DOMUS-INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW BY
BRENDAN MCGETRICK
EDITED BY

Zhang Xin
Beijing
December 9 2010

For the first installment in the series,
I spoke with Zhang Xin,
the CEO of SOHO China,
the largest real estate developer in Beijing.
For the past fifteen years,
SOHO has worked to introduce
a number of innovations into
China s urban development,
emphasizing flexibility of use,
expressive design,
and public engagement.
We talked about the strengths
and weaknesses of China s
construction industry,
the joy of Twitter,
and how real estate development is
like conducting a symphony

BM: Since the company started in the mid 90s, SOHO has become well known for introducing new ideas and new designers into China. Could you describe the process through which you and your colleagues search for and select architects?

ZX: When you are building architecture on the scale that we do -we ve built or have under development over 4 million square meters -you find yourself working with designers constantly, endlessly. And finding these designers is itself a creative process: we are constantly thinking about where to find talent. I go around to exhibitions and whenever I see a design book or magazine I go through it and say, Who is this? Who is this? Who is this?
After I find these designs or these designers, then my job is to see if we can bring them over to China. Can we invite them to a competition? Would they be able to cope with scale of China, the speed of China? Because most of the interesting things you see outside of China are, by nature, of a small scale. So the question for these designers and architects is: can they move from small scale interesting to large scale interesting? Can their office cope with doing an art center vs. doing a
commercial project that s ten times bigger?
We ve always resisted the temptation to go to an established design firm who has done a lot of commercial projects and has hundreds of designers who can deliver all the details. We ve always resisted that because we think it s the easy choice: these firms are attractive in terms of experience, in terms of their teams capacity to deliver, but for that you sacrifice originality. It is precisely because these smaller architects have never done anything of this scale or of this nature that allows them to think differently. So when we approach them and say, Look, we have an office building on the Bund [in Shanghai], would be interested to do it? they may say, We ve never done an office building.
But that s what I always find interesting. And that s been our working philosophy -always go the ones who are first time designers or in the case of experienced designers, always ask them to do something that they haven t done before.
We ve been working on this for fifteen years and over that time the office has developed a reputation for loving, promoting, and being a patron of architecture. So when we invite architects the kind of know that they have the go ahead to do things that are daring and new.

BM: In the case of the less established firms that do small work that SOHO wants to scale up for the Chinese context, does the company have a process for helping them make that transition?

ZX: We do. We have seen disastrous cases where some of the same architects who we work with have done other projects with parties that have no capacity to bridge that gap and the end results are really terrible. By now we ve developed a system: we have an in-house materials department, we have in-house architects, you name it. So normally it doesn t matter if [the invited architects] don t know that much.
Our only request is that their team has to be stationed in our office.
This way we really work as a team together. Whatever ideas they have, we can quickly respond and say, This doesn t work, this works... And if we see what kind of materials they re leaning to, we ll quickly go around to see if it s possible to find it in China. And once we ve settled on these things, we will do many, many mock-ups -from as small of this [glass] to as big as a building. These mock-ups give us the chance to literally see how it can be made. Because it s one thing to design something to look beautiful on a computer, but it s totally different once you actually make it on site, with China s construction capacity.

BM: Right, I suppose that s the other side of the coin for a developer: to do it well, you have to be aware of the latest developments in design, but just as much you need to be aware of what s happening in construction.

ZX: We were just in Tokyo last weekend, going to see the buildings and construction. There are a lot of things that Japan can do that we cannot do -that kind of precision, attention to detail, the immaculate planning before the construction starts... We cannot do that. But, on the other hand, we can do things in China that they cannot, things that are very enterprising. Any idea that comes out we can quickly find many factories and manufacturers and so on who are willing to try, and at a reasonable cost. That s why China is able produce so many things that don t seem to be seen outside of China.
Of course, in design, you need a few things: you need your thinking to be creative to start with; then you need the design process to be creative; then you need the technical abilities to really build it. These three are all needed in order to make a beautiful idea into a beautiful building.
So for a developer like us, you need to first be creative enough to recognize that a beautiful idea is good, even if it is strange. If you say, Oh no no no no no, the building has to look like a tower, then you ve failed the possibility. But if we say, Ok, that s great. We ve never seen that, but we would love to see that, then the process begins. From there the design begins and a lot of it involves working with engineers and lately a lot of manufacturers -to come up with all the possibilities.
So, to sum it up, as developers we are a little bit like the conductor of a symphony. Maybe the lead architect is the pianist but we need to get all the other players to support him to make it into a beautiful symphony.

