When Forest City Ratner broke ground on the first of its apartment buildings at Atlantic Yards, a 32-story tower at Atlantic Avenue and Dean Street, it was poised to be "the world’s tallest prefabricated, or modular, building," according to The New York Times.

But it one crazy Chinese developer makes good on his word, next month that record will be shattered: Broad Sustainable Building says it will begin work on its 220-story, 838-meter (about 2,750 feet) prefabricated tower, which they're calling Sky City, next month, according to Treehugger.

Economically, the building makes absolutely no sense. It will feature over 11 million square feet (or is it 13 million? The facts for this project always seem to be in flux) of floorspace in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. With more than 7 million inhabitants, Changsha is by no means a small city, but density like this could only possibly pencil out in the densest and most valuable of city cores. And yet, the project appears to be sited outside of the city center, surrounded by acres of open green space.

When the building got a flurry of press last year, we assumed it was just a publicity stunt. BSB did manage to build a 30-story tower in 15 days, so they're not total charlatans, but they did encounter a fair amount of skepticism.

"I don't think it's possible to build [a 838-meter tower] as quickly as they claim," structural engineer Bart Leclercq, who's worked on a number of skyscrapers for WSP Middle East, told Middle East Architect. "If they manage to build this structure in three months then I will give up structural engineering. I will hang my hat and retire. I will be eating humble pie as well."

Luckily, Mr. Leclercq won't have to do that: the developers have quietly rolled the time frame back to seven months of construction (or is it six?). Check out the promotional video above.

(And some friendly to BSB: hire some native speakers to do your English-language marketing. The Observer would be happy to offer our services in exchange for a high-floor penthouse. But don't try to stick us with any of those two-digit floors—we know you can do better.)

A Chinese classroom. (Photo: MIKE CLARKE /AFP/Getty)

One night after my Cantonese class, a fellow student approached me to let off some steam. Like me, Jean-Baptiste was struggling mightily with the tonal language. “These evenings,” he said in a thick French accent, “would be much more enjoyable if I stayed at home and was a potato couch.”

I couldn’t have with him more agreed. Our instructor, a 60-something former “office creature,” is decidedly old-school. She follows the textbook to a T, and asks us to repeat after her. It’s immensely boring.

Sometimes I imagine that my classroom experience has been a little like my wife Wendy’s when she was in school here. She’s often told me about her teachers, who spoon-fed her information and seldom asked for her opinion.

From a young age, we in the West are encouraged to speak up in class, to voice our opinions and ask questions, but that’s not the case here. Despite some recent curriculum changes here toward more inquiry-based learning, a teacher friend of mine told me, schools are slow to change. For one thing, teachers were taught to feed information to kids; for another, students fear that they’ll ask stupid questions and embarrass themselves. Not to mention that in a place that respects Confucian values, it’s considered inappropriate to challenge your elders.

Thankfully, the parallels between my classroom experience and Wendy’s end at dry lecturing. During the week, when I fumble around for the right Chinese word, I have nothing to lose but my pride and everything to gain by amusing people with my botched Chinglish. “It’s like a game for me,” my friend Indy once told me. “Trying to figure out what it is that you’re saying.”

For Hong Kong kids, however, education isn’t a game at all. They’re saddled with a heavy workload from a very young age and face enormous family pressure to get good grades. Consider that Wendy often went to school on Saturdays, knew her class rank as early as kindergarten and had to have her parents sign any test she failed. While she was suffering through all this, I was attending a school halfway around the world that gave extra credit to students who attended basketball games.

It’s hard to believe, but since Wendy graduated in the ’80s, the pressure on Hong Kong kids has only increased. Seemingly every second of a child’s day here revolves around school, tutoring or lessons of some sort, all of which are exam-based.

This emphasis on testing has been around for a long time in Chinese society—roughly 2,000 years, in fact, since the origins of China’s Imperial Exam System, which the writer Justin Crozier called “a glorious attempt at intellectual meritocracy.” This civil service test was a grueling exercise in rote memorization of Confucian classics. As Crozier put it, “Texts of a total of over 400,000 characters had to be thoroughly memorised if a candidate was to have any hope of progressing to a civil service position.” He added that “the pass rate was only 1 or 2%.”

Even though China abolished this system in 1905 (Hong Kongers started receiving instruction from Western missionaries after British rule was established in 1841), there’s still a belief that the path to success starts with good grades.

Hong Kong Tiger Parents do anything and everything to ensure that their young children will “win at the starting line.” Many speak only English to their young kids, hoping to pass on vital language skills at an early age. Others enroll them at learning centers like “Little Academy,” which offers Little Bachelor’s, Little Master’s and Little Ph.D. “degrees” for kids aged 4 months to 6 years. While most of these tutoring centers offer instruction in English, Mandarin, math and the arts, some provide wealth management instruction for 5-year-olds and prep classes for kids hoping to nail their kindergarten interview.

