese companies were more prone to buying properties.

A handful of international property developers are taking their first tentative steps into the Chinese market, although the risks and barriers to entry are still considered high.

Meanwhile, London’s West End remains the most expensive location in the world, at $191.60/sq ft a year. It is followed by London’s City at $125.80, central Tokyo at $124.36, outer Tokyo at $119.51 and Paris at $96.12.

By contrast, downtown New York is $37.80/sq ft a year and Pudong in Shanghai is $37.61.

Some experts caution against direct comparisons of office costs, given that rent is often measured in different ways in different countries. - By Jim Pickard in London and Andrew Yeh in Beijing      FINANCIAL TIMES      26 January 2005

Fast-lane Shanghai hit by power crunch, traffic

The city of 20 million -- roughly the population of Australia -- should nonetheless grow 11 percent and rack up its 14th year of double-digit growth, mayor Han Zheng told an annual meeting of the city's parliament.

Despite electricity shortages brought on by a scorching summer and frigid winter and Beijing's efforts to rein in investment in sectors from steel to property nationwide, Shanghai's economy grew 13.5 percent in 2004 -- its fastest rate since 1998.

Han said the city would build more power plants and encourage energy conservation after a summer heat wave forced 1,000 firms to shut temporarily for the second year running, including Volkswagen AG's local plant.

A freezing winter also taxed the grid, at one point forcing more than 800 firms to shift production to graveyard shifts.

"We will enhance our energy security by developing a number of electrical power and liquefied natural gas projects," he told parliament members in a Russian-style exhibition hall, without giving details.

Shanghai raised power generating capacity by more than 10 percent in 2004 and plans to invest another 20 billion yuan ($2.42 billion) to improve grid transmission.

Han, mayor since 2003, also took aim at soaring property prices and increasingly gridlocked traffic, two other corollaries of breakneck growth, promising more affordable housing and greater investment in roads and public transport.

The city is luring multinationals seeking a manufacturing base in low-cost China, but also houses the Asian headquarters of the world's largest auto maker, General Motors Corp , and U.S. conglomerate Honeywell International Inc. .

Shanghai hosted a Formula One Grand Prix in 2004 and is preparing for the World Expo in 2010.

Actual foreign investment rose 12 percent to $6.54 billion in 2004, while exports leapt 52 percent to $73.5 billion, Han added.

Booming trade propelled Shanghai past Rotterdam to become the world's second-busiest port in 2004. Container traffic rose 29 percent to 13.55 million 20-foot equivalent units.

Some previous Shanghai mayors have gone on to join the rarefied ranks of China's cabinet in Beijing, including former president Jiang Zemin and former premier Zhu Rongji.

Concerns had surfaced Shanghai may be losing its attraction for multinationals compared with cheaper Chinese cities, because of rising housing and consumer goods prices, traffic jams and bureaucracy.

"If not addressed promptly and effectively, they will undermine Shanghai's long-term development," Han said. "We must take these problems very seriously." ($1=8.276 Yuan) - REUTERS     18 January 2005

Shanghai Property Synopsis

Having grown at a phenomenal rate in the past several years, Shanghai's residential property market continues to improve but has eased into a steadier pace. The buoyant rebound has been in part due to speculative buying and developers cashing in on the rising demand.

However, to avert any possible overheating, the government introduced several measures in the past year such as more stringent regulations for developers, credit access and transfer of properties. With fears of excessive supply and speculative activity in check, the market has been brought into better balance.

Since the last trough in 1999, home prices have risen some 90 per cent. In 2003 alone, prices went up 25-40 per cent while the increase has moderated to 12-15 per cent for the first eight months of this year.

Investment grade properties, which encompass mid- to high-end apartments or villas in the US$1,500-US$2,000 psm price range, have also seen their prices rise - possibly even more for those in the city centre due to their limited supply.

With supply of investment grade developments in prime locations being restrained by recent regulations, existing or soon-to-be-launched projects will be well placed to meet the still-rising occupational demand.

