SIZE CLEARLY MATTERS to Sun Peiliang, the director of the new art gallery in Ningbo, the port city across Hangzhou Bay from Shanghai. 'Ningbo's will be the second largest on the mainland,' he says, 'exceeded only by the China National Art Gallery in Beijing.'
And Sun has the numbers to back it up. 'Ningbo's will weigh in at 23,000 square metres, compared with 27,000 at the Beijing Gallery. But, while our museum is smaller, its facilities are the best in China.'
In recent years, Ningbo has invested heavily in cultural spaces. 'The government is building a science museum and it has already completed the City History Museum, a new opera house, theatres and libraries,' says Sun.
The flurry of cultural construction mirrors the mainland's real estate market, which is purportedly on the verge of overheating. And although the City History Museum, for example, doesn't draw big crowds even during weekends and on holidays, Sun is confident that, in a city with the third-highest per capita income on the mainland and a long history as a cultural centre with its own artistic, musical and literary schools, the number of venues is only just meeting demand.
'The city is building so many museums because the residents, artists and tourists have asked for it,' he says. Nonetheless, he admits the gallery is part of a larger economic development plan to revitalise the area surrounding it on the Ningbo Bund.
For a short period after the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, Ningbo became China's largest trading port. Some of the European bank buildings on its bund predate those in Shanghai by four years. The redevelopment of the Ningbo Bund has entailed transforming an abandoned site opposite an industrial park into an exclusive shopping, residential and business centre - not unlike the refurbishment of New York's meatpacking district or Shanghai's now chic Xintiandi. The bund makeover is aimed at enticing businessmen from Shanghai and Beijing to skip the last flight home, stay in Ningbo's planned five-star hotel, and spend their money in the stores along the waterfront. 'And, hopefully, they'll visit our fine museum, too,' says Sun.
