Sir David Tang has, over the past three decades, garnered both fame, and notorious infamy as entrepreneur, restauranteur, impresario, playboy, socialite and cigar connoisseur.Above all, perhaps, he has come to represent a bridge between East and West, a position of increasing prestige given the indefatigable rise of China.
‘Tango’, as he is affectionately referred to, does indeed present a somewhat confounding wealth of contradictions, reflected in his flamboyantly enigmatic appearance.
Reclining in his characteristic Mao suit in his London home he pontificates in the arched tones of his perfect Oxbridge English, exhaling a fatalistic plume of Fidelista cigar smoke from that ultimate symbol of capitalism, the Cohiba.
How is it that a veritable Chinaman who came to England at the age of 15 speaking only Cantonese can now seem more English than the English? At this Tang laughs: ‘I am the token Chinese for a great number of English people, so I end up spending a lot of time with them! And I adore the English sang froid and litotes.’
Indeed, Tang is certainly Hong Kong’s most unabashed Chinese anglophile. Nevertheless, while boasting of personal friendship with Margaret Thatcher and Chris Patten and being a member of Whites, the Tory London gentleman’s club he maintains that ‘I have always felt 100% Chinese.’
His latest addition to the Tang dynasty, his restaurant, China Tang is a perfect testament to this seamless blend of East and West, which Tang has come to embody. It is an opulent mix of 1930s Shanghai art deco with contemporary art and chinoiserie, which does not shirk from the ubiquitous influences of pop culture and commercialisation.
This fusion is also reflected in his business ventures, most notably the department store, Shanghai Tang. This is the ultimate in Mao-chic. Aside from the self-christened ‘Tang suits’ modelled by the grand proprietor himself, Shanghai Tang offers a Day Glo hued plethora of lime green and bright red velvet Mao jackets, People’s Liberation Army knives, and of course, Mao and Whitney Houston place mats.
Tang glances disapprovingly at our waiter’s mutant form of Mao suit and whispers: ‘I’d dress them much more outrageously, but you know I’m always walking a fine line with the Chinese.’ His wicked sense of humour has landed him in trouble before. He tells me of a recent trip to Nairobi: ‘I was asked if I had had the yellow fever injection. I hadn’t, but I joked that I didn’t need to because I was yellow. The pun was not appreciated, and I was bunged into a cell for a couple of hours. Rather unpleasant, I have to admit.’
Aside from his notable business acumen Tang has also acquired a reputation for being a merciless socialite with a penchant for ‘celebrity’. His disarmingly easygoing manner have won him many influential friends; Kate Moss addresses him affectionately as ‘Uncle David.’
China Tang has become the haunt of every London socialite, drawing a regular clientele as diverse as Fergie, Pete Doherty, Joan Rivers, Jung Chang and Jimmy Goldsmith over whom Tang presides: a whirlwind of networking energy.
Tang certainly does have a Falstaffian decadence, but when so wholly unrepentant it becomes his most endearing characteristic: ‘Actually in my view what we need is more decadence, because decadence allows for diversity.’
His advice on travel is particularly revealing: ‘The best advice I can give on travel is to avoid airports at all costs – unless you go private. The commercial airport is now so utterly ghastly with unimaginably rude people who pass themselves off as ‘security officers.’ As is his confession to his cinema antics: ‘I used to buy the two seats in front of us so no big head got in the way.’ Nevertheless, his admission to his most extravagant action is getting married twice!
The sumptuous interior of China Tang is vintage Tang; indeed, it would not look out of place in Dictator’s Homes, Peter York’s coffee table book. It is an opulent showcase for Tang’s renowned impeccable taste and meticulous to the point of obsessive attention to detail. He proudly shows me how he chose every shiny objet d’art, punctiliously designed the panelling, commissioned the intricate weave of the carpet. He even facetiously boasts that the ordered a mild breeze to bow from a westerly direction, fulfilling the ever-important feng shui credentials.
However, what he is most excited to show me in China Tang is, surprisingly, the lavatories. I start as I enter, met with a booming disembodied voice proclaiming Noyes’ The Highwayman. Indeed, as Andrew Higgins of the Guardian has joked: ‘Tang is much more interesting than he pretends to be.’
He is exceedingly well read, a consummate writer and regular contributor to the Spectator and South China Morning Post. ‘A bit of culture,’ Tang pronounces with a regal wave of his Cohiba. ‘Somebody has to keep a little culture going around here, don’t you know.’
His comments on his recent book, An Apple a Day, are endearingly self-deprecating. On the foreword written by his friend Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and current Chancellor or Oxford, he snorts in surprise: ‘he wrote so generous a foreword that he might have committed perjury.’
He admonishes the Hong Kong attitude to art in which, he sniffs dismissively, ‘the art of making money seems to remain the favourite pastime by far.’ In addition to art, Tang is a classical music aficionado who claims that his greatest regret is ‘not to have practiced more on the piano and play another musical instrument.’
And what of the China of the future? Tang relates his recent trip to the Beijing Olympics with characteristic facetiousness. On the intense heat he claims that ‘for once in my life, I became conscious of what it must be like to be a piece of Peking crispy duck.’
Nevertheless, he describes the opening ceremony as ‘a phantasmagorical display of brilliance. The extravaganza was a garagantuan success – every aspect of anticipation satisfied and every sceptic and part pooper, not to mention terrorist, entirely frustrated.’
So Tang is decidedly optimistic; when asked for his vision of China for the future, he has just one word, ‘imperial.’