Two such properties coming up in the next six months are phases two and three of New Westgate Garden at Fuxing/Zhaozhou Road near Huaihai Road and Chevalier Place in the prime district of Huashan Road.

Apart from capital appreciation, rental demand remains healthy as more multinational corporations continue to make Shanghai their regional base. High-end apartments in the city are usually the preferred choice of expatriates and can command an average rent of US$17 psm per month, translating to yields of 7-8 per cent.

Unlike other Asian countries that have a more mature economy and property market, Shanghai's economy and property market are still at the growth stage. Demand for housing will continue to grow - both for owner occupation and investment - and prices should continue to see a steady rise in tandem with economic growth. - 2004 Oct    SINGAPORE BUSINESS TIMES

Luxury marques make a beeline for Shanghai

Plaza 66, Citic, Portman, New Sogo, Times Square, Three on the Bund and soon 18 on the Bund: in China's wealthiest city Shanghai, skyscrapers are pushing through old suburbs and temples to luxury abound.

'Five years ago, there were about 20-30 luxury shops here. Today, everyone is here and their networks in continental China are becoming more and more significant,' McKinsey management consultant Jacques Penhirin told AFP.

Christian Dior, which has been in China since 1998, has, for example, doubled its space at its top-flight Plaza 66 store and is planning to open Dior Hommes in December to join Hermes, Vuitton, Prada, Celine, Versace and Cartier at the elite location. Shanghai is the most international city in China and counts a high number of Western and Asian expatriates among its population of 17 million people.

Many among the Chinese diaspora have also returned to put down roots, such as Yue-Sai Kan, one of the most powerful women in China.

In 1992, she successfully launched the first Chinese cosmetics company, which has since come under the control of cosmetics giant L'Oreal with Ms Kan as vice-president of its China operations.

But Shanghai is an expensive city in a largely poor nation, in which McKinsey estimates only 300,000 people in a population of 1.3 billion have more than US$1 million in assets, excluding property. This has made the metropolis merely a shopwindow for most, displaying luxury items that are highly taxed in mainland China.

'Prices can be 30 per cent higher in Shanghai compared to Hong Kong,' Mr Penhirin said.

People are still buying though, with gifts to smooth business transactions and pamper wives and mistresses making up a 'not insignificant' part of the turnover, he said.

Dior couture and perfume Asian representative Pierre Denis is in no doubt that 'luxury in Shanghai, as in China, is a reality'.

'China, with Hong Kong and Taiwan, represents 10 per cent of the business of Christian Dior couture,' he told AFP.

For Chinese consumers, who have suffered many years of privation under communist rule, 'luxury begins with handbags and skin creams or lipsticks', he said.

Most interested are a new generation of women in business, aged between 25 and 35, he said.

Nonetheless, an average Dior bag is double the city's average monthly wage, retailing for 6,000-8,000 yuan (S$1,205-1,607) with the mean salary between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan.

Not all the labels have set up shop in Shanghai, but the most important are here and they agree that there is strong potential in the Chinese market.

It is a matter of 'familiarising the Chinese with the new names that they do not know and are beginning to see in the local fashion magazines', Mr Denis said. - AFP    2 Nov 2004

Shanghai snippets

Among Shanghai’s home-grown talent are Joan Chen, the glamorous, American-based actress who starred in ‘‘The Last Emperor’’ and ‘‘Twin Peaks,’’ painter Chen Yifei and veteran soccer star Fan Zhiyi, whose athletic prowess helped China reach the World Cup finals for the first time.

Shanghai is the only Chinese city with two international airports. The new facility at Pudong handles the bulk of international flights, while the older Hongqiao has domestic flights and short-haul flights to such destinations as Hong Kong.

The legendary Peace Hotel Jazz Band is still going strong nightly. When China opened up to tourism in the 1980s, the old-timers regrouped and have even been on overseas tours, playing the traditional jazz they used to play in nightclubs in pre-1949 Shanghai.

