“…Pan says he has succeeded because his own political, ideological and aesthetic journey merely reflects that of the nation. China is embracing a form of liberalism that is open to new ideas and architectural styles, he said…”

By John Garnaut
Source: International Herald Tribune

Lately Pan Shiyi has been reading the scriptures of one of the world’s oldest religions, Buddhism, and one of its newest, Bahai, but he has yet to find the quiet enlightenment he is searching for.

“I have been seeking for 10 years and read many scriptures but I’ve failed to find the truth,” said Pan, 44, sitting in the avant-garde headquarters of his SOHO real estate and design empire. “I’m in the process of stepping back. I felt Buddhist scriptures brought limited enlightenment to my life. Maybe others have found it.”

The meaning of life does not come easily to anyone, let alone a property tycoon who is busy controlling what Forbes magazine has identified as the seventh-largest family fortune in frenetic, secular China. But Pan’s quest for meaning is leaving its mark on the urban landscape of Beijing.

Decades of Maoism followed by rapid economic changes had buried one of the world’s most elegant ancient capitals beneath a dirty gray concrete sprawl. In the past decade, however, Pan and his wife and business partner, Zhang Xin, have helped to nudge the city’s architecture from the purely functional to the aesthetic.

Some credit Pan with preparing the city for the recent work of international architects, like the bewildering “egg”, the nickname of the Grand National Theater, by the French architect Paul Andreu; the “bird’s nest” Olympic stadium by the Swiss firm of Herzog and de Meuron; and the twisted feat of high-rise engineering designed by Rem Koolhass’s OMA team that will soon be the headquarters for China Central Television.

Pan’s first major project, the red-fronted SOHO New Town, dates from 2001, but it still stands out as a statement of difference. The apartment and office complex - SOHO is an acronym for Small Office, Home Office - helped establish Beijing as a cosmopolitan, even fashionable, modern city.

“The SOHO concept is multi-functional diversity,” said Li Wenjie, who manages the north China region for Centaline Real Estate. “It carries a sense of the times, and young people love it. I notice it is where Coca-Cola is advertising.”

Pan moved on to build Jianwai SOHO, 16 enormous residential and commercial cubes of light in minimalist white frames. He also commissioned a dozen of the world’s top architects to showcase their creativity in a tourist village, Commune By the Great Wall, north of the city.

To Pan, those three early projects represented his evolving political and ideological views. In his eyes, they also are metaphors, or milestones, for what he sees as the Chinese nation’s journey toward becoming a more liberal and creative place. (Pan was interviewed before the recent unrest in Tibet and subsequent protests along the Olympic torch relay.)

“Creativity is a form of individualism,” he said. “If everyone is dressed in uniforms like soldiers and call out the same slogan, there is no creativity. Release of individualism is the precondition of creativity.”

SOHO has completed six projects with total construction area of 1.55 million square meters, or almost 16.7 million square feet, with five more projects totaling 1.15 million square meters on the way. Nine of the 11 are in Beijing; the two outside are the Commune at the Great Wall and the Kempinski resort on Hainan Island.

Pan’s latest contribution to city living and working is the twisted, serrated and camouflage-colored Guanghua Road SOHO. In Pan’s mind it marks a new twist in the materialist road: a retreat to nature. “Normally people believe tidiness is order, but nature tells us differently,” he said. “Like leaves, or coastlines, there is hardly a straight line in this project.”

Pan says Peter Davidson, the Australian architect who designed Guanghua Road, spent days convincing him that the secret to the order of nature was its disorder. Davidson demonstrated how the sawed-off edge of a steel tube looked neat from a distance but uneven and irregular under a microscope; he contrasted the straight concrete lines of man with the gentle curves of nature.

Pan now talks about these insights with the conviction of the newly converted. “Lakes and beaches are always in curved lines,” he said. “That is the secret of nature.”

Melbourne was somewhat shell-shocked in 2002 when Davidson first unleashed his idea of naturalism in the center of the city. Since then, Federation Square, an arts and multi-media center, has become one of Australia’s most popular and family-friendly meeting places.