All of this emphasis on tutoring squeezes parents (one estimate places the average monthly outlay at $1,000 per kid) while making some tutors rich. Buses are plastered with ads for young, attractive “star tutors,” and a silly online video produced by the team at “Super English Force” promises that studying with their native English speaker, Charles, will give you “an unfair advantage to [sic] your upcoming examinations.” A bunch of star tutors have become rich cramming kids into their numerous lecture halls. The genre’s pioneer, Richard Eng, earns more than $1 million a year and drives a canary-yellow Lamborghini (vanity plate: “RICHARD”).

In New York, there’s currently a standardized testing backlash among parents who fear that the city’s emphasis on testing and prep comes at the expense of more meaningful schooling. Last summer, New York City parents and children picketed outside exam publisher Pearson’s Avenue of the Americas headquarters with placards that read “Testing is stressful” and “I’m more than a test score.” One group, called Time Out From Testing, fears that “Bubble tests lead to bubble minds.”

And while it’s true that Hong Kong kids don’t have nearly the individualism of your average New York student, the schools here, for all their spoon-feeding and emphasis on tests, have produced some outspoken youth whose daring and intelligence would impress even a sign-waving New Yorker. Last summer, after the government tried to implement a pro-Beijing National Education curriculum in local schools, a group of teenagers formed a social action group called Scholarism. The students—cheeky, subversive and uncommonly bright—staged sit-ins, rallies and even a hunger strike. A little over a month later, largely as a result of their actions, National Education was scrapped.

Bubble minds? Not at all.

editorial@observer.com

A Hong Kong taxi. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty)

A couple weeks after I moved to Hong Kong, I had coffee with a British woman named Margaret.

Margaret had lived in Hong Kong for many years and was the director of business for a communications consultancy. When I lived in New York, I had occasionally worked as a corporate trainer, and wanted to resume that work now that I lived in a financial capital again.

A friend recommended me to Margaret, and I liked her immediately, even though she told me I talked too much. “But that’s okay,” she said. “We can work on that.”

She took a nibble of her biscotti and flipped her Hermès scarf over her shoulder. “You’re just the kind of person we’re looking for. So let’s talk compensation. We pay $5,000 a day.” I clamped my lips so as not to spew English Breakfast all over her.

Even as a moderately successful actor—I portrayed “Mr. Pussy” on Sex and the City—I’d rarely made more than $5,000 a month, let alone in a day. I resisted the urge to fist-bump Margaret.

She told me that her company would train me for three months, and that I’d coach business leaders in presentation and negotiation skills about four times a month, for five grand apiece. “But this is a full-time job,” she said, scrutinizing me. “We’ll need you in the office the rest of the time, ringing up potential clients. We want someone who is fully committed.”

I calculated my annual salary: over $240,000. “Do you want me to sign in blue or black ink?” I asked.

She looked me square in the eye and sighed. “You’re an independent spirit. I fear a corporate role may be too restrictive and dull for you.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d worked the last six and a half years as a magazine editor and hated the 9-to-5 life. I couldn’t understand the appeal of rush-hour commutes, vapid office chatter and having to wear pants to work. When I quit in August, I vowed never to do it again. I wanted to be my own boss again, like when I was an actor in New York. But still ... $240K?

“I can change,” I said extending my fist for a bump.

“From what I see on your C.V.—actor, writer, radio producer, teacher—flexibility is what you want. Be honest with yourself and get back to me in a few days, alright love?”

And with that she kissed me on both cheeks and exited down the shopping mall’s polished floors. Margaret really had a flair for the dramatic. I collapsed into my chair and thought: Okay, doofus—if you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. 

The first time I visited Hong Kong was in 2001. Back then, I was a proud New Yorker living in a Park Slope railroad apartment that tilted at a 15-degree angle. Despite the funhouse accommodations, I loved the city: popping into Stromboli for a slice, making wacky experimental theater with friends and trying to predict what The New York Post’s headlines would be. Wacky Jacko Backo? New York was the grad school I never attended, a place where I was constantly stimulated and pushed to be more inventive, clever and competitive. It wasn’t the greatest city on earth—it was the only one.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, my parents took my brother and me to the city a couple times a year. We’d make the usual tourist rounds, but what really captivated me were the skyscrapers, with their lighted windows at night. Riding up Madison Avenue, I’d look out the window of our Ford Escort and wonder what people were doing in those offices and apartments. At that hour in my hometown, people were calling it a night. In New York, they were just getting started. Ten days after I graduated from college, my bus pulled into Port Authority. It was January 1995. I was 23 years old and my dreams were big.

Being a struggling actor wasn’t easy. At first, I shared a cramped Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. My room looked out onto a shaftway flecked with pigeon poop, and I slept on a grubby single mattress that had once belonged to my great-uncle when he lived in New York in the 1920s. Later I moved to a 105-square-foot shoebox on 71st between Central Park West and Columbus. The bathroom was so tiny that to reach the shower I had to step over the toilet. But I was willing to make these sacrifices. After all, I lived in New York, and I was certain that if I stuck it out, I could make it.

