The King Of Arts

It sounds almost absurd, but a pressing need to decorate a Shanghai nightclub in 2006 was the catalyst for its owner Qiao Zhibing to start buying contemporary art and in less than 10 years, become a leading collector in China. Mr Qiao, a former sound engineer, musician and DJ, turned Shanghai Night into a karaoke club with a difference - and discovered his true calling in the process. He has an all-consuming passion for art, and the means to keep on buying it.

Anyone who visits a high-end KTV joint might reasonably expect it to be a less-than-subtle repository for chandeliers, neo-Greco columns, life-size horse statues and paintings of exotic birds. At Shanghai Night in the city's southwest, what they will find is a treasure trove of international contemporary art, with the club's opulent interiors and high-ceilinged lobbies filled with dozens of high-quality works by world-famous and emerging artists.

The four-storey building's neon-lit façade looks just like many of the other throbbing, large-scale entertainment venues around Shanghai, but in addition to the 90 private rooms and hundreds of uniformed hostesses on standby, Shanghai Night serves as an impromptu gallery for contemporary works by the likes of Chinese artists Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang and Zhang Enli as well as big name Western artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Sterling Ruby, Tracey Emin and Thomas Houseago.