 To think tech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Lise Anderson. And I'm Kawe Lucas. In our show this time, we'll visit a meeting of the long-established China Seminar, which presents monthly programs about things of interest to those who follow China. Every month or so, the Friends of the East-West Center present the China Seminar. This has been going on for many years, since it was founded by Danny Kwok, longtime Asia scholar at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The program featured three speakers from China who spoke about the world market for Chinese art and how Chinese art is being repatriated back home to China. The China Seminar takes place under the auspices of the Friends of the East-West Center. It has met for many years at the Maple Garden Chinese restaurant on Eisenberg Street near the university. The food, of course, is Chinese. One of the speakers was Xi Qing Xu, a connoisseur collector, authenticator, and consultant in Chinese art. Xu does not speak English. His talk was interpreted by David Ding Yu. Xu graduated in 1991 with a BA degree in Chinese art from the Shusou Institute of Fine Arts. Xu then joined the Yangzhou branch of the National Bureau of Cultural Relics as a Chinese art authenticator. In 2002, he opened his own gallery in Shanghai, the Shizu Kautang Gallery, which means the Thach Tut of Modesty, to showcase his collection. Chinese collecting and collecting China really has a very long history. It could date all the way back to the Tang Dynasty when lots of Chinese arts got transferred to the Western world. Even today in Japan, in Nara, you can still see a huge collection of art objects presented to Japanese emperor from Chinese royal families. Throughout the five dynasties of the Tang Song, Yuan, Ming Qing, roughly from about 618 to 1912, over 1,300 years, lots of Chinese art expanded into every corner of the world. The largest number of art objects were exported into the Western world, mostly through the end of the 19th century to the 1930s. In that 40 or 50 years, lots of beautiful Chinese treasures were lost to the outside world because China was a weak at that time. We can see most of them in today's museums around the world, the three decades between the founding of the People's Republic and the Cultural Revolution because of the political reasons and because of Chairman Mao's call on smashing the old things and establishing the new, lots of Chinese art were destroyed during that three decades. During that 30 years, the connection between China and outside the world in collecting and in art appreciation was also cut off. Things started to change after the Cultural Revolution and when China reopened its stores in 1978 and through Hong Kong and other places, China started to rebuild that connection with the outside world. The next speaker was Beijing-born Kevin Zong, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Singari International. Zong had his secondary education in Portland, Oregon, then took a BA and MBA from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He joined Singari in 2014. And just now my colleague, Mr. Xu, has introduced his collection, Path Experience, all over the world. So I will start here and review the Chinese art market development for the past 30 years. Before the 1980s, the art trades were very small, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Only a few state-owned antique stores were allowed to do this business, otherwise it would be called the crime of speculation and it's almost forbidden. But until 1993 to 1995, the four major auction companies were found in Beijing and Singari was one of them and art market found a new life back to China. At that time, the supply was greater than demand. Everything was very cheap because the whole society was lack of money. According to the economic research that the price of the antiques or paintings or the volume of the trades strongly correlated, highly correlated with the hot money in the society. But during that time, the China was very poor. People were so busy about making money instead of buying the collections. You can see from the index that because the economy is still growing up and the art market increased smoothly. But suddenly in 2003, I think you guys, everyone knows what happened. The SARS disease happened and in greater China area like Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, thousand people lost their lives and during that time I was in Beijing. It was quite scary and more than 20 million living in that city. To be honest, no one really came out. The whole city was like a death city so the economy was damaged. Unfortunately, the disease was controlled by the government within one year and a few incentive plans make the economy keep growing for the next five years and our market got back in just only five years. In 2008, the US subprime because the financial crisis influenced the whole world and China was dragged into these disasters. Many people lost their jobs. At that time, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao soon approved a huge stimulus package. That's 4 trillion RMB, about 600 billion US dollar. When this money injected into the society, everything got really expensive because inflation was really high. My hometown is in Beijing and Mr. Xue He lives in Shanghai. We can tell you in these two cities, for example the real estate. These four or five years, the real estate price increased at least three to five times. That's really fast. Right now, if you want to buy a small studio like 500 square inch in Beijing or Shanghai, it costs you more than one million US