Pink power
DIDIER LI, scion of a conservative Hong Kong dynasty, will take credit for the local rave revolution. The 35-year-old is a fixture on 'The List', Tatler's yearly Who's Who compilation, but he finds himself mingling with club kids, not high culture. He earned an MBA in the US but 'couldn't come to grips with the office atmosphere' of New York's high-rise business environs so he bolted. 'By virtue of heritage and upbringing' he was groomed to work with his father Alan Li Fook-sum, the executive director of Kowloon Dairy, but 'it didn't satisfy my needs' so he quit his role as marketing manager to eventually found a record company.
From his beginnings as a DJ at a Swiss boarding school to co-owner of Pink, Hong Kong's first international club contender, Li has found his groove like a record needle. A founding father of Hong Kong's dance club scene he may be, but now he'd much rather be playing dad to his two daughters. 'At heart I'm a family man,' he says.
Still cutting a boyish figure despite a grey dusting to his side-parted hair, Li grew up a tycoon's tyke who enjoyed the horse races, encouraging the family entries - his father is also the Jockey Club's influential chairman. When Li Jnr married Michelle Huthart in 1993 it was heralded as a match of two beautiful people from powerful, wealthy clans; Huthart family patriarch Robert Snr is credited with building the Lane Crawford empire. Pink, the 26,000-square-foot club that opened in Chai Wan last weekend, exists because Li sees himself as a dance music cognoscente. What prompted him to shell out $10-$20 million - as go the range of estimates by Chinese newspapers - for a venue that serves up internationally renowned DJs, was also the catalyst that drove him to first partner a record label: a belief that there were local people who desired and appreciated quality dance music.
Li had finally shed his corporate caste (which included an attempt to import oranges from Morocco) and along, with Dale Rennie, his partner in Pink, set up Millennium Records in 1998. They put together a dance compilation that included house and garage music, paying extensive royalties for original songs, unlike other compilations at the time that instead used cover bands to reproduce popular songs. 'We were out to prove something,' he says, to prove that a market existed for 'quality music'. Alas, the album's immediate success was its downfall. Pirates copied the CD within two-and-a-half weeks and left Millennium Records in a bath of red ink. But not before Li and Rennie threw a party in January 1998 at the Hong Kong stadium sports bar. The full-scale production show with some 1,500 carousers was 'the original concept that generated Pink'. 'We put dance music on a different dimension,' says Li. 'We staged entertainment. Previous to us it was sticking people in a dark room and turning on music.'
Two Pink parties ensued - so named because they 'want the most colourful people in town' - at the Convention and Exhibition Centre on Boxing Day last year and this April at Hitec in Kowloon. With about 10,000 and 7,000 party goers respectively, 'that success convinced us that a permanent place was needed,' Li says.
Pink stands to leave a mark on Hong Kong's club scene as indelible as Disco Disco, Lan Kwai Fong's first legendary nightclub founded by the extravagant and openly gay Gordon Richard Huthart, Li's now deceased brother-in-law. 'Maybe it runs in the family somehow,' Li says in a brief pensive moment. He used to attend the club in his 'late teens' but discounts that it had any influence on his formative years. In fact, Li's philosophy is in contrast to that of Huthart. 'Gordon was obviously a flamboyant person - he was the club.' In keeping with a low-profile public image, Li has no desire to personify the nightlife. 'People come for the music, the production, not me.'
Which sits with Li's seemingly inherently reserved nature. Far from living the wastrel ways of a prodigal son he says: 'Contrary to what people might believe working in Hong Kong was never that lucrative.' His father 'was strict in making us understand principles and the value of money', and when working for Kowloon Dairy he was 'expected to do his job and prove himself'.
It seems curious though, that someone from such a blue bloodline has left himself open to being labelled a corrupter of youth. This at a time when the use of 'club drugs' like ecstasy and ketamine are so heavily in the news and police and customs have announced crackdowns. As a result 15 people were arrested for drug possession during Pink's opening weekend.
Social criticism, however, hasn't come from Hong Kong's older generations but a couple of Li's peers, and he laughed their accusations off as ludicrous. He says they were quick to see his point: drugs have always been a custom of a night-time culture that reincarnates itself around the music of the moment. 'For people to say drugs and dance music go hand-in-hand is a total fallacy,' he says. Moreover, regarding the police raid of the club on both Friday and Saturday nights, Li says 'the arrests project the right message'.
Along with a strong security presence that includes Gurkhas and hidden cameras, Li says 'the police will always be welcome' and that the goal is to provide safe entertainment for the majority of club goers whom he believes are more interested in music than drugs.
Li has learned to dislike misconceptions, having grown-up being probed with obscure or irrelevant questions by the Chinese paparazzi. Lately he's been unable to convince Chinese media that his partner Dale Rennie - whom he lavishes with credit - is the majority shareholder of Pink and AEC, an events production company. 'I refute, they insist.' Then again, he's bemused by press allegations that the club is pocketing $1 million a night in profit. With the overheads of pulling in such big name DJ's he says, 'obviously the profit margins aren't enormous'.
A cavernous venue, strong relationships with international DJs, sophisticated sound system - Li believes are the keys to success in establishing the Pink brand which he intends to take abroad to Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne. There are already moves in the works to take it to Singapore. 'It's not shots in the dark,' Li says. He speaks of London's renowned club, Ministry of Sound. 'Hopefully we'll be recognised on that level.'
Pills, thrills and bellyaches - Pink's opening night: Page 2
