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New
Yorker Yue-Sai Kan is the most famous woman in China — famous
to a billion people — as a television personality, and as
the woman who has introduced cosmetics to the Chinese women. Even
her haircut is famous: Chinese women will go to the hairdresser
and ask for a “Yue-Sai.” She is the modern Asian woman.
She is the modern American woman. She is the modern businesswoman.
Over the past twenty-five years, Yue-Sai has been a force for change of a lot
of things for the Chinese people. An American citizen who came here as a very
young woman in the early 70s from Hong Kong via Hawaii, she has “opened
up the world” to the mainland Chinese, including opening up New York and
America to Asia.
Born in Shanghai, daughter of the famous Chinese painter Wing-Lin Kan,
she was brought up in Hong Kong. As a young woman, an aspiring concert pianist,
she migrated to Hawaii and eventually came to New York on a vacation to visit
a schoolmate. Her first weekend she went to a concert of the Boston Symphony,
conducted by Leonard Bernstein at Lincoln Center. Afterwards
she was taken to the Green Room to meet the great conductor. Amazed and excited,
she decided then and there that New York was where she wanted to be.
She got a job as an assistant to a casting agent in an advertising agency. From
there she went to work for a public relations man whose clientele included movie
stars such as Bette Davis and Cary Grant. From
there she got into cable television, which was still very new to the viewing
public. The show was called “Looking East.” She was amazed at the
response. The show ran for twelve years – the last two on the Discovery
Channel.
In 1984, PBS invited her to host a live broadcast from China of the 35th Anniversary
of the People’s Republic of China. It was so successful that the Chinese
Government asked