dollar or 1.5 million US dollar. So at the same time, the art market reached the highest point in the history of PRC. Of this map, you can see in 2011, that's the highest point in the history. It's total volume of trade was about 15 billion US dollar and it makes China the second largest trading company, our trading company of the whole world. From the map on the right side, you can see Beijing takes about 65% of the whole trading volumes in China. In Shanghai area, it takes about 25%, but the rest of the whole nation, only 10%. So in 2011, Beijing was the volume of trade was the largest of the whole world. But of course, not every buyer by those antiques or paintings on collection purpose. Actually many of them were on gift purpose. As a gift for the leaders or their friends, actually this is part of the corruption. So in 2012, the new government established and Mr. Xi Jinping became the chairman of China. He was born in the Red family. His style of work was very different with the former leaders. The first move was to fight against the corruption. From the map on the left, we can see obviously it's very successful. Four years later, the volume of trade of art down to 50% off. So it's like 7 billion US dollar last year. Maybe the economy is slowing down in China is another concern. But four years, 50% off, that's very unusual. So for us, we believe because the anti-corruption move, so the buyers who want to buy those antiques for gift has gone. So right now only the real collectors are left in this market. Of course, this is bad for business. We don't earn that much money. But actually we're happy to see this because the real collectors who knows the value of those antiques are the only buyers right now. We also heard from Irene of Sungari International. Sungari was established in 1995 and has since become known as one of the world's most important auction houses for Chinese art. My name's Irene and I've been working for Sungari International for almost two years. I was studying in Japan during university and I worked there for two years. And two years before, Kevin gave me a call saying, Irene, why don't you come back? We have a job position open here. So two days after he called me, I flew back to China to attend their spring auction. It was my first time attending an artwork auction in China. So I got so interested and I quit my job and got back to China within two weeks. So here I am. And because of that event, I have this opportunity to be here. So I consider myself very lucky. Today, first I'm going to introduce a little bit about our company. We were founded, we were established in 1995 and we were one of the first and also largest auction companies in China. At the time when we were established, we were established in purpose of retrieving lost national treasures. And that's what we did. In the year of 2000, we successfully retrieved the national treasure. Now, the three bronze animal heads, which used to be in the old summer palace, as everybody know. And we retrieved them from Hong Kong. At that time, the press and the public gave us very high praise for the event. And also in 2001, for the first time, we presented six pieces of Shi Qu Bao Ji. Shi Qu Bao Ji is an imperial book catalog which included all the finest paintings from Song and Yuan and Ming dynasty. So it was actually the first time the paintings in Shi Qu Bao Ji collection presented in auction market. And eventually we initiated a very new trend for ancient painting. Also in 2002, we retrieved another piece, Yan Shan Ming, from Song artist Mi Fu. And it was one of the only two that existed in the world. And we retrieved it from Japan. And in 2009, we auctioned another artwork, paying tribute with captives from the west. And it was the first Chinese artwork auctioned exceeded 100 million RMB in China. And that time we created the 100 million mark in China. And last year in 2015, it was our 20th anniversary since our establishment. And the hammer dropped with a total transaction of 320 million at the close rate of 70.3%, which is very high for auction houses. And we attracted a house full of people. That was when we sensed the tone that the market is actually getting back. Since 2015, we started our worldwide trip. And we went to North America, the six cities in America and two cities in Canada. And we also went to Japan and Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia for open collection. And we've seen many, many great collections over there as well. So as the auction house, as the young generation for us, it's not only a place for selling and buying. But it is also a platform which provides the opportunity for our young people to get to learn about the cultural legacy and also the stories which was carried on the items that we never had the chance to witness. So for example, this is a set of two volumes of books that we auctioned this year. It is from the Imperial Book Collection catalog called Tian Lu Ling Lang. So the name Tian Lu actually derives from Tian Lu Pavilion, which was the name of book collection archive dated back to Han Dynasty established by Emperor Liu Bang. And also Ling Lang stands for Dazzle of Jade, representing the richness and fineness of the books. So about the Tian Lu Ling Lang story, at the first in the year of 1744, Emperor Qian Long called on a group of most knowledgeable scholars to select the finest books around China since Song dynasty, also through Yuan and Ming dynasty. And 10 volumes of catalog were edited, and more than 400 books were kept in record. And they were all kept in this Jiao Ren Palace down here, I took the picture. And after the coronation