Beijing, in contrast, seemed relaxed from the start about its leap from communist modernism to avant-garde - but perhaps that should not be surprising in a city that has witnessed as much revolutionary change as any other in modern history. (Workers at the nearby Guanghua Road SOHO site said they did not know whether SOHO’s office and apartment complexes looked good or bad - but that they knew Pan was making a lot of money.)

Pan says he has succeeded because his own political, ideological and aesthetic journey merely reflects that of the nation. China is embracing a form of liberalism that is open to new ideas and architectural styles, he said.

He also has shown a canny knack for side-stepping all manner of land and credit restrictions to acquire enormous tracts in the heart of Beijing. In 2006 the Beijing Land Bureau said SOHO China accounted for 36 percent of all major sales in the city’s central business district. SOHO China’s own Web site says it is the largest commercial real estate developer in Beijing.

Pan denies speculation that he owes his success in part to close relations with city officials. Li, at Centaline Real Estate, said the secret to Pan’s rapid rise was “too sensitive” to talk about.

But it helps the SOHO business that Pan’s adopted city has a greater appetite for major new buildings than any in the world other than Shanghai. And Pan says he is not interested in Shanghai because it “only has a lot of businessmen and petty bourgeoisie.”

So far his Beijing-focused strategy seems to be paying handsomely. His company’s listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange last October propelled his family into seventh place on the Forbes list of China’s richest, with a worth estimated at $3.8 billion. (The SOHO China empire was recently transferred to Zhang, its chief executive; Pan is chairman).

Then, in January, Pan was appointed a deputy to the Beijing People’s Congress. While the membership undoubtably will bolster his ties with city planners, it also may provide a degree of political insurance against his strident liberal and pro-development views.

One of his great frustrations is China’s recent law banning foreign purchases of residential real estate except in cases where properties are primary residences. In talking about the restrictions, Pan mentions the world’s most closed and repressive nation: “How can there be such a policy in a time of globalization?,” he asks. “If you don’t open up and communicate, you will become like North Korea - you won’t have water to drink or pens, papers and books.”

Another of his concerns is land restrictions that are limiting developers and forcing up property prices - especially in Beijing in the days before the Olympics.

“Only when the market can’t tolerate the price will the government take measures,” he said. “But urbanization is inevitable, so there must be change in the future.”

If Pan’s creations reflect or presage social change in China, then his work with the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma at Sanlitun deserves close attention. Sanlitun SOHO will be built on yet another vast, prime site in Beijing’s downtown corridor - this time in a busy bar district catering to foreigners.

Drawings show a spacious, cylindrical glass city, with offices and residential towers linked by narrow canals. The waterways are designed to freeze into functional skating paths in winter; the overall design is ultra-modern, fluid and tranquil.

Pan says Kuma’s designs speak of community, personal cultivation and meditative contemplation.

The developer and architect first met at a large, bamboo-walled retreat that Kuma designed at Commune by the Great Wall. That mix of traditional China and modern living hints at the effect the pair are aiming to achieve.

“When people see bamboo they are reminded of China - the most splendid period of history, the Weijin and Southern and Northern Dynasties that produced great poems, great literature and strong personalities,” Pan said. “They cared nothing for worldly life and spent all their time writing poems, drinking and enjoying.”

Poetry is what Pan returned to after his unfulfilled religious quest and he now calls it his most reliable path to meditation.

Pan’s favorite is by the modern poet, Zhu Zhiqing; it seems to capture his own life journey:

The last few days have found me very restless
This evening as I sat in the yard to enjoy the cool
It struck me how different the lotus pool
I pass every day must look under a full moon….
Strolling alone down the path
Hands behind my back
I felt as if the whole earth and
Sky were mine and I had stepped outside
My usual self into another world.
I like both excitement and stillness
Under the full moon, I could think of whatever
I pleased or of nothing at all
And that gave me a sense of freedom.