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Mark O'Neill

In a painting on the ceiling, angels and dancers frolic before a Roman villa beneath a deep-blue sky.

Below stands a grand piano surrounded by tableaux of Amsterdam's canal-lined streets, the water clear and sparkling.

The imposing four-storey red brick building is a replica of Amsterdam Railway Station, which was built in 1889, and is one of the centrepieces of Holland Village, the flagship project of tycoon Yang Bin, who was arrested on Friday morning at his home in the village.

In the past 20 years of soaring property development, China has seen some astonishing real estate projects - and 20 billion yuan (HK$19 billion) Holland Village ranks among the most remarkable.

Situated in northwest Shenyang, the village has been carved out of 220 hectares of farmland Yang bought for an estimated 150 million yuan in 1999.

The models on the second floor of the 'railway station' show the scale of the still-incomplete project - blocks with 3,000 apartments, 100 villas, a tennis club, a 500-metre shopping street, a lake and tropical forest for recreation and large greenhouses to supply vegetables and flowers through the year.

The project is due to be finished by 2004, according to an employee in the sales department. The apartments cost 2,880 yuan per square metre and the villas between 6,800 and 8,000 yuan per square metre.

The red brick buildings are built in the Dutch style. Yang has also added windmills, canals filled with goldfish and swans, with a greenhouse attached to each villa.

According to the saleswoman, about 300 apartments have so far been sold, but the homes are not moving as quickly as the company hoped.

The second floor of the 'station' houses booths for the Industrial and Commercial Bank to offer home loans, however, they have no staff or furniture. Instead, security staff between shifts sleep on bunk beds behind a screen.

The saleswoman said the company was marketing the properties all over China.

Asked what impact Yang's arrest would have on the project, she said she had not heard of the arrest, and shook her head when asked if anything unusual had happened on Friday morning.

The shopping street is almost complete but none of the units have been occupied.

'There are not enough people living here, so people do not want to lease the shops,' said one contractor. 'The result is that we have not been paid.'

Local residents and the official press said the project was suffering from a cash shortage, with not enough units being sold to pay for new building.

'Shenyang is not a rich city,' said Wang Junyi, a retired civil servant taking a morning walk through the village.

'The number of people who can afford to buy this kind of apartment is no more than five per cent of the population here. And they have plenty of choice, with other villa developments aimed at them. The scale here is too big,' he said.

'While there are buses, realistically, you need to have your own car if you want to live here and go to work each day.'

The village is 10km from Shenyang's city centre, at the far end from the airport and economic development zone, which has attracted US$1.3 billion (HK$10.1 billion) in foreign investment over the past 14 years, according to official figures.

Local residents say the project needs new money - from the purchase of apartments, bank loans or other sources.

A lengthy detention for Yang would seriously hamper the development's ability to raise such funds as banks may not be willing to lend money to a prisoner, and potential buyers may lose confidence in the project.

Holland Village is worlds away from a community just a few kilometres down the road.

Some residents are from rural areas, others have been laid off from local state factories. There, jobless people hang modest signs advertising their services - carpenter, bricklayer, roof-tiler, domestic cleaner - hoping that someone will hire them for the day. Some set up stalls and spread goods out on the pavement, trying to sell clothes and cigarettes, or shoes as cheap as six yuan a pair.

'You would be surprised at how many Shenyang people refuse to do this even though they are laid off,' said one taxi driver. 'It is a problem of face. They prefer to stay at home living on 200 yuan a month rather than risk being seen by their friends and neighbours on the street. Some laid-off people get a monthly allowance, others do not.'

Meanwhile, as Yang's detention threatened to strain ties between China and North Korea, which recently appointed the tycoon as the chief executive of its Sinuiju special administrative region, Pyongyang announced the visit of a parliamentary delegation to the mainland, according to Agence France-Presse.

The visit, scheduled for October 15 to 19, was at the invitation of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress and the State Council, according to the Korean Central News Agency. Radio broadcasts from Pyongyang said the visit was aimed at enhancing friendly ties between the two countries.



Yang Bin's arrest threatens $19b project