BEIJING -- Inside a tent amid new minimalist apartment towers, Chinese film stars and business elite mingled with Western diplomats. But the real draw of the evening were the hosts, building tycoons Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin.
Ms. Zhang swept into the room wearing a Mao suit in untraditional electric blue. She air-kissed a Chinese television host and bantered with another guest in black velvet as TV cameras captured the exchange. In a corner, Mr. Pan chatted with the U.S. ambassador's wife.
In a country newly fascinated with glitz and glamour, Ms. Zhang and Mr. Pan have become something novel in China: a hot celebrity couple. They made their mark by building some of China's most successful office and housing complexes, defined by a simple, modern aesthetic. And they found fame thanks to an increasingly competitive media that pays attention to personalities, and a growing class of monied young professionals looking for role models.
Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang "are the 'It Couple,' " gushes Hung Huang, a publisher of trendy Chinese-language magazines who has run stories identifying Ms. Zhang as "China's smartest woman." Mr. Hung adds: "They're self-made, they're creative and they're very good at feeling the pulse of the modern-day, middle-class Chinese."
Unlike many other Chinese entrepreneurs, who prefer to keep a low profile, the couple have opened up their lives to the press. Their faces have appeared on the covers of many of China's new glossy magazines. Hundreds of articles have chronicled their rags-to-riches story and even their sometimes stormy relationship.
Ma Weiyan, a 28-year-old media entrepreneur, and her husband have bought two of the couple's properties for investment and a third for their own use. They devour any news about the couple.
"China has so many people with money," Ms. Ma shrugs. "Why do we want to follow them? They don't just have money; they have taste."
Not long ago, such renown would have been unthinkable in China. Most city dwellers lived in cramped, dingy apartments and their clothes tended toward sober hues. Society frowned on individuals achieving wealth, not to mention publicizing it.
When Ms. Zhang and Mr. Pan set up their own property company in 1995, they decided to market units based on Japan's "Small Office, Home Office," or SOHO, concept, with homes doubling as offices. They named their company Soho China, evoking New York's Soho art district, a favorite locale of Ms. Zhang. The units boasted white walls, blond-wood floors and large windows, in contrast to the dark, empty cement shells that most other developers were putting on the market."We sort of started the middle-class consciousness of lifestyle," says Ms. Zhang, 38. "We pay a lot of attention to decorating details."
Word-of-mouth over Soho's novel approach fueled sales, and potential buyers faced long wait lists. The couple went on to build the Commune by the Great Wall, a dozen avant-garde houses. One plays off the concept of a suitcase, where parts of the floor open up to reveal layers of space beneath. It won Ms. Zhang a special prize at the Venice Biennale, a prestigious international art festival.
Neither of their upbringings offered any hint of a trendsetter future. Mr. Pan, 41, grew up in a backwater village in the northwestern province of Gansu. He says his family was so poor that he sometimes had to beg for food.
After graduating from vocational college in 1984, Mr. Pan headed to Hainan Island where he joined a group of young Chinese to launch a property company. In 1992, he moved to Beijing to set up a subsidiary, developing the city's first office building that sold space instead of renting it. Prices surged to record highs of about 30,000 yuan per square meter, or $326 a square foot.
Ms. Zhang's parents worked as government translators in Beijing. They divorced when she was 15 and she moved with her mother to Hong Kong, where they worked in a series of sweatshops, she says. She studied economics at Sussex and Cambridge universities and then went to Hong Kong to work in project financing for Goldman Sachs and Travelers Group. The jobs took her often into China, where she met Mr. Pan.
Today Londy Ong, social editor of Beijing Tatler and a regular on Beijing's party circuit, labels their followers "nouveau riche." But that didn't stop the lifestyle and society magazine from running an article on who wore what designer dress at a recent party hosted by the couple.
The couple's efforts to court the press have occasionally backfired, such as when a U.S. film crew followed Ms. Zhang around for a day, trailing her at one of her fancy parties. Then the filmmakers spliced scenes from her life into a program about the wealth disparity in China. It ran on PBS several years ago.
They are skillful at deflecting criticism. When some Soho residents grumbled in 1998 about an acrid smell in their new apartments from the cement that had been used, the couple turned the incident into an opportunity for public debate on quality problems plaguing the whole industry.
More often the couple's interaction with China's new magazines benefits both. After Mr. Pan returned from a recent conference, one of the first phone calls he made was to a top editor of a Chinese lifestyle magazine. Mr. Pan invited the editor for a preview peek at a "future homes" exhibit for which the government has invited Soho to contribute a display. "You can see it next week, before it formally opens and the place is filled with photographers and students," he offered.
As Mr. Pan prepared to go to work one morning, Ms. Zhang pointed to his paunch as he emerged in an ill-fitting white button-down shirt and black trousers. "I don't know anything about style," he laughed, after changing into a crisp vermilion shirt. "I leave all those decisions to Zhang Xin." Their division of labor applies also at work. While he handles finances and government relations, she focuses on aesthetics and design issues. She says her views are now in demand from western executives. "Companies like Bulgari and Valentino want me to talk about how they can do business in China," she says.
Valentino recently held a fashion show at the couple's newest property. Jacqulyne Li, Valentino's business development manager, says the company is trying to reach the "significant people" in China. "We're very selective," she says.
For many middle-class Chinese, Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang also embody the ideal modern family that skillfully balances work and home obligations. In a 2003 interview with the Chinese-language version of Madame Figaro, Ms. Zhang identified "my two sons" as her most prized possessions.
Ms. Zhang recently took time off from work for an hour-long parent-teacher conference at the private, bilingual Montessori school her sons attend. Ms. Zhang had planned to ask the chauffeur of their silver Toyota minivan to drop her off at her office before he drove the boys home to their nanny, a college graduate who teaches them art and piano.
But her 4-year-old kicked up a fuss, so his mother agreed to go home with them first. She let the boys tag along as she checked some stores in the newly opened Soho development where they live.
Back at the office, Ms. Zhang dialed London and glanced at the latest issue of "Trendshome," a magazine aimed at China's growing class of homeowners. The lead story is about the "capital city lifestyle." On the cover: a photograph of Ms. Zhang, wrapped in a faux leopard fur.
---- Qiu Haixu and Cui Rong contributed to this article.