By the time I moved to Park Slope, I was fast approaching 30 and wondering if I’d ever experience anything remotely close to a civilized life. While my living situation was bleak, I had all my teeth and most of my hair and was scratching out a living acting in film, TV, theater, commercials and corporate diversity training programs. Those last were the gigs that first took me to Hong Kong.

Here’s how they work: rather than asking employees to sit through a training video, companies invite actors into their offices to perform scripts designed to help participants better communicate with people from different cultures. After the scene is over, the actors stay in character and interact with the audience. In 2001, one of our clients liked what we did so much that it asked us to train its employees across the globe.

In Hong Kong, I played “Patrick,” a young ex-pat investment banker who botched Cantonese names, pried too deeply into his Chinese co-workers’ private lives and bossed around his dutiful but suffering assistant “Suzie.” It was a fun role to play—jerks always are—and during my three weeks there, I got to see the world as a privileged Westerner. I was flown over in business class, put up at the Shangri-La Hotel and treated like a rock star in a city known for its superior customer service.

Like Patrick, I knew little about Hong Kong. Unlike him, I loved it. There, it felt like the natural order of things had been dialed up to a furious speed. Restaurants served food fast and hard, slamming down bowls on tables and whisking them away as soon as you’d eaten your last grain of rice. Hong Kongers hustled and talked away on their mobile phones at all hours. This was a place where business got done. 

When I returned to New York, the city felt positively Schenectady. Times Square’s neon lights and billboards looked small and dim, and walking along Madison Avenue at lunch hour felt like a leisurely stroll down Main Street. Hong Kong was taller, brighter, busier and more exciting. It was, as my dad would later put it, “New York on steroids.” When I was there I felt like anything was possible.

I loved this so-called “Asian Manhattan,” but more than anything, I loved Suzie—or rather Wendy, the actor who played her. Two and a half years later, we got married. I wanted to move to Hong Kong immediately. But I knew that wasn’t practical. I was an actor, and the clock was ticking on my career. If I was ever going to have a successful film career and live in an apartment larger than a storage unit, I felt like I had to go to L.A. I moved there in 2003. Wendy joined me a year later. My New York dream was over.

I quickly soured on the L.A. acting scene. Driving an hour to audition alongside 50 guys who looked exactly like me felt like an utter waste of time. I transitioned to writing and radio producing, in large part because I wanted to be flexible, to work anywhere. Now and then I thought about moving back to New York, but it was a great place to be when you’re poor and in your 20s—or when you’re rich.

While living in L.A., I constantly dreamt of Hong Kong, and after the U.S. economy tanked, I thought about it even more. I knew that if I quit my magazine, I’d have little chance of landing another job. And yet I couldn’t stand the lifestyle. I wanted to live in a land of opportunity again. This past summer, we packed up our things and headed to Hong Kong.

Wendy arrived two months before me and found a 417-square-foot apartment in the North Point neighborhood, an area once ranked the most densely populated place on earth. We live on the 18th floor in a newly refurbished two-bedroom. There’s no pigeon-poop shaftway, and our mattress is firm and new. Still, the building has its quirks. Recently, the Filipino maid upstairs hung the children’s Snow White sheets so low that they blocked half of my office window. It’s a local neighborhood. Very few Westerners live here. In our building, I’m one of two white guys. And that’s just how I like it.

I feel like I’m in the center of the action, a pasty-white gweilo observing Hong Kong’s uncomfortable transformation from former British colony to bustling Chinese city. Before Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city-state was a bastion of free enterprise, long rated the most economically free place on earth. A place with no sales tax, a capped salary tax of 17 percent and few unions of any significance.

Today Hong Kong is booming, with an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, helped tremendously by China’s rise and the 77,000 mainland tourists who pour into the city, a place one writer deemed the “Great Mall of China,” every day. Hong Kongers may deride these “Strong Country People” for wheeling large suitcases through department stores (and packing them with everything from Louis Vuitton handbags to baby formula), but they contribute to a strong economy that continues to draw Westerners to this South China Sea archipelago.

Some 55,000 Westerners call it home, many of us sponsored on work visas arranged by banks and architecture firms. We come from New York, London, Paris and Sydney to escape gloomy economies and to join the workaholic workforce. It is, to most I’ve talked to, a relief from the bleak climate back home.

Here the air, while not great, is better than on the mainland. The taxes are low, and people enjoy personal freedoms unheard of in China. Of course it’s not as culturally rich as New York. You won’t find witty tabloid headlines or a capella singers on the subway, and nobody comes here for Broadway shows. But hurrying down Hong Kong’s sidewalks, you’re surrounded by something else equally electrifying: opportunity.