BM: I m curious about the issue of construction quality that you mentioned before. Very recently I visited two buildings here in China that were designed by leading Western architects. And in both cases, the imprecision of the construction made it difficult to appreciate the design. I think it is just as you say -the buildings were executed on computers and must have looked very impressive in 3D, but as material objects they perhaps demanded too much of the contractors. I find it a really tricky issue for architects, because, as you say, there are certain things that Chinese construction is not yet capable of, but at the same time, you can always find someone who is willing to try. Especially for more experimental foreign architects China offers incredible opportunities to build things that they never could in their home countries, but at the same time there s the risk that it goes wrong and they end up with an ugly or unsafe building. So I d like to understand better how you as a developer deal with that.

ZX: It s not everyone who can do, to be very frank. If you have a Zaha Hadid design and give it to some contractor, most will not know how to do it. So that s not the way to do it.
If you have an unusual concept, the first question you have to ask is: what material would you use to realize it? If you ask people is Zaha s office in London, they would have no clue, because material choices are dependent on many local issues -the climate, the local capabilities... For example, how many factories are there? How mature is the industry? Every material works in different ways -some look great when they re small but when you go up to a big scale they don t work. This is first test -what material to choose.
This is a very interactive process where we work with, for instance the Zaha team, and we apply a lot of our experience in terms of what is really realistic. We know what materials can be found in China, which can be constructed on a big scale, which can be divided into modules, etc. When you do a construction project that involves thousands of workers, you have to have a system to manage it. If you just give it to any random contractor, it won t work.
I ll give you an example: we were just talking to the Zaha team about how to achieve seamless flooring -no lines and so on. To achieve this kind of seamless, fluid space you don t want to use tiles. So then one of the best material choices is probably Terrazzo. But how do you work with Terrazzo on a site of this scale?
We know that, on site, if you really want to make things beautiful you should try to be as pre-fabricated as possible, so that on site you just assemble it. Back in the factory you can control the quality but on the site it s very hard. There s just too many people coming in and going out and too many procedures.
That is decision we need to make. If someone just came from London and said, We want to use Terrazzo. Can you do it? If we didn t have the ability to judge, we would simply say, OK, fine. We ll do it. And then we would give the order to the contractors. I think today the contractors can do it, but only on a very small scale. If it s one shop, it s fine. If it s one restaurant it s fine. But if it s a building of 35 stories and every floor is using it, it becomes difficult.

BM: And once the most appropriate materials are chosen, what are the next steps?

ZX: Once you ve chosen the materials, you have figure out how to join all these details together. Often when you see problems in a building, this is where they came from -this is cracking, that isn t draining properly, these don t align, and so on. This is because the design is not detailed enough and you re leaving too many of the details to the contractor, who s never seen a design like this so he just interprets it in his own way. That doesn t work either.
If you do the same project in London, it could go differently, because a contractor there might have strong design capacity. You can give them a quite abstract design and they can still realize it, maybe not perfectly but well. In China if you just do that, it won t work. All the bridges need to be there.

BM: Have you considered incorporating material production into the company?

ZX: No. We work with the manufacturers directly, intimately, but we don t need to own them. You don t need to own them but, early on, you should bring them in to discuss how things can be done. That way you re not just going to the factory and seeing their standard products.
We always bring them an idea and say, Can you possibly do it? It s usually very different from their standard products, but if we see that they have the capacity then they will usually work with us -the designer and the manufacturer together.

BM: Do you work to develop original products?

ZX: Everyday. Like aluminum, for instance. The standard module would be like a banner. But we go to them and say, No, we don t want this.
This is the design we want it. So everyday we re working with...

BM: I understand that, but I mean developing an original material -not an original module of an established material, but an entirely new one.

ZX: No, we don t do that. Just like construction itself, materials have their own evolution, their own lives. A new material that comes out usually goes through a stage of being used in a smaller circle then wider and wider and wider and then eventually is used in big buildings.
Often we see that one factory can do quite a bit [of a new material], but it s not enough. We need three to five factories all doing it. If we can do that, it means that the market is mature enough. If you have just one factory that can do it, typically we don t invite them. So we always choose materials that have reasonably mature markets, but do it differently.
Recently we went to see a factory that is developing green products.
They are basically using natural gas, rather than electricity, for heating and cooling. This is natural gas transmitted on site, which provides a higher efficiency than you get from electricity that is transmitted many times over a power grid. Now, I was fascinated by this idea, because it s green, it s efficient... We liked the product and we went to see it and it feels very good. It can do many things. But as we dug in deeper we realized that there is only one manufacturer for that.
So we actually had an internal debate, quite a heated debate, because some of our engineers are ready to use it and believe this is mature technology. But, in the end, we still vetoed it, because we said, It might be a mature technology, but it s not a mature market yet. So for us, as developers working at this kind of scale, it s still very hard to choose a mature technology that has only one producer.