of Emperor Qian Long's song, so it's Emperor Jia Jing, he continued to edit the catalog. So 20 more volumes of the catalog were edited with more than 12,000 books in record, also included the finest book of Song Yuan and Ming dynasty. But unfortunately, after the second year, after the coronation of Jia Jing Emperor, there was a fire disaster, which completely destroyed Jiao Ren Palace. So all the book collection were destroyed. Emperor Qian Long at that time was very furious about the accident. But after the burn down, he called on the restoration of the book collection again. So again, more than 600 books were selected and put in the collection. According to the record, until 1925, only 311 of them remained. And some of them are brought to Taiwan, and the rest of them were given to Pujie by the last emperor Puyi. But now they're all spread around in the society, and we're very, very lucky to retrieve two of them this year for the auction. And all the scholars and collectors, we draw a very high attention of the public this year. And scholars and collectors, they all gathered around at the auction. And the hammer dropped at 20 million RMB at the end. But as far as we are concerned, it's not only about numbers, but it also represents the value of the books, of the culture, of the legacy in the public's eyes, and we're very excited about it. So through the history of some gallery from the three bronze animal heads to Yan Shan Ming to Tian Lu Ling Lang, the cultural value of each item is always the core of our company's vision. And not only within China, but also throughout the world. And Chinese art is no longer the only treasure in Chinese people's heart, but also for foreign collectors. Taking Robert Ellsworth as an example, he is the most influential Chinese art collector as an American. He started very early since a teenager, and after his high school dropout, he started working at a jewelry shop. That's where and when he started getting to know about Chinese art. And his first travel to China was in 1979, where he got to see the warehouse in which all the confiscated art pieces were stored. Because as Kevin introduced at that time, art transactions were prohibited. So the artworks were all confiscated and stored in the warehouse. So he went to China and he got to see those artworks and got very interested. And he started buying and collecting. And after Ellsworth, there are many of the famous people like John Rockefeller, the Third and Florence and Herbert Irving, and also Sir Joseph Edward Houghton. They're all very famous Chinese art collectors. And in the late time of their life, they all donated a large part of their collection to either nonprofit organizations or to the art museum like the Metropolitan Museum. So from here, you can see that it doesn't matter who you are or where you are. As long as it is where your passion lays, you can always get the essence of any culture that you're interested. And actually, Robert Ellsworth became an honorary Chinese citizen in the late of his life. And he was actually one of the only four foreigners who became an honorary Chinese citizen after 1949. The other three are Russians and he's the only American. But as we say, this is where our passion lays. And as an auctioneer, we always call us the transmitter and the passenger of the cultural legacy. And we'll keep on passing on the cultural legacy to many, many people not only in China, but also to people around the whole world. Tsingharia's had many important transactions in Chinese art, including the sale of Mifu's Yan Shan Ming, an extremely valuable thousand-year-old work of Chinese art in 2002. We were pleased to attend this China seminar as many before, and we were delighted to hear and take these speakers and see the interest of the attendees who came to see them. We'd like to see the China seminar continue for many years, bringing this kind of scholarship to our community and enriching Hawaii's bridge to Asia and our heritage in connection with Chinese history and culture. Indeed, this is all part of the culture of Hawaii. Thanks to the friends of the East-West Center for making the China seminar possible. Keep up the good work. In January, there'll be another China seminar program. It will feature a talk by Richard Hornick, a longtime journalist and former executive editor of Asia Week. He will speak about the challenge of Xi Jinping. Can China avoid economic stagnation? It's an important question for China and for the U.S. too. We'll be sure to cover that program, so stay tuned for more on ThinkTech on OC16, raising global awareness in Hawaii. And now, let's take a look at our ThinkTech calendar of events going forward. There's so much happening in Hawaii. Sometimes things happen under the radar and we don't hear much about them, but ThinkTech will take you there. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on OC16 several times every week to stay current on what's happening in government, industry, academia, and communities around the islands and the world. Remember also that ThinkTech broadcasts its daily talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, and then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com slash radio. And good news! ThinkTech will now be uploading its talk shows as podcasts on iTunes. Stay iTunes for more! 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Okay, Kauii, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it just like Kauii does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com, be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Elise Anderson and I'm Kauii Lucas. Aloha everyone! you