I turned down the gig Margaret offered me, along with the $240,000. I continue to write and produce radio spots for the U.S. market, but what I never expected was that I’d return to the acting I’d given up years ago. It only took me a couple weeks to get back into it here. Now I’ve not only returned to corporate diversity training, but I’m recording voice-overs and dubbing movies and TV shows. And while these gigs may not be as glamorous as a memorable appearance on HBO, it’s steady work. In the past five months, I’ve worked more days in a recording studio than I ever did in New York.

Hong Kong is, despite its urban density and exorbitant rent, far more liveable. Old buildings are (sadly) torn down and replaced with efficient, modern ones. Heading to the airport? A bus will cost you $5. Public transportation is blissfully smooth, efficient and cheap—a ride costs anywhere between 30 cents and $1.25. Lunch at a Hong Kong-style restaurant will set you back as little as $2.50. I could barely save a dime in New York. Here I’ve already saved three.

The comparisons between Manhattan and Hong Kong are endless. They’re skyscraper cities on islands with similar citywide populations (8.2 million in NYC and 7 million in Hong Kong). Hong Kong is often called the “Manhattan of Asia.” The other day, a bus whizzed by me with a real estate ad pasted on its side. It was, like all other new developments here, a gleaming collection of high-rises boasting modern amenities and glass façades. “Iconic Residence, Manhattan Lifestyle,” it read. As exhaust swirled around me, I thought of my Hell’s Kitchen and Upper West Side apartments. They looked nothing like the Manhattan Lifestyle being touted here. I still love New York, but for now I like living in the Manhattan of Asia a bit more. It’s the place I wanted to move to nearly 20 years ago, when I first got off the bus in Port Authority.

editorial@observer.com

“I regret that Chris Buckley has been forced to relocate outside of China despite our repeated requests to renew his journalist visa,” Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, said in the statement. “I hope the Chinese authorities will issue him a new visa as soon as possible and allow Chris and his family to return to Beijing. I also hope that Phil Pan, whose application for journalist credentials has been pending for months, will also be issued a visa to serve as our bureau chief in Beijing.”

The Times's new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, is also waiting for a visa. Mr. Pan applied in March.

Meanwhile, Chinese access to both the English-language Times website and the new Chinese-language site remains blocked after the paper published an investigation into Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's family's fortune.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the visa issues or whether the delay is linked to the paper's China coverage. The six other Times correspondents in China have had their visas renewed--including David Barboza, Shanghai bureau chief and author of the articles about the prime minster's family.

The English- and Chinese-language websites went down just a couple hours after the story went up on Friday morning there. When the article was mentioned on the BBC, the station suddenly went black, tweeted Louisa Lim, NPR's Beijing correspondent. The topic has been banned from Weibo, a Chinese social network similar to Twitter. 

"We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we have asked the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism," Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said in a statement. "China is an increasingly open society, with increasingly sophisticated media, and the response to our site suggests that the Times can play an important role in the government's efforts to raise the quality of journalism available to the Chinese people."

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin ordered an end to blocking of The New York Times site in August 2001. Since then, it's been mostly accessible.

But after Bloomberg  published an article about Vice President Xi Jinping last June, the website had frequent problems.

Full Times statement below:

We are disappointed to receive reports that readers of The New York Times in mainland China are having difficulty accessing our English and Chinese websites. We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we have asked the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism. As we have said from the beginning, our goal in launching this Web site was to bring New York Times journalism to China and since June, we have seen great interest in that journalism from China’s increasingly global citizens.  China is an increasingly open society, with increasingly sophisticated media, and the response to our site suggests that The Times can play an important role in the government's efforts to raise the quality of journalism available to the Chinese people.

We will continue to report and translate stories applying the same journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times.

Guangcheng and Bale. (Michael Stewart/Getty Images)

Standing in a Manhattan event space with cocktails and views of the Hudson, Chen Guangcheng was far removed from the countryside house that confined him for over a year and a half, before he captivated the world in April and May by escaping from house arrest in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, being taken in by the American Embassy in Beijing. Blind since childhood, Mr. Guangcheng climbed and felt his way past the guards posted around his home by the local authorities, who had imprisoned him for 51 months on charges largely considered to have been fabricated, before releasing him to his home. A self-taught, or “barefoot,” lawyer, he had irked the local authorities by legally challenging their unlawful land seizures, treatment of the disabled, pollution and incidents of forced abortions and sterilization to enforce the one-child policy.

The Chinese activist was surrounded by fellow lawyers on Wednesday night, though they were less likely to be from his village than from The Village, where, after some diplomatic tension between the U.S. and China, he now attends NYU Law School as a visiting scholar. Human Rights First, an organization that advocates the government for greater American leadership in fighting for global human rights, honored Mr. Chen at its annual awards dinner, held at Chelsea Piers’ Pier 60. 

