David Tang, who was a founding board member of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and well known as a socialite, has died. In London, he was a trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts for over twenty years, chaired the Tate’s Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee, was president of the London Bach Society and had advised the London Symphony Orchestra. He also advised Carnegie Hall, New York.
Tang was born in Hong Kong but educated in England from the age of 13. He studied philosophy and law at London and Cambridge, and taught at Peking University in the 1980s before founding the Shanghai Tang fashion chain in Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore.
More recently he set up the Pacific Cigar Company Ltd and opened the Cipriani restaurant in Hong Kong and the China Tang restaurant at the Dorchester Hotel, London. He was given a knighthood in 2008 for his charity work.
Tang died having been given just months to live. His death came a few days before a party he had organised at The Dorchester as a send off for himself. The party will still go ahead.
31 August 2017.