BM: Right, but considering the large scale of your work, it would seem that you yourselves could mature the market for an innovative green technology if you
decided to use it.

ZX: But this is not us; this is still them. We might be able to enlarge their market access, you re right, but ultimately it is too much of a jump, rather than a natural, organic evolution. If they are doing 100 villas using this technology, that s ok. And then from 100 to 1000, from 1000 to 10,000, and eventually other manufacturers will see the brightness of the product. When you have two or three guys, even if each is very small it doesn t matter because you already have a relatively interesting market. But if you re still at the stage of one manufacturer doing it and, let s say, halfway through this manufacturer can t deliver what he promised, what do you do? That s a market risk.
That s an example of not just being small, but not being mature.

BM: And SOHO doesn t do small enough projects to take those sort of risks.

ZX: Don t forget, we don t build for ourselves. If I was building my own home, I would do all kind of experiments. If it fails, it fails; I take responsibility for that. But we re building for the others. The owners are not us. Once we ve built it, we ve sold it, so it s not right for us to try those kinds of experiments that others will carry the risks for.
In terms of design, when people come to see the building they already know the design, so it s not an embedded risk. It s already there. But technology and materials are something they don t know. So we are very careful about these things.

BM: As you say, you build your buildings for others. I ve always been curious about how a developer like yourself goes through the process of defining who those others are.

ZX: The clients? It s whoever. Basically people who want to buy properties.

BM: Of course, but there has to be more thinking than that. I assume you have to decide how you position a development, what role in plays in a neighborhood or in a city. And part of that must be considering what sort of people you want to attract and, once you ve attracted them, facilitating the sort of behavior that
will make the property more valuable for you.

ZX: The reason we began working with all these creative architects is because early on we understood our work. As a developer we are not required to do anything architecturally interesting. Really, if we sell offices or apartments or shops, the buyers who buy individual shops and apartments are mostly inward-looking. They are interested in, Oh, this is a nice apartment. They are less concerned with architecture, in terms of master planning, the image, the interconnectivity with the city, and all that. So we knew that we don t need to worry about architecture in order to be a successful developer. However, we also knew that -and again, this is from the very beginning -given the scale of the building, it affects the face of the city. Even though we build to serve a functional purpose -we build apartments and offices and people need these spaces to live and to work -our developments should have their own cultural identity.
Just like the Great Wall: it was built for defense, but now that there is no need to defend, it s become the symbol of our culture and history. So everything we build today is a representation of the modern world we face -the technology, the aesthetics, the spirit behind it. We were very aware of this from the early days. We were not requested by the mayor or anyone to do it so amazingly. We kind of self-imposed the responsibility, and said, Let s do interesting architecture because it will make Beijing interesting.
When we started out doing SOHO New Town, the whole of Beijing was just one color -gray. Nobody was working with any [international] architects. So we started working with an architect who came up with the idea to put color on the building. We were so excited. We thought, Oh that would be great! And that was as early as 96, fourteen years ago. And two years after the buildings were built I remember the South China Morning Post did an interview with me and put as the title The one who brings color to Beijing.
Now if you come to Beijing, there s color everywhere and it s no longer anything interesting. It s no longer a breakthrough. But at the time it was interesting for the city, and you could say that that may have inspired more people to think differently. And we learned that every little effort that we make to break through barriers actually encourages more people to do it. We started doing small office-home office SOHO -and now you go around China and there are small office-home office [developments] everywhere. So we realized that, being in Beijing, you have influence. Other cities and other provinces come to Beijing to learn and, often, to copy.
After we did the Commune by the Great Wall, when we invited these twelve architects to come and design something from their deep imagination, the idea was quickly replicated in many of provinces and in interesting contexts -in the mountains, by the sea, and so on. We feel very proud that once a process begins it can evolve to a much wider circle. That itself is quite exciting.