After an introduction and interview between Meredith Vieira and HRF President Elisa Massimino, actor Christian Bale presented the award: “He climbed walls. He navigated fields, ditches, woods—journeyed hundreds of miles to make it to the US embassy—all while keeping his shades on. Steve McQueen in The Great Escape has nothing on this man.” Mr. Bale had attempted to visit Mr. Chen with a CNN crew last year but was roughed up and chased away by guards. Meeting him for the first time right before the event, Mr. Bale also spoke the written remarks of Mr. Chen, who wept on the Brit’s shoulder while receiving the award.

The enthusiastic American corporate/pro bono lawyers who made up a large part of the crowd celebrated their rural Chinese counterpart’s award and had already raised $2 million dollars for HRF leading up to the event. NYU Professor Jerry Cohen, an expert on Chinese law who helped bring Mr. Guangcheng to New York was also honored, and executive producer Howard Gordon accepted Human Rights First’s Sidney Lumet award for Integrity in Entertainment for his show, Homeland, which deals with national security and human rights.

However, Mr. Chen’s thoughts in his speech turned away from New York and Hollywood towards the serious situations of individuals in his own homeland. He said, “While we enjoy ourselves tonight many of our friends are missing" and spoke of his nephew, who now faces prosecution for stabbing three men who invaded his home in the aftermath of his uncle’s dramatic escape.

The Observer spoke with Mr. Chen through an interpreter before the event. His voice bubbling with the emotion that would overwhelm him on stage, he spoke of working for his homeland. “Being here is absolutely of the most practical use for China. What I’m studying now is useful for the situation in China.”

Though Mr. Chen is studying abroad as a Chinese citizen with the approval of the government, he may not be able to return to his homeland to continue his activism should the state see him as a threat. “I absolutely would love to return—and I feel like at some point I will go back. But I feel like at that point China will be a different place than it is now,” he said. He had previously been reported as hoping to return to China within several years, but the actions against his family by local authorities may have diminished that possibility.

As China seems more distant, Mr. Chen is taking English classes and adjusting to life in America, including large fundraising dinners with celebrities.

Stick to your back yard. (Durst Organization)

Leonine developer Douglas Durst might not be quite the public presence than his father Seymour once was—a regular in the letters to the editor column and on local talk shows, among other outlets for his restless mind—yet he still very much knows his way around a podium. Last week, he found himself in China, talking about New York, and he even seems to admit that the one investment his firm recently made just across the Formosa Strait might not have been its best.

"My experience is almost completely New York centric," Mr. Durst said at the China Alliance's US-China Investment Summit: Focus On New York Real Estate in Shenzen. "Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local."

He also, naturally, talked about his kids—it’s now a fourth generation business!—and how building sustainably not only provides better buildings, and thus better income, for them, but also a better world. There was talk of 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park, but nothing about the widely anticipated, mildly concerning West 57th Street pyramid. The full speech is below.

My grandfather and father were in real estate and my father had a strict policy of not buying anything that wasn’t within walking distance of his house.  I had the good fortune that he lived in mid-town Manhattan.

My experience is almost completely New York centric. Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local.

While some prefer to be diverse geographically, our diversity is over time. Our lease expirations are spread over time so that usually only 5 to 10 percent of our office portfolio expires each year, and the good years make up for the bad years.

This is not to say that one cannot invest over a diverse geography, but that to do so successfully you must have local talent involved.

I am very lucky to work in one of the most dynamic and challenging real estate cities.  My dad said to build in New York you need an architect, an engineer and two psychiatrists.

Today you need 2 architects, 2 engineers and 6 psychiatrists. The risk, competition and regulation is intense, but so is the reward.

New York has a unique formula for success.  For the past 400 years, from the earliest Dutch settlers to the 21st Century, the best and the brightest have come from across the globe to New York to make their fame and seek their fortune.

The city’s tolerance, openness, acceptance of newcomers and insatiable appetite for innovation and creativity has insulated New York from the stagnation that has plagued many of the older US cities.

In the past, workers moved to where the jobs were, but New York’s ability to attract young, educated talent has meant companies relocate here because New York is where the qualified employees are.

New York has always been a center for financial services, but the city also has thriving media, education legal, art and cultural sectors as well as a newly energized tech and new media sector.

The area south of the central Midtown business district was once a clothing manufacturing center, as these businesses left the area entered a dormant phase.

A few years ago, as tech start-up firms needed inexpensive office space they began populating South Mid-town.  Now vacancy is near zero, and rents are high.

This is the quintessential New York real estate success story.  Neighborhoods are transformed by the creative, talented and driven people that populate them creating opportunity for development.

New York’s critical mass of talent also provides opportunities for traditional development—more along the lines of “build first and the people will come.”

This is what my father and uncles did in the 1950s along Third Avenue and in the 1970s and 80s along Sixth Avenue.  Both thoroughfares were beyond the central business district when we began developing, but are now considered the heart of midtown.

Four Times Square and One Bryant Park are the Durst Organization’s two most recently completed projects comprising more than 3.7 million square feet of office space on the block bounded by 6th Avenue, Broadway, 42nd Street next to Time Square.

