china From Teas To Tees

These days, people typically visit Pu’er for its teas, not its tees. But that may soon change.

Remember Huang Nubo, the Chinese tycoon who made international headlines last year when he unveiled a plan to build a huge “eco-tourism” resort in Iceland? Well, these days Huang is making headlines in his homeland. He controls 14,825 acres west of Pu’er, in Yunnan Province, where he aims to build yet another large resort community, this one with multiple golf courses.

The to-be-named community will take shape in Lancang County, not far from a regional airport that’s expected to open in 2015. The site is puny compared to the 74,130 acres that Huang wanted to develop in Iceland, but it’s still the size of a small city. It offers more than enough room for the vacation houses, resort-style hotels, meeting space, shopping areas, and golf courses that are included in its master plan.

For better or worse, Huang clearly likes to thing big. And it’s not just that he dreams of developing vast expanses of land. His personal and professional ambitions are equally grand, if not grander.

Huang’s Beijing-based Zhongkun Investment Group, Ltd. has developed several resort and tourist attractions in the People’s Republic, including a golf course in Xinjiang Province: Kashi Zhongkun International Golf Course in Kashi City. Over the next decade, it aims to build a network of what it calls “holiday villages” in Asia, Europe, and North America. Each of these villages (10 in all) is to include a golf course, and some will have wineries and organic farms. One is slated to be built in Japan, on Hokkaido Island, and another may come to the United States, on a 1,200-acre tract near Nashville, Tennessee. Others are planned in Finland and Denmark.

Given the size of Zhongkun’s ambitions, it’s important to note that Huang is one of China’s richest people. (Forbes estimates that he’s worth more than $1 billion.) But for Huang, life is about more than simply risking his fortune. He has other passions that require him to take personal risks: writing poetry and climbing mountains. He’s published several volumes of verse, under a pseudonym, and since 2005 he’s visited both the North and South poles and climbed seven of the most challenging peaks on seven continents, including Mount Everest, Mount McKinley, and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Perhaps because he has these other passions, Huang appreciates historical treasures and understands the value they can add to contemporary development ventures. He made a name for himself in China a little more than decade ago, when he restored two ancient villages in Anhui Province whose architecture dates back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. These villages, Hongcun and Xidi, are now notable for three things. One, they’re on the United Nations’ world heritage list. Two, Zhongkun built new resorts near them. And three, scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed in them.

A similar act of preservation is going to happen in Lancang County. The property is dotted with a dozen villages that are home to roughly 2,000 people, and Huang intends to restore many of the villages’ existing buildings.

“We would renovate the original villages and build new villages among the old,” he told the Xinhua news service earlier this year. “We are not going to overhaul the old and bring a city.”

It’s also safe to assume that Huang isn’t going to mess with the area’s tea culture. Lancang is in southwestern China, just a short ride from the Myanmar border, and it’s long been a popular vacation destination for those who drink “post-fermented” teas. I’ve never tasted these teas, but I can tell you this: Some are sold with a vintage and a place of origin, like fine wines. They must be special. They helped to lure an estimated 5.5 million domestic visitors to metropolitan Pu’er last year.

Still, a question lingers: Has Huang again poured himself a drink that he can’t finish?

Huang’s grand ambitions earned him a letter of rejection in Iceland, and some critics have speculated that Zhongkun isn’t capable of developing a property as large as the one in Lancang. Huang has acknowledged that he’ll have to take on partners but has yet to admit something more fundamental: Size is always accompanied by a weight that can crush even the richest men.

The original version of this story appeared in the May 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.