BM: Let s talk a little about copying. As you say, Beijing is influential: developers and architects come here and are inspired then they return to their hometowns and try to build something similar. That makes the work you do important, of course, but it s also a bit tricky because something like a Zaha Hadid building can easily be misunderstood as just a crazy form. There is a degree of thought and aesthetic power in good modern architecture that can t just be copied. As a result I think you see around Beijing, and China generally, more and more buildings that are inspired by imaginative designs but that actually miss the point of what makes those designs interesting.
So you get whole districts that seem to be filled with outrageous but basically mediocre architecture. I realize it s not your obligation to be concerned about
that, but I wonder if, as a leading force in introducing unconventional designs to China, you think about this effect.

ZX: If you look around, the boxy-style architectural language is still by far the most dominant. I mean, it s probably 99 percent; fluid forms are very much in the minority. There might be a few that have got a lot of attention, like the national opera house [designed by Paul Andreu]. But still there aren t many with that kind of shape.
You know we re working with Zaha on three projects. This is through their own merit -they won competitions that included other great architects. Now, once these buildings are built and if we achieve what we aspire to achieve -high quality, successful development -then you are right that there will be many people who want to copy it. But I don t think you should assume that the quality will always be bad. You would never believe ten years ago that you could go down to Chongqing
or Hangzhou and see the kind of quality they have today, because back then it was all very bad. Even in Beijing you never would have thought fifteen years ago that this city is capable of building so many architecturally high quality buildings.
I think, once you have the technology, even the bad examples like the ones you mention serve as lessons for people to learn. They are there, so you can say, Well, I want to build something like this, but let s see what the problems are with it. To an experienced eye, the problems are very clear and they will find a way to solve them.

BM: I suppose that s the benefit of urbanizing at the rate and scale that China is -there are simply so many buildings being built that you can have badly thought out or badly built ones to serve as negative role models to others. You don t have to be precious about what is built. In the west or Japan, places where the technology is there but the rate of development is so much slower, each building seems like a big deal and if it s badly designed or constructed it seems that a major opportunity has been missed.

ZX: Wherever I go I visit construction sites. I ve been to see construction all around the world. I have to say that China s quality is now good, especially given the speed and so on. I was just in New York seeing the sites. They have different problems and different causes, but the end result is slow and because the time management is slow everything else becomes problematic. And I looked at the best new buildings built in New York and I think, China can do better than that. In a much shorter time. Because they have different problems there -[construction workers ] unions and and so on -and these effect the process in different ways but the end result suffers.
That is why China has quickly become the factory of the world. Very luxurious things are made in China -iPhones and things like this are all made in China. You would not believe ten years ago that China could ever produce something of this quality -Japan or Korea maybe but not China. I think when you have the speed and determination and the cheap labor force where everyone is trying so hard you get it.
Take Domus China for example. Who would think this was produced in China? Ten years ago you wouldn t think it s possible. When I started out in this business fifteen years ago, all of the design magazines in China used terrible paper, were black and white and so on. Now we live in a world where everything travels very quickly: this is technique or skill set that started in Italy but it can be quickly replicated around the world.

BM: Let s return to something you said earlier about your first development, SOHO New Town. You said that initially SOHO s contribution to Beijing was to
introduce color and considering what the city looks like now, you seem to have been very influential.

ZX: Oh, I m tired of color. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Right. But regardless of its ultimate acceptance, I know that at the time the design was controversial and a number of prominent people spoke out against it. I m curious to know more about that time.