The site sits atop nearly a dozen subway lines and is within walking district of three of the largest intermodal transportation hubs in North America.

Besides the environmental benefits of locating close to public transportation these building will remain desirable for decades because of the simple fact that they are easy to get to.

***

We are a family-run company in a business that is well suited for family-run operations.  Our freedom from the disclosure dictates and need to demonstrate quarterly profits of a public company allows us to develop for the long-term.

We rarely if ever sell our assets and plan for our children and grandchildren, not for the next earnings report.

Our long-term investment strategy compliments our commitment to sustainability.

We build more efficient buildings not only because they use less energy, are less expensive to operate, and provide a more productive work environment, but because we are focused on providing not just an economic future for our children, but a healthy one as well.

Our latest investment epitomizes this policy.  Two years ago we purchased a $100 million equity position in One World Trade Center and also became the buildings’ manager, leasing agent and development adviser.

The short-term prospects for the building were challenging.   The building is perhaps the most complex ever built, the real-estate market has yet to recover and the competition for large tenants is intense.

When we became involved, the single tenant was Vantone’s China Center for less than 10% of the 3.1 million sqft. Despite these risks we believed that New York and Lower Manhattan is a great bet and the benefits of new and sustainable construction provide a critical edge.

With the recent signing of a lease by the US Government, the building is now over 50% leased 2 years before it opens.

The real estate investment world is rapidly changing. My father’s generation avoided partners and outside investors, but all of our recent developments include partners: The Port Authority at 1 World Trade Center, Bank of America at 1 Bryant Park, and Vantone at 855 6th Avenue.

In closing, I would like to say that wherever you invest, it is important to remember that real estate is a service industry, not a commodity.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I wish you good luck and am sure we will have a constructive and productive conference.

Bale and Ni Ni.

In the dark history of human atrocity, one savage, inhuman chapter that is always missing from the textbooks in courses about the Pacific conflict in World War II is the Rape of Nanking. Except for the occasional documentary, this harrowing event has gone largely unexplored by filmmakers, yet it surges with historic value and the elements of heartbreaking drama. Ask history majors about what the Japanese did to freedom-loving civilians to alter the world and all they know is Pearl Harbor, Bataan and the Death March. Now the great Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made a valiant and compassionate effort to enlighten the ignorant. The Flowers of War is his best film since Raise the Red Lantern. It is emotionally shattering.

In the winter of 1937, after Japan conquered and destroyed Shanghai, Emperor Hirohito’s cruelty and ruthless thirst for power shifted to Nanking, the Chinese capital. More than 200,000 people were massacred, including the Chinese army, and only a handful of ordinary people fought to survive. Their bravery and heroism have become legendary in China. This is the true story of an American mortician named John Miller, brilliantly played by Christian Bale, who miraculously made his way through the fire, mortar and bombs to reach a Catholic cathedral to prepare a murdered Catholic priest for burial. When he reaches the church, a small altar boy is the only one left to offer shelter to the homeless. Having already missed the last boat out of the harbor before the Japanese takeover, John hides out in the church himself, sharing space with 13 terrified convent girls and a group of abandoned prostitutes from the Jade Paradise, a notorious brothel in the red-light district. As the fumes of powder and perfume waft up through the rafters, the painted women and the innocent virgins all turn to him as a kind of surrogate savior. Far from being a saint, he’s a thief, an adventurer and a drunken war profiteer. But he is also inexplicably transformed by the plight of these women and children to find a conscience he thought buried long ago—especially by a beautiful courtesan named Yu Mo, who begs, “If you help us, I will thank you in ways you can never imagine. All of us will.” It’s a plea, made to a lonely man who hasn’t been with a woman for years. It is also a challenge. The movie catalogues the events, large and small, in the lives of these dissimilar people—each one a flower growing up to the light through the filth and rubble of war—that bond them together with mutual respect to overcome prejudice, escape death and value life as an extraordinary gift, not to be taken lightly.

