'One ambitious couple are carving out an extraordinary niche in China'
China is now the fastest urbanising country in the world. Whole cities are being built in less time than Europe could even plan them and on a scale that makes Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games venues look incidental. In the midst of this turmoil, one ambitious couple are carving out an extraordinary niche. Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi(inset above), wife and husband and partners in property since 1995, are purveyors of upmarket homes to the many people who are getting rich in new China's dash for growth.
Zhang studied development economics in the UK and worked for finance house Goldman Sachs in New York, but she is the one with the aesthetic sense. Her husband has the real-estate experience of a seasoned developer in China. Together, they make a formidable team.
Zhang and Pan's first big development was in Beijing-the Soho (small office, home office) New Town project. It offered people handy places to work right by their homes. In a British city a development of this kind would probably involve converting an old warehouse or factory. In Beijing, it meant a completely new 10-building enclave, including six 28-storey towers, with room for 8,000 people to live and office space for 7,000.
The Great Wall Commune (above) attracted the world's attention to what Zhang and Pan were up to. An hour north of Beijing, on a wooded slope dominated by the zig-zag course of the Great Wall, it is a small, high-design luxury resort-and the urban experiments the couple have previously pursued. Instead, it's a collection of virtuoso homes by top Asian architects, plus a boutique hotel that has been garlanded with awards.
Now China's property power couple are back in Beijing, this time working with maverick Australian architect Peter Davidson on a vast new development, Soho Shang Du, scheduled for completion in 2006.
Covering more than two hectares with shopping malls and offices in the city's central business district, it continues the relentless rise of Zhang and Pan to heights their equivalents in the West can only dream of attaining.
