Snapshots from Asia

Thibault Pontallier and his business partner Arthur de Villepin (right) were in Beijing recently to launch the new set of Wine and Art from their Pont des Arts project. This year’s collaboration was with the renowned Chinese artist Yue Minjun.

Grace Vineyard’s CEO, Judy Chan, hosted a small exhibition at the company offices in Quarry Bay recently showcasing the work of several young, up-and-coming artists and graphic designers. db‘s man in Hong Kong, Rupert Millar, went along to have a look.

An example of one of the works by a group called Brainrental, more of who’s work can be seen here. Also exhibiting were: Angryangry, Jane Lee, Meshiria Chan, UUendy (Wendy) Lau and Vivian Ho.

db was also invited along to Tin Hung Leen at the Ritz Carlton for a specially created menu based on Chinese fine dining from the days of the Song and Ming emperors. The dishes also incorporated other elements of Chinese history, philosophy and mathematics. Each of the dishes here for example is numbered one to nine and each row, up, down and diagonally, adds up to 15. Number five is in the middle if you’d like a small challenge.

Also on the menu was lobster bisque…

and each dish was paired with tea, including this delicious cup of chrysanthemum tea from the Tian Shan mountains in the west of China.

…although being on a table with wine lovers it wasn’t as if db was going to get too thirsty – certainly not when Krug 1990, Rayas 2002, Solaia 1994, Vega Sicilia “Unico” 1995 and 1999 Richebourg from Denis Mugneret were on offer anyway.

Rupert has also been spotting some flash cars around his Sai Ying Pun/Sheung Wan neighbourhood and recently papped this Mustang just off the Hollywood Road – see the pink rolls that’s hangs around the area here and look out for a full gallery of cool rides coming soon.

A solid mass of humanity marching from Victoria Park down to Sheung Wan on Tuesday 1 July. The date of the creation of the SAR of Hong Kong in 1997 is a holiday in the territory and has been a traditional day of protest since 2003. This year the annual march attracted over 500,000 people which wasn’t too far off the 800,000 who marched just over 10 years ago. Lasting all day, the protest was called for following fresh wranglings between Hong Kong and Beijing over the “White Paper” that was drawn up following the ’97 handover and which laid out Hong Kong’s status. The complaint from Hong Kong is that Beijing is attempting to do away with free elections in the SAR by choosing which candidates can stand for office.