The Flowers of War is profoundly involving on many levels. Clocking in at 141 minutes, it requires patience, but the rewards are numerous. Zhang Yimou finds human revelations in small places and small faces, as seen both through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl, forced to age prematurely while she watches the brutality of aggression and conflict from a hole in a stained-glass window, and through the gun sights of the last Chinese soldier in Nanking, who sacrifices his chance to leave for one final act to save his people. This is a director who knows how to tell a story from many points of view by slowly building myriad characters simultaneously: the opportunist who risks his own life to save the convent girls from rape by dressing in the robe of a priest and becomes an accidental hero; the two prostitutes who meet a mortifying fate at the hands of Japanese soldiers when they return to the ruins of their bordello to retrieve a jewelry box that symbolizes a once-privileged life now destroyed forever; the father who goes to work for the enemy to get his daughter out of Nanking, but ends up wrongly labeled by her as an unforgivable traitor; even the Japanese commander who ploughs through grenades, corpses and crushing debris for one chance to play the cathedral organ. Zhang Yimou knows how to build characters gradually, until you get to know his roll call as friends but without the unnecessary exposition that burdens most historic war pieces. But the center of the film is still the whores themselves, who make the ultimate sacrifice to save the convent girls from Japanese gang rape, giving the lie to the cliché that prostitutes are “cold and heartless.” After six years in a convent as a child, beatific Yu Mo (called Mo by her friends) was raped by her stepfather when she was 13. She has empathy for the girls huddled together in the church. By the time she had reached their age, she was already forced to take her first clients. Her special appeal for the American is completely understandable. She has education, she speaks perfect English with a mandarin accent, and she’s the one who devises the courageous plan to save the virgins from tragedy by enlisting the help of the other whores. The tableau of sewing the drapes into uniforms to trick the enemy soldiers with sex, binding their breasts to pretend they are teenagers, and using their professional skills to do one last thing in life that is honorable while John, posing as the priest, drives the children across the border using Communion wine as a bribe—well, the whole sequence rendered me silent with heartbreak. The film mercifully shields the viewer from too much graphic gore and brutality in the interests of finding an audience. But the imagination is unmistakably fueled. Instead of shock value, the director concentrates on individual acts of heroism, masterfully conveyed and emotionally wrenching.

Zhang Yimou (pronounced “Johnny-moo”) used to be a cinematographer, so his films are always sumptuous. From the colorful costumes of the courtesans performing a Chinese folk song to the ashes of the city in ruin, every image is evocative. The music is magical and gorgeous. Without exception, the richness of the cross-cultural performances really resonates. It’s rare for a bankable star like Christian Bale to collaborate with a foreign director and appear in a film of this magnitude, but having once appeared as an English boy trapped in Japan’s invasion of China in Steven Spielberg’s great 1987 film Empire of the Sun, he has remained intrigued by the period. With an unheard-of budget for a Chinese film of $100 million, his diligent work and the punishment of the no-frills location shooting in China pay off handsomely. He is just one element in a haunting panorama of a war that illuminated the bleakest corners of despair with unexpected acts of decency and valor, but he fits in majestically with the rest of the massive ensemble. In the role of Yu Mo, Zhang Yimou has discovered a new Gong Li in the luminous, radiant actress Ni Ni. At 23, she is on her way to what I predict will be a big career. The Flowers of War is not perfect. The film is too long, with so many characters it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. But it’s a special film of sacrifice, redemption and hope in the shadow of a holocaust that packs an emotional wallop from which there is no escape. I can’t get it out of my thoughts, and I recommend it highly.

rreed@observer.com

THE FLOWERS OF WAR

Running Time 141 minutes

Written by Heng Liu (screenplay) and Geling Yan (novel)

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Starring Christian Bale, Ni Ni and Xinyi Zhang

3/4

Good light, good views, good numbers. (Eileen Hsu)

An attractive young woman in a dark pantsuit is pacing the edges of demolished urban lot, chanting quietly and gently tossing grains of vodka-soaked rice while development executives looked on appreciatively, smiling beneath their ceremonial hard hats as an ancient ritual is performed on the site of their newest project.

If the scene sounds bizarre, it is also almost surely a glimpse into the future of New York City real estate

“Everyone can benefit from good energy,” said Eric Benaim, President of Modern Spaces, whose company has enlisted the services of “Certified Feng Shui Consultant” Laura Cerrano of Feng Shui Long Island to advise them on every facet of the design and construction of Vista Court, a 15-story residential building on Purves Street just south of Northern Boulevard. But while Mr. Benaim might very well be correct, every trend in city real estate would point to the fact that Modern Space’s decision to feng shui its newest project is being made with explicit intent to attract the most sought after buyer in today’s market; the Chinese.

Roughly $30 billion was invested in New York City real estate during the last year alone, making it the premier city in the world in that category, outpacing London, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. A vast amount of that investment capital came from overseas, with European, Pacific Rim and South American investors, but Chinese investors are widely believed to be leading the way.

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 2001 the relative value of the Chinese Yuan to the US dollar posted an increase of almost 23%, a figure that demonstrates both the plummeting buying power of the U.S. economy and the surging power of Chinese consumers. Simply put, New York City has never come cheaper to a foreign investor like it does now to the Chinese.

“International buyers keep our market alive,” says Amy Williamson, Vice President of sales for Prodigy Network, an international real estate company. “Whether it’s welcomed locally or not, it’s a fact of this global economy.”

What has become important is the skill set required to attract, understand and better serve the potential Chinese buyers that are in the market, flocking to New York in droves. Those skills are especially important in a market as deep and convoluted as New York City’s, where even lifelong locals have found themselves lost in the sheer volume of geographic choices and uniquely local, bureaucratic minutiae.

“New York City has always been a favorite of Asian Investors, like the Japanese in the 80’s and so forth,” explains Michael Chen, an Asian market specialist at real estate firm BOND New York.

