David Tang is not a genius. Despite rumours to the contrary, he is not a tycoon either. He is not rich enough.
'It's nonsense to think I'm a tycoon. I'm like a cockroach in Bombay, I'm nothing. I'm a tie-pin perhaps, as Simon Murray used to say.' In its own way, that is a classic Tang quote. It contains an element of humour, modesty and a bit of name dropping - three of the essential elements that make up the exercise in public relations that is Mr Tang.
He is not even successful. 'I'm a crawling businessman. A crawling entrepreneur. It's too early to call myself a proper entrepreneur as I believe you have to be successful before you can call yourself an entrepreneur.
'The expression should have embedded in it that notion of achievement and I don't think I've achieved anything yet.' So what is he? He seems to think he is unpopular.
'I'm very conscious of the fact that a lot of people dislike me for being a bit of a show-off, but in this world you can't have everything.' He's right. There may be a lot of people who find Mr Tang a little painful. The self promotion, the Mao suits and the plummy accent rile some Chinese and English alike, perhaps because he sometimes comes across as neither one nor the other.
'I don't go out of my way to irritate people. People do get terribly upset either because they're jealous or don't like to see me branded as a tycoon or genius.
'I disown all those attacks. All I want to do is try to meet the intellectual challenge of starting with a clean piece of paper as I did six years ago and say 'what business do I want to be in?' ' More of Mr Tang's chosen business later. First, there may be a blot on that clean piece of paper that needs to be addressed, given his plans to publicly issue shares in his flagship enterprise, Shanghai Tang.