ZX: We had a few experiments happening in SOHO New Town. Architecturally we tried to use color. Product-wise we tried the small office-home office model where the upstairs are homes and downstairs are offices. We also tried to create an art collection by commissioning a group of artists to use the construction site to make their artwork.
One of the leftovers from those works are the pig sculptures that you see [here in the SOHO headquarters]. The artist originally had all these pigs positioned at the entrance of the office building [in SOHO New Town]. It turns out that this was quite ironic because people were busy heading to work in their business suits but yet they had to get though a big group of pigs. But then we had a group of Muslim restaurant owners who came and protested saying that they don t want these pigs outside, because it s a public place. So we took them out.
Besides the three things I mentioned -the color, the small office-home office, and the art -what really was really revolutionary about SOHO New Town was what we call jing zhuang xiu which is apartments finished with all the details -fitted with furniture and everything.
Back then everybody was delivering a cement shell. The idea was that no family wants to live in a uniform apartment -they all want to express their individual creativity. But one of the artists made an interesting video. His name is Wang Jianwei and he filmed a building that was recently completed -of course as just a bare shell, just cement, pipes, and so on -but where every apartment was being renovated. So he went around and knocked on the doors and interviewed the people, asking Why did you design it this way? And the families would say because they love this or love that. Then he asked them who actually designed it. And they said, so-and-so company designed it. Then he d go to another floor and do the same thing.
After ten floors it turned out that they d all used one design company, and that was the company of the contractor. This company has no design capacity, so that was a very powerful way to demonstrate the mismatch between people s perception of their creativity and the reality in which there is nobody who has the capacity to design in the family.
So they rely on the contractor who also has no capacity.
I already knew that this was the case. I d been to many of these homes and thought that they all looked the same and are all badly designed.
So we came up with the idea to deliver all of the apartments with a finished look, so that the buyers could just move in.
I was told that this personal desire to be different, to be unique, wouldn t allow that. And I remember we did four different showrooms to demonstrate styles: one was decorated with Chinese traditional furniture, another with Ikea-style modern furniture, another with a more artistic expression, including art and so on. These were just to show people that, even with these very standard finishes -wood floors and so on -you can still express your personal creativity and style through the things you know how to do, which is choose furniture and position furniture, not through the things you don t know how to do, which is design the lights, the flooring and so on.
So that was the first time, and I remember the outrage. The media said, This is never going to succeed. Who would want to buy these already designed, already finished apartments? But we were very lucky and it was a great success from day one. We launched it and the market liked it, the consumers liked it. A lot of people came in and appreciated the different expressions in the showrooms. That was back in 96 of course.
Now even if you go to mid-market developers who do cookie cutter apartments they all do finished projects. They all do jing zhuang xiu; nobody does bare shells anymore.
But being the first to do something is always very controversial, because you are hitting against people s traditional beliefs in terms of what s doable and what s not. I could give you thousands of stories about how every single time we ve tried something new there is tremendous resistance.

BM: Resistance from who?

ZX: From anybody. It could be from media, from fellow developers, from design institutes, you name it. But of course the test is always: will the market like it?
But I ve also learned that the market doesn t like it until you ve positioned it well. People don t know what to make of a new thing if you just put it there. So you need to tell people in a language that they understand why this fluid architectural shape is interesting -just as we did with the four showroom apartments to demonstrate that even if the apartments are finished, you can still express your individuality. That s the sort of work that we do everyday.

BM: And what means do you use to do this work?
What other resources do you use to explain these new concepts?

ZX: You need to do many things. By now we ve got so many means of communicating. People s perception is formed through many different channels, not just one. I m talking to you and maybe some designers will read this -that s one way of forming an impression of SOHO. But consumers may not read it, and so their impression may be formed by coming to our Christmas party. It s a continuous effort of talking to different groups of people through different media. While print media seems to be shrinking in terms of readership, many other media are becoming interesting.
We are spending so much time on micro-blogs, Twitter. I now have about a million followers on my Twitter, so I run my own media now.
This is actually a rare moment for me to still sit down and do a print media interview, but I do it because you and Domus are a very different print media. The general print media, like newspapers and so on, are quickly disappearing. But this sort of specialized print media, like Domus, still has some position and weight. And that cannot be replaced yet by Twitter, for instance.

BM: What is your experience using Twitter so far?

ZX: I started by seeing my husband doing it. I d seen him doing a blog before but I thought, I don t have the time to write a blog, so I was just a reader of his blog, and I wasn t tempted to do it myself. Then we started a micro-blog, weibo, and I thought, Wow, this is very fast. It seemed to be very sticky.
So I began to do it myself, and my first weibo, my first tweet, was about Zaha Hadid and Seijima. It was about design, because I thought I should start with something I know. But gradually I realized that all sorts of different people are on Twitter. I think by now they have 60 to 80 million people twittering on sina.com, and it s only a small circle who are interested in design. So I began to tweet on more than just design.
I also realized that this is a more direct way of communicating, compared to an interview that s been edited. Even the process is different: in this interview you and I are talking, but when I write a tweet I think. In a way it s a different me -it s a thinking me rather than a talking me. And I like that. So it s been about a year now and it s become a custom for me to write a tweet everyday. Sometimes it s about design, but not so much. Maybe just ten percent.
The readers of your Twitter [feed] form a general impression of you through the many things you do. Before I started tweeting, I was just known as a developer. When you come in to interview me, you have a very specific idea, because you re interested in architecture and design.
But that s just one part of me. The readers who read this will form an impression and say, Oh, this is who she is. But actually that s just a part. That s why I think Twitter is very well-rounded. Very complete. You can give your opinion on current affairs, your introduction to design, your complaints about family, your aspirations to do charity work...
Everything gets put together, and many people find it interesting. So I now don t spend time doing media work, but mostly just on Twitter.