Mr. Chen is referring to the boom of Japanese investment into New York City real estate during the 1980s and early 90s that was characterized by the 1989 purchase of a 51 percent interest in Rockefeller Center for $846 million (in cash) by the Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Estate Company, a deal that set off a mini-panic for those in fear of Japan’s growing comparative power.

Although that era of anxiety dissipated as the American economy rebounded (Rockefeller Center was re-acquired in 1995 by a partnership led by David Rockefeller and Goldman Sachs), the New York City real estate market continued to rely rather heavily on investment from foreign buyers, especially from Europe, where the climbing value of the newly-minted Euro made Big Apple pied-a-terres a “must have” for wealthy jetsetters

“International buyers have been an enormous part of the New York real estate for decades,” agrees Ms. Williamson who pointed to the positive sustaining force that European buyers have had on SoHo since the late 1980’s.

The spotlight that formerly shone brightest on the European purchaser of pied-a-terres has been filled by the Chinese buyer—buyers who have not so much stepped forward to steal attention and sale but rather who have had that spotlight thrust upon them as the European actor stepped back from the spotlight in the face of financial collapses in Greece, Spain, Ireland and other members of the “Eurozone.”

“These Asian investors aren’t suddenly buying that much more, the global economy just changed the numbers to show a dramatically greater amount of them,” Mr. Chen said.

But whether it is an illusion by comparison, or a full-scale stepping up of investment activity, the hard reality is that Chinese buyers are a dominant force in the New York City real estate market. Brokers throughout the city are learning daily what Chinese buyers want most and doing everything they can to offer it, putting the most appealing bow on that most au courant Chinese status symbol—a Manhattan luxury condo.

“People in China can’t buy financial products, so when the people who make money there look immediately to real estate outside China,” he explains. “There just aren’t a lot of other things for them to buy.

And both Mr. Chen and Ms. Williamson agree that the ability to understand the needs of Chinese buyers is a tool that they need in their metaphorical toolboxes to succeed in this new market where these particular buyers will need a broker that understands both their needs and the often-bizarre realities of New York City real estate.

“Neighborhoods and new construction are universal to foreign buyers from any continent,” says Ms. Williamson. “Apart from buyers looking for something specific like a townhouse, most international buyers are looking for newer construction. Especially branded real estate like W Residences or anything Trump.”

But while Chinese buyers will probably love ‘Trump SoHo,’ they also have distinctive needs from a stereotypical European buyer.

“Chinese buyers are often interested in feng shui, and there can be issues with numbers,” explains Ms. Williamson, alluding to Chinese belief system that there are “auspicious” (or lucky) and “inauspicious” (or unlucky) numbers, which can dictate which floor of a high-rise that they would chose to by into.

And that need to understand the needs of clients goes both ways according to Mr. Chen who has developed a system of working with potential Chinese buyers that relies heavily on spending an unusual amount of time with clients discussing their desires and matching them up best with specific neighborhoods and buildings they might not have been aware of as foreigners.

“I showed a property to potential Chinese buyer looking to be a landlord for long-term gain,” says Mr. Chen citing a recent example of his own experience. “He was very specific about what he wanted and where he wanted it. The guy had done his homework, I was very impressed.”

But, this being New York City, nothing is that easy and Mr. Chen taught his prepared client that lesson the hard way.

“I had to spend hours explaining rent control,” say Mr. Chen with a weary laugh.

So, standing in that Long Island City lot, watching Ms. Cerrano burn sage, bury red silk pouches and toss Smirnoff-soaked rice, one sees not just the modern embodiment of an ancient ritual, but a calculated prayer for the future of the most crucial real estate market in the world today.

tmcenery@observer.com

Here's the skinny on your home-searching competition:

Brazilians: The economy in this beach-loving nation has boomed in recent years, thanks largely to the discovery of off-shore oil in 2005. Brazilians are buying up New York properties faster than you lather on a layer of oil and perfect that base tan.

Brazilians have grown wealthier and done their share of buying: Average per-capita purchases in the U.S. (including real estate) jumped 250% between 2003 and 2010.

Russians: What do rich Russians like? Caviar, fine vodka, fur coats and New York real estate. The most fortunate have duffles of cash (no really) and a penchant for spending it on luxury New York apartments. While the Russian economy has weakened recently, don't expect to see the buyers disappear. Securing some seven figure New York real estate is always a good investment when the Ruble is wavering.

Chinese:It's no secret that Chinese buyers have been dominating the high-end real estate purchases in New York over the past few years. Desiring an American home-base for business trips, to visit kids in college or stockpile Louis Vuitton handbags, wealthy Chinese have been buying up a storm.

Chinese buyers are flooding the New York market, picking up Chelsea condos for their children and touring properties like 20 Pine, 15 Central Park West and the Time Warner Center.

There you have it folks! The Observer posits the theory that there is a direct correlation between hosting the Olympics and high-end apartment buying in the city. Expect to see hordes of Englishmen at open houses in the near future.