BAO BAO WAN

Take a Bao by JON WALL

BORN THE GRAND-DAUGHTER of a senior Chinese Communist Party functionary in the early 1980s, Bao Bao Wan astonished her family and friends by indulging a passion for the arts, travel and adventure from an early age. Leaving Beijing for the United States in her mid-teens, she studied in New York and Paris before arriving in Hong Kong, where her perceived rebellious, mischievous and capricious character, as well as her daring (at least by local standards) outfits, ensured that she fast became a fixture in the pages of tabloids and gossip magazines.

Yet beneath the glamorous surface of the socialite notorious for the sexiest wardrobe in town lies a much more serious and romantic temperament which, after graduating from the Gemological Institute of America four years ago, Wan has increasingly expressed through her opulent jewellery collections, which have been shown in Beijing, Tokyo and Paris, as well as Hong Kong. As she prepared for an exhibition of her Fine Jewelry line at Joyce, Wan ruminated on her idyllic childhood, her connections or lack of them, the creative process, and a life in the limelight.        

You have a reputation as an iconoclast and a party person in a city that, for all its surface glamour and glitz, is still rather conservative. Yet you yourself are from a very different – some would say ascetic – background. So how do explain the contradictions, and how did Bao Bao get to be who she is today?
I was very much of a rebel. Even the profession that I’m taking up these days, being a designer, it’s really out of the norm, because usually in this kind of family, you become a banker, a doctor, a lawyer or a property developer – or you get married and live in the shadow of your successful husband. I chose none of these routes, and I must say that it’s much more difficult to go on doing what I’m doing right now, because I get absolutely no help from my family or their connections.
Yes, my family’s reputation brought me a lot of easy access to media exposure, lots of short cuts, you know, in terms of name and noise creation. But in terms of jewellery manufacture, finding the right manufacturer, finding the right workmen, and knocking on the door of every single magazine and media, or department stores, my family hasn’t helped that much.

What was it like, growing up in a privileged household in Beijing at that time? Was it a very cloistered kind of existence?
It was completely closed, but it was also very, very romantic – especially as a three-year-old. I’d play with the butterflies, the flower petals and the fish in the pond and I’d play hide and seek in the stone garden, I’d make a little boat and go boating on the pond in front of the house, with the frogs and the lotus flowers…It was very, very romantic, like living in a movie set every day. Looking back, after I started to travel and live in the real world, I realise how precious it was. As soon as you leave a place and you start living your life elsewhere, the purity is already ruined, you can never go back again.

You went to the US in your mid-teens. It must have been an incredible jump, going from that kind of background. And you were on your own?
Completely on my own. I had two suitcases, I didn’t speak very much English, and I went to a boarding school. It was very difficult.

You may have been a rebel, but to go there at that age, and to succeed, makes me wonder whether underneath you were quite a studious and serious person.
I’m actually very, very serious, yeah [laughs]…I think a lot of people misunderstand me. They think that with this family background, you really don’t have to do much to get you anywhere. I’m not in a hurry to correct them. On the Internet, I get these comments like, “Of course, with your family background, you can do this or that.” I don’t try to argue with anything, I just suggest that they come and take a look at my jewellery pieces. It doesn’t give you a guarantee, or a green pass or a password to making beautiful jewellery, you still have to make an effort on your own.

You spent time studying in Paris. You mentioned the romance of your childhood and I’m wondering if there’s a romantic side to France and French culture that appeals to you.
Definitely. Living in Paris makes you want to fall in love. It makes being single and feeling unloved seem like a crime. And, yes, French is a very romantic language.

How does that feeling for romance influence the way you make jewellery?
To make jewellery you need training on two sides, behind the scenes and in front. One is visual and one is conceptual. I think it’s very important that a person who makes jewellery is not only into making something that looks pretty, but to giving a soul behind the creation. My training in photography definitely helped direct my visual side and literature helped with the conceptual side.

You have an exhibition of your Fine Jewelry at Joyce, as well as a second line at On Pedder. Can you tell us a little bit about your collections and what they represent?
With the Fine Jewellery, every single collection comes from a sentiment of mine. Like the pagoda, or as I call it, La Maison de Mon Enfant, it’s about my nostalgia for my childhood. The L’Amour Paradoxal [set] with the butterfly and the bamboo is about the romance between the two, the beauty of impossible love.

There’s also a collection about leaves, the falling leaves in the autumn. When I studied abroad, what I missed most was the autumn in Beijing. Even though New York has the most beautiful autumn and Paris even more, I always missed the soil, the smell of the soil in the air in Beijing and the feeling of riding a bicycle, because at the time we still rode bicycles. Riding a bicycle and having the leaves fall on your head, you’d never have that feeling again – when are you going to ride a bi-   cycle in Hong Kong or in Central Park? And even if you did it would be different, because at that time a bicycle was actually your [main means of] transportation.

The Fine Jewelry collection is quite grand; I must say it’s not commercial and it’s not for every woman. It’s for a woman who’s either comfortable in her own skin or confident enough to wear a piece of bold jewellery, because you could easily be worn by my jewellery if you’re not confident enough. The little ones [at On Pedder] are more intimate. You could be putting some make-up on, taking a shower or sleeping and you don’t have to take it off. It’s with you 24/7, it’s something easy, something intimate.

How do you go about creating what is, by definition, intricate, delicate and time-consuming? Is this a full-time job for you, do you have a team working with you and how does the creative process work?
I only have one lady working with me in my workshop, and both of us do everything, from design to packaging to selling to client relationship. We don’t have a clear definition of the jobs that we do yet, because I’m not big enough. When inspiration comes into my head, I draw it.

Do you ever work around particular stones?
Not unless it’s for a special client who’s given me a certain stone to work with. But any stone is like an instrument of mine. I was just asked how passionate I am for a single kind of stone, but I’m not like, let’s say the pianist Lang Lang, who’s so passionate about the piano he wants to kiss it every day, it’s about what kind of music can I make with the piano? For me, whether it’s diamonds, jade or pearls, these are my instruments to make art. They’re my media.

I wonder, given the stylish and occasionally even outrageous way you dress, whether you’ve ever considered going into fashion – and if not, why?
No, I’m very interested in going into fashion. One thing about my personality is that I’m not the kind of person who can follow the trends, but I would love to go into fashion if I didn’t have to do it season-after-season. Because with my jewellery I’m doing something classic that could last for 200 years.

As for “outrageous,” I haven’t done that for a while. I don’t consume my time on dressing up, I don’t have the energy for it. It’s my reputation, it’s how people view me, but right now I prefer to dress in something really comfortable, that I can move around in. I can’t do uncomfortable clothes any more. I’ve done that.

This is an edited version of the original, which appears in the October 2010 issue of Prestige Hong Kong.