Actor Dennis Hopper, known for his role in the influential movie ‘‘Easy Rider,’’ recently wound up filming a futuristic television series in Shanghai.

When former U.S. President Bill Clinton stayed at the Portman Ritz-Carlton, chefs rustled up the president’s preferred low-fat breakfast muffins and - to feed accompanying bodyguards and staff - placed orders for 8,000 eggs, 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of fruit and 300 Peking ducks.

One of the city’s most famous dishes is Shanghai hairy crabs, only in season for a short time (usually mid-to-late November) and much prized by gourmet diners in Shanghai and elsewhere.

Mao-tai, the fiery and powerful rice wine used to toast people at traditional banquets in Shanghai and other parts of China, won an award at the San Francisco World Expo back in 1915.

The top-selling household appliance in Shanghai is the color television. Some 806,914 are purchased annually, followed by 428,585 electric fans and 420,585 air conditioners.  - INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Shanghai Port aims for #1  

SHANGHAI The Shanghai government's port operator is planning to spend 5 billion yuan, or $604 million, on the first phase of a deepwater project that may make the city the world's biggest container handler by 2010.    

Shanghai Port Container and its state-owned parent company will invest the money in Yangshan port, which is being constructed 28 kilometers, or 17 miles, from China's largest commercial city, the company said Saturday in a statement in the Shanghai Securities News.  

China is pushing ahead with the $16 billion project to help end transport bottlenecks caused by surging foreign trade. Overseas operators, including Hutchison Whampoa and PSA, have expressed interest in investing in Yangshan, which is designed to handle 25 million standard containers annually, more than Hong Kong's total of 21 million containers last year. 

"The investment will help to ease berth constraints for Shanghai port and create room for future expansion," said Ma Ying, a Shanghai-based analyst at Haitong Securities. Shanghai Port's "earnings may get a boost from 2006 after the Yangshan Port starts operation."  

Chinese ports including Shanghai, Ningbo and Shenzhen handled 48 million 20-foot cargo containers last year, 30 percent more than in 2002 and surpassing the United States for the first time, China\'s Ministry of Communications said in January.  Hong Kong is the world's busiest port, handling 21 million containers last year, followed by Singapore with 18 million and Shanghai with 10.65 million, the Oriental Morning Post said in January.   Shanghai's container traffic may more than double to about 25 million containers by 2010, Shanghai Port said.  Yangshan port, which will have 52 berths when completed in 2020, will enable bigger container ships to dock at Shanghai. 

PSA, which operates Singapore's port, Hutchison Whampoa, controlled by the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, and P&O Ned Lloyd Container Line are among overseas companies that have been in talks to invest in the project, the Shanghai government has said. . China's container shipments are still rising after the government introduced measures this year to cool economic growth, shipping lines such as China Ocean Shipping Group and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha of Japan said last week.  

Shipments to and from China rose 29 percent in May, according to the latest figures from the London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants. That was the same rate as April and higher than March. . The government is trying to slow economic growth to 7 percent this year, from a seven-year high of 9.1 percent in 2003, by clamping down on lending to industries such as steel and real estate, where an investment boom has contributed to transport bottlenecks, energy shortages and rising raw materials prices. 

China's exports surged 47 percent in June to a record $51 billion, while imports jumped 51 percent to $49 billion, the Beijing-based Ministry of Commerce said last week. The nation's share of world trade has tripled to about 7 percent in the past decade, making China the world's third-largest importer.   Shanghai Port will spend 2.55 billion yuan to take a 51 percent stake in Shanghai Yangshan International Container Wharf, the company said in its statement. Shanghai International Port will invest 2.45 billion yuan for the remainder, it said. . Shanghai Port's net income rose 28.3 percent to 998.8 million yuan last year from a year earlier as revenue climbed a third to 3.3 billion yuan.   First-quarter profit dropped 7.6 percent because of higher costs, while sales jumped 20.5 percent to 912.8 million yuan. . Shareholders will vote on the investment plan on Aug. 20, the company said. Shanghai Port may sell additional shares or convertible bonds to finance the investment, said Ma at Haitong.  - by  Jianguo Jian      Bloomberg News    July 19, 2004

Starry-eyed Broadway producers dream of China

NEW YORK: If starry-eyed young actors dream of making it big one day on Broadway, what do starry-eyed Broadway producers dream of? China, baby.

