Profile | She’s educating America about Chinese art – Daphne King-Yao, niece of Tung Chee-hwa, on taking over her mother’s gallery, memories of home and cultural diplomacy
- Daphne King-Yao, granddaughter of shipping magnate C.Y. Tung and Tung Chee-hwa’s niece, has been surrounded by art since she was very little
- Today she runs Alisan Fine Arts, the Hong Kong-based art gallery her mother co-founded, which recently opened a branch in New York
Daphne King-Yao grew up in a world where art, family and business always overlapped. Her grandfather, shipping magnate C.Y. Tung, frequently travelled to New York for work and on these trips sought out budding young Chinese dancers and musicians.
“He would take them out to dinner and support them,” says King-Yao. “When my mother was young, she would often travel with my grandfather on these business trips. She even met [Chinese-French painter] Zao Wou-Ki back then.”
King had her work cut out for her when she opened one of the first art galleries in Hong Kong. King-Yao, then a young girl at Maryknoll Sisters’ School – now called Marymount Primary School – recalls her mother commenting that people would rather buy a designer bag than a piece of art.
“I wasn’t even 10 yet and already I was immersed in that world,” she recalls.