Chinese furniture heiress Che Xuanqiao on art space she founded to show her growing collection

By Elaine Yau

Dressed plainly in a T-shirt and wearing no make-up in a coffee shop in Beijing, 28-year-old Che Xuanqiao is as far as can be from how Netflix series Bling Empire has led us to think an heiress to a multibillion-dollar business empire should look.

Despite her understated look, Che will be getting plenty of notice as part of a coterie of Chinese millennials who are as rich as Croesus and who buy a lot of art, especially since she is opening an art space with a growing collection.

Che’s is a classic rags-to-riches story. Her father, Che Jianxing, is a former carpenter who came from a family of farmers in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. He started a furniture business three decades ago with just 600 yuan borrowed from a relative.

Today, his Red Star Macalline Group (Red Star) has become a furniture retail giant and real estate conglomerate, and he was 139th on Forbes’ China Rich List for 2020 with an estimated net worth of US$4.2 billion. (Alibaba Group, owner of the South China Morning Post, is an investor in the company.)...READ MORE

Macalline Art Centre founder Che Xuanqiao poses amid an exhibition she oversaw in Shanghai of furniture from The Shouter, a high-end brand she co-founded, juxtaposed with hunks of raw pork and beef.