Next week the Nederlanders, one of the big three Broadway theater owners, are planning to announce the details of a new company they have formed that, among other things, will present and market tours and live entertainment in China. The entry of the Nederlanders into the Asian market is only the latest sign of how sizzling it has become.

"The Broadway brand is very hot to them," said Simone Genatt, one of the creators of Broadway Asia Entertainment, a company that produces and presents tours in Asia. "There are a lot of theaters going up across mainland China."

The company, Nederlander New Century, to be unveiled officially next week, was first put together a year ago as a joint venture of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment and a group based in China, Beijing Time New Century Entertainment. The plan was first reported in Crain's New York.

Broadway shows have been in Japan for years and the touring business has been spreading to South Korea, Singapore and other Asian countries. China represents a significantly larger marketplace. In September 2005, its Ministry of Culture announced that it would allow foreign investment in the entertainment industry; Nederlander New Century is the first company to be established under the new rules.

Taking Broadway to China over the past decade has been a slow process and at times a thorny one; presenters sometimes have to cope with a bramble of bureaucracy and an audience that is by and large unfamiliar with the Western musical.

It does not help that most of the productions presented have been in English. Tickets are less expensive in China, so the tours need to be produced more efficiently.

But the rush of eager producers and presenters is growing crowded. At the head of the pack are three operations based in New York: Broadway Asia Entertainment; the British impresario Cameron Mackintosh (who brought a production of "Les Misérables" to China in 2002); and Disney Theatricals, part of Walt Disney Co.

Independent tours are dancing into China as well: A tour of "Mamma Mia!" will go to Beijing for a short engagement in August.

Broadway Asia Co. was created in 1991 by Genatt and Marc Routh. Two and a half years ago it entered into a formal partnership — creating Broadway Asia Entertainment — with the Frankel/Viertel/Routh/Baruch Group, the producing and management company behind "Hairspray," "The Producers" and the latest revival of "Sweeney Todd."

Broadway Asia, which holds the Asian licensing rights to the Rodgers & Hammerstein library, has already produced a tour of "The Sound of Music" in China. Tours of "The King and I" and Chinese-language versions of "SpongeBob SquarePants Live!" and the Off Broadway musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" are scheduled to begin in the next few months.

Genatt said Broadway Asia was also creating theatrical training schools in several Asian cities, teaching the fundamentals of musical theater performance. Although the labor for the shows is local, the performers in the tours have in most cases come from English-speaking countries.

"We want to help build the infrastructure for the future of Chinese touring," Genatt said, adding that Broadway Asia was one of the producers of a planned $12 million original Chinese musical, "The Monkey King."

Disney Theatricals jumped into the mix in 1995, when "Beauty and the Beast" opened in Tokyo. Four yeas later, a licensed Chinese-language production of "Beauty" was presented in Beijing, where it ran for four weeks.

David Schrader, managing director and chief financial officer of Disney Theatricals, said one of the main challenges in many parts of Asia was finding theaters. Major cities like Beijing and Shanghai have elaborate performing arts centers that play host to orchestral and dance performances, leaving small gaps for theater.

The government is building more theaters and converting some buildings that were meant for other uses. But given the current landscape, Schrader said, touring is more logical than producing blockbusters from the ground up. That has not stopped Disney from trying for extended runs.

The longest engagement for Disney so far — and for any Western musical, Schrader said — was a 13-week run of "The Lion King" at the Shanghai Grand last year.    - by Campbell Robertson    INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE     14 March 2007

Shanghai Covets a Big Role on Asia's Cultural Stage
  Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
A visitor with masks at the Shanghai Museum, one of several new spaces in the city