Liu Yiqian, the Chinese billionaire, swiped his American Express Centurion card 24 times.
Surrounded by the Chinese art world’s most elite collectors, Liu charged $36 million on his credit card to purchase “the holy grail” of Chinese art: a tea cup from the Ming dynasty. The cup, which is more than 500 years old, is only 8 centimeters in diameter and adorned with chickens pecking at their feed.
The Meiyintang ‘Chicken Cup’. Credit: Sotheby’s
It was the summer of 2014, and Liu, a former taxi driver on the streets of Shanghai, knew he was making history. In front of invited media at Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong, the self-taught stock trader and founder of investment firm Sunline Group, poured tea into the cup and, with cameras flashing, casually drank from it.
The sheer swagger of the moment underscored a larger trend in the art world: China had arrived on the scene.
In 2006 China was home to only 5 percent of the global art market. By 2011,
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