Buffett junior has gift of music and $1.2 billion

Peter Andrew Buffett is a successful composer and producer. One of his major works is scoring and choreographing the Fire Dance in Kevin Costner's 1990 film Dances with Wolves. But when he visited Beijing this month, the media was mainly interested in his famous father, Warren E. Buffett, recently named the world's richest man.

"What influence did your father have on you?" or "What are you interested in investing in China?" the media asked.

"It is too bad, that my father has not influenced me at all in business aspects," he told China Daily before an entertaining dinner with officials from the ministries of culture and education.

"My father never says you should do this, you should do that," he says.

"Instead, he asks me to follow my beliefs, listen to my heart and do what I enjoy. The real wealth is to fulfill what's inside of you," says Buffett who followed his passion to begin a musical career in the early 1980s.

Buffett and his wife Jennifer made their first trip to China with a cultural delegation from the state of Wisconsin. But he is also managing a $1.2 billion fund and is looking for charity or culture projects to support.

"It's very important to think carefully how to invest and benefit people," he says, adding he is looking forward to coming back, because "Beijing is very exciting and has a lot to see".

During their four-day stay, they visited the newly-opened National Center for the Performing Arts and the 798 Art Zone.

The 49-year-old musician was impressed with the galleries and studios at 798. "I did not expect China had such a place that houses so many modern art works."

"What has surprised me most is how much we share, how much the East and West connects.

"I did not feel any big difference between the works exhibited here and in the US. What we can say is, art is truly a universal language. I can just get the feeling of the artists from their works," he says.

When he was a child, his mother had a room in which she collected a lot of Chinese art works, jade, silk, paintings and furniture. And his visit to the Middle Kingdom reminds him of that room.

One of the other main goals of Buffett's visit to Beijing is to prepare for his musical Spirit - The Seventh Fire to tour China next year.

Premiering at the National Mall in Washington DC during the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in 2005, the show celebrates and honors the rich culture of the first people in the America.

"The reason I think it will appeal to Chinese audiences is the same reason that it appeals to the American people," he says. "Nowadays, we feel disconnected from the culture, the traditions, the root we are from."

"In the name of progress, we forget who we are, where we come from and what is the meaning of life," says Buffett who created the show to explore how Native Americans traditionally searched for connections to both past and future generations.

(China Daily 03/11/2008 page19)