Romantic businessman who loves poetry

Zhongkun Plaza at Dazhongsi, in Haidian district, Beijing, on Wednesday. Zhongkun Investment Group invested 3.5 billion yuan ($553 million) to build the plaza. [Photo / China Daily]

As a controversial overseas land acquisition by a Chinese businessman comes to a close in the coming weeks, Huang Nubo, the man behind it, is again in the spotlight.

The 56-year-old chairman of Beijing-based Zhongkun Investment Group is preparing for the final signing of the lease on Icelandic land he originally intended to buy in the country's northeast areas. Meanwhile, Huang's latest Pu'er project in southwestern China's Yunnan province is right on track, with his teams of experts conducting further surveys and planning there.

Huang impressed many as a businessman who writes poems, or a poet who works in business. As Wei Xiaoan, an expert in tourist economics with the China Tourism Academy, puts it: "Huang is a rare combination of poetic romanticism and a merchant's aggressiveness plus shrewdness."

As for Huang, he said: "It's my poet's identity that separates me from the other businessmen and offers me insights into chances others tend to ignore."

Huang, although big in stature with a height of 192 centimeters, reveals a gentle smile when talking about his literary creations.

Like all passionate poets, he hides no outflow of emotions, such as anger when he was refused permission to buy the land he coveted by the Icelandic Interior Ministry in November and also confidence and satisfaction when a new deal was struck in May.

Under the pen name of Luo Ying, Huang has written a number of poems since he was 13. They were published in poetry collections including 7+2 Mountain-Climbing Diaries, Little Rabbit and The Ninth Night, and translated into other languages.

In his artistically decorated office, also the home to several Scottish tapestries and even a small shark, Huang tells the story about being laughed at seven years ago when telling a crowd of real estate investors that he's actually a poet.

But to the majority of Icelanders who supported his land deal - 60 percent according to a poll by Icelandic media last year - they know him first as a poet and then a sponsor of international poetry exchanges.

Huang says that in Iceland, the country where reading and writing are so valued that even policemen and prisoners write poems, he gained fast access into its social networks.

He also has old acquaintances in literary circles there. One of his college roommates back in Peking University in the 1970s is the Icelandic translator of Chinese classics Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, who considers Huang to be a spiritual guy and "very kind and considerate from the start".

"I went to Iceland for a poets' forum and was overwhelmed by the natural beauty there, seen through my poet's eyes," Huang said.

Huang's poet's insight is, indeed, a business foresight.