Word: jianfu
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Saturday night's dinner amidst the gardens of the Jianfu Palace, tucked away in the Northwest corner of the Forbidden City, brought together the power brokers who had forged the ties that today bind China and the United States. Blue bloods and red bloods, you might say, gathered for a valedictory celebration of their achievements: Hosted by Hong Kong real estate developer Ronnie Chan, the purpose was to put a punctuation mark at the end of an era - an exclamation point, not a period...
...China's "Iron Lady", were a bit younger, but not by much. They may run the country's huge state owned companies and the government that minds them, but in a China dominated by the Communist Party, leadership is chosen, and replaced, by generation. The diners at the Jianfu Palace were smart, and like Madame Wu, as tough as can be, but they are conservative, and they do things by the book. Dinner was served by scores of waitresses clad in qipao. The guests listened to traditional Chinese music, and they sat through toast after toast...
...Jianfu Palace affair was not the only A-list dinner in town. Almost simultaneously, exactly 30 miles north, in the shadow of the Great Wall, China's next establishment gathered to welcome their foreign friends. Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin are, as one foreign press story put it last year, are the "it" couple among China's new entrepreneurs. Husband and wife, both in their mid forties, they run SOHO China, the largest private property developers in Beijing, and a company known for its sleek, stylish properties. On Saturday night, at a resort development at the Wall known...
...Here was part of China's new business establishment-in-formation, and in style and attitude, it could not be more different from the one bidding its Western counterparts farewell at the Jianfu Palace. Many, of course, have been educated in the West, and worked there. (SOHO's Zhang went to Oxford and worked at Goldman Sachs.) The point is not that they are merely comfortable in hip, international settings. They are creating them...
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