Cultural entrepreneur

A Chinese businessman has become an arts ambassador for South Africa

Dabing Chen is a Chinese entrepreneur, environmentalist and passionate collector of ethnic and tribal art. He considers South Africa, where he has lived for 23 years, his second motherland.

Chen, who founded the international Chenshia group of companies, proudly recalls how he voted in South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. But despite his business successes, history is more likely to concentrate on how he promoted connections between individual South Africans and Chinese, largely through the visual and performing arts, education, tourism and sport. This is what sets him apart from many who accumulate wealth and power in Africa.

"I believe it is more important to connect people than to make more money," he says.

Chen uses resources from his private museum in Wuhan, Hubei province, to assist the Robben Island Museum, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, and the Mandela Museum at Mveso, where the national hero was born.

"We worked closely with Chief Mandela to set up a staff training program in China and we will send our staff as volunteers to his Mandela Museum to help set up administrative systems," Chen says. "We also share information with Ambassador (Dikgang) Moopeloa, chairman of Iziko Museums South Africa Council, to establish exchange programs for private and public museums between China and South Africa."

The Chenshia Museum, which collects and exhibits some of the finest works of art from around the world, is invariably included in the itineraries of visiting foreign dignitaries. Its six departments include modern and ancient works from Tibet, Africa, ethnic minority groups in China, jewelery and contemporary art. There is also a document department, a national asset that houses old letters, scripts and even old membership cards for the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party.

Through China Travel Services South Africa, Chen offers tours to Chinese travelers. He also facilitates the exchange of students studying for degrees in Africa and China studies.

What set him apart initially was the cultural exchange program he conducts through Chenshia Musuem and the African-Chinese People's Friendship Association, which he initiated and co-founded in 2011. Each year a South African artist is sent to China, all expenses paid, for anything from three weeks to three months, and one or more Chinese artists are sent to South Africa.

Once they have produced a body of work they are showcased in the Chenshia Museum for a month and their work is exposed to top critics through symposiums. The works are also exhibited in Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg and in Chen's home and office in Cape Town.

Vusi Khumalo, whose collages and paintings now adorn corporate offices and homes across the world, went to China twice. He does not speak Mandarin and some questioned Chen for putting him on a train to Wudangshan, the Taoist headquarters that dates back 1,400 years, with a Chinese artist who could not speak English.

"Of course we could have flown him there, but a lot of interesting things happened on that journey as two artistic minds learned to connect, communicate and interact without language. It was quite an experience for both," Chen says.

"Normally we show the South Africans the modern technological China, then take them to the ancient places. First stop is the Three Gorges Dam. Then we send them to Jingdezhen, where porcelain, an important part of Chinese heritage, is made. They are also taken to see the third century Terracotta Warriors.

"After that we show them the Great Wall, the Forbidden City in Beijing and the newly emerged art districts, where contemporary art and traditional Chinese paintings are produced in huge studios."

Greg Pullen, a decorative artist in Cape Town, was sponsored three times. He visited the Mogao caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, to study ancient frescoes and experiment by combining those works with African ideas. And when the South African National Art Gallery declined to allow surrealist multimedia artist Beezy Bailey a 30-year retrospective, the Chenshia Museum accepted his proposal. The exhibition garnered exceptional critical acclaim. Today Chen, ever the discerning art collector, owns almost 300 pieces by Bailey.

Ayanda Mabula and Shany van den Berg have also benefitted from Chen's support, and he is looking for another female artist to send to China this year.

In the performing arts, Chen is about to export Cape Town Opera's Mandela Trilogy to tour five major Chinese cities. It will include a Chinese narrator, orchestra and conductor to make the cultural exchange more interesting and more meaningful. Appropriately, it will be listed as a bi-national project.

He is also sending South Africa's national soccer team to play in China.

"This is South Africa Year in China and next year it will be China Year in South Africa," Chen says. "I must do everything I can to promote and showcase the arts and sports tours."

All this is the result of a young boy's dreams of one day "going overseas".

Growing up in a central China rural village about 15 kilometres from Xiangyang city in Hubei province, Chen was greatly encouraged by a teacher who was impressed by his English, and he won a local speaking competition when he was 14. After studying at an international trade school he joined Sinochem, then a state-owned enterprise, where he was involved in export and import. Then, influenced by former leader Deng Xiaoping's market economy reforms, he started his own business.

Chen first went to Bangladesh, then to the Seychelles and Nairobi, where he fell in love with Africa. Having carefully researched South Africa for three months, he knew he would settle there once he arrived in 1991. He decided to set up his African base in Johannesburg.

"South Africa was in the same transitional stage as China had been 10 years earlier. The countries complement each other and there are similarities in our struggles, traditions, way of living and family values," he says.

Chen moved to Cape Town in 1999 because he loves its "artiness, lifestyle and scenery".

He regards Africa as the world's next growth point and says Chinese people are increasingly less inclined to make money in South Africa and then head home. Instead they are settling there. His advice is for them to get out of the Chinatown enclaves and get to know the people, the culture, the history, the food and become part of South African society.

"Immigrate, integrate, participate, contribute, benefit and pay back," he says. "Promote peace and harmony and respect the environment."

Chen also reminds those who are suspicious of China that its aid to Africa can clearly be seen in the form of stadiums, bridges, schools, hospitals, factories, roads and railways, power stations, and technology transfers from farming to communication. "Unlike other countries, we don't siphon much of it back to our own coffers. We are doing fair and good business with our African partners and there are no strings attached."

Incidentally, having recently invested in a South African vineyard, Chen now exports fine wines to China. So his business is even more a case of intercontinental "ganbei" (cheers).

China Daily

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/04/2014 page28)