FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com NOVEMBER 26, 2015 • BUZZ • THE QUEENS COURIER 67 victoria’s secrets VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS vschneps@gmail.com tweet me @vschneps Guangzhou South China’s economic powerhouse Life never ceases to surprise me with its coincidences, and during my trip to China, that happened twice. Thomas Chen, the CEO of Crystal Windows and fellow Queens Museum board member, had invited me to visit China with a group of business people. Little did I know that Long Deng, our recent King of Queens, would be one of the leaders of my group visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. When I met him, we discovered that we lived across the street from each other and belonged to the same club. And now we were traveling together to China! I was so impressed that he came to America almost penniless and is now hugely successful with a company that is involved in property development, supermarket retailing and food importing and agriculture. The other man to encourage me to come to China was the respected Charles Wang whom I've known for years. When our group arrived in Guangzhou, a twohour fl ight from Shanghai, he said to me, "You must meet the talented artist whose studio is here and last year donated 40 sculptures to the Queensborough Community College Art Gallery under the expert direction of Faustino Quintanilla." Since QCC's President is dear friend Diane Call, I was doubly impressed and delighted to meet Wenji Zhang She picked me up at the Sheraton where I was staying and we drove about 45 minutes on highways to reach her studio on the Pearl River. The river fl ows through the city and she shared that being near the water is meaningful. Besides being beautiful, water brings We had 30-course feasts presented to the delegations success, she explained to me. Well, she surely is successful! Her work besides sculpture are lacquered paintings, wall sculptures, furniture and now silk scarves of her paintings and lacquered, beautifully designed bangle bracelets. I was delighted to be in her studio and learn the process of creating her works that have been seen in galleries, hotels and museums. She invited me for lunch and then back to town for dinner. Wenji has an extraordinarily helpful young woman, Bonnie, who acts as her assistant. I know how critical that role is as I too have great assistants who make my work possible. At dinner together that night, I bit into a chicken foot and broke my front tooth! My kids had warned me not to eat chicken feet and now I guess my chicken feet eating days are over!! The next morning, Bonnie went with me to the dentist. To my delight, she was a French woman speaking perfect English. Her husband is a foreign correspondent for a French newspaper and they were in Guangzhou for a few years. She glued my tooth back and about $100 later I was cameraready for my next meeting. It was with the leader of the Chinese Tourism Bureau who shared with us that 2016 is the Year of Tourism and the country expects an enormous increase in tourism. Since some of the people in my group were representing the Chinese-American hotel industry, that was music to their ears. Guangzhou, formerly Canton, is now a center of trade and manufacturing. The city was born in 220 B.C.! Today, it is an economic powerhouse in southern China and some consider it Hong Kong’s little sister. The vibrant and bustling city had manufacturing plants that produced products distributed around the world. I went to several of the markets that were packed with people buying and men with carts carrying the merchandise to its next stop. It was great fun shopping and bargain with the vendors whose tiny (10x10) stores were overfl owing, stocked with merchandise. It’s a vibrant city with great food, sights and people. One evening, our group was hosted at the Sky One Restaurant on the 28th fl oor overlooking the spectacular neon-lit needle-like TV tower. The views of the Pearl River and the developing area around the restaurant/offi ce building had me mesmerized, looking out from the fl oorto ceiling windows encircling the dining room. We had an elegant dinner of 20 courses ending with an enormous birthday cake for Felix Ortiz and Richard Chuk. The happy birthday song is the same in every language. It was a memorable night before we left for our last city, the fast growing competitor to Hong Kong- - Shenzhen. Read all about it next week! Dynamic $1000 off Lumineers $500 off Invisalign DENTAL WORK Free Whitening included the inViSiBle WAy to Some excluSionS Apply StrAighten teeth third generation dentist 175-15 Jamaica avenue, Jamaica 718-297-4100 • 718-297-4106 Wenji Zhang turned her work of art into a silk scarf Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (right) and delegation members with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in China rep (left) A bagel-shaped building called Guangzhou Circle
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