BM: I read that you initially received a number of very negative responses when you started your micro-blog?

ZX: Did I? I don t know.

BM: There was piece in Forbes magazine quoting you as saying that you were shocked that there is such a high level of animosity towards developers.

ZX: Oh that s right. When you tweet you are facing a large audience. Now I have an audience of a million people, and I don t really know who they are. It itself reflects the society and our society now is against establishment and against authority. I think that s a general sentiment in the society.
I used to think that, as a developer, if I am producing good products, providing good jobs, paying taxes, and building something beautiful for the city, then I m doing pretty good. And I had no idea that, actually, no I might be doing all of those things that you think are right, but if the whole society is not quite right, than I, being positioned as a successful developer, will still face these problems. Because there are a lot of people who do not have as many opportunities and so they vent out their discontent toward the people who have made more.
I never used to know that part of it, because how do you know that? People are not going come to you and say that. But on Twitter people write about this everyday. So I would say that ten to twenty percent of the comments are negative, but eighty to ninety percent are positive.
That itself might be a biased selection because whoever chooses to follow me is already in favor of me, right? If you just take the whole society the negative number might be even higher. That s what I learned from Twitter.

BM: Have you spoken to any other developers about how to adjust that perception?

ZX: No. Just be yourself. Continue to write and people will learn about you. I think I have benefited a lot over this past year just by tweeting honestly and now people have a much fuller idea of who I am, what I do, and I think that the bias against successful developers is also going away.

BM: So, in that sense, do you think it s important for successful people in China to more actively engage the society in order to make themselves less vulnerable to the anti-establishment sentiment that you mentioned before?

ZX: I think the technology has empowered individuals to do this and we should take advantage of it. We should all do this, not just developers.
Anybody. So much of the society is biased and it itself is created by different biases. Now technology is giving us a chance to get rid of the bias.

BM: Do you think it helps you get rid of your biases?

ZX: Tremendously. I can see that... People won t follow you if they don t like you. So the fact that the followers are coming means that they like you.

BM: Do you follow any people who are critical of SOHO or China s urban development in general?

ZX: I follow about sixty people. People and news -like ft.com, for instance, and Sina, [CNN] headline news, and so on. So maybe it s half individuals and half news.
It s interesting: there are people like me who benefit from writing tweets and getting rid of biases, but there are also people who created false impressions of themselves and who become victims because using Twitter revealed the truth about them.

BM: I suppose that s the risk of providing a fuller image by commenting on issues like family or politics.

ZX: If your spirit is negative, it comes out, because you tweet all the time, on all the topics. It s impossible to hide. And I think the reason that people are so addicted to Twitter is because it s so true. You can fake it once or twice, but because you tweet so many things everyday people will eventually form a general opinion of you, which is far better than reading a profile.

BM: Perhaps, but Twitter is still a form of performance, isn t it?

ZX: No. How can you perform so well?

BM: Well, some people play a role for decades. But actually what I mean is that Twitter is a public act.

ZX: It s your opinion on things, right? So whether or not it s a public act, it s just your opinion. That itself is a biased comment, I have to tell you.

BM: What is?

ZX: That you think Twitter is a public act. Why is it an act? It s just a comment; it s your opinion on things.

BM: The opinion may not be an act, but putting it on the Internet is an act.

ZX: But then this is an act that everybody loves to do. Why would people write blogs about themselves and put it there? It s because our desire to communicate with others is tremendous. That s what makes us human beings.

BM: Last, I d like to ask you about the future. Does SOHO have a long term strategy for itself? If you think of the company, say, in fifteen or twenty years,
what do you imagine it will be doing?

ZX: At the moment I think we ll continue working on the projects we have now. You never know when you ll have the next opportunity to build. At the moment, there still seem to be plenty of opportunities to build and I think that every one of these is a privilege. That privilege can disappear very quickly, as cities like Beijing and Shanghai are being built quite fast. So, it s hard to say what we ll be doing in twenty years. But I can see that in the next five years the focus of SOHO will
remain on building intensely in Beijing and Shanghai and on bringing a new architectural language into it.

Zhang xin was one of the first private entrepreneurs to engage
in commercial real estate development in china. She has led the
company she co-founded in 1995 with her husband pan shiyi, soho
china, in becoming the largest developer in beijing. As ceo of soho
china, she also led the company to an ipo on the hong kong stock
exchange in october 2007, which has the distinction of being asia s
largest commercial real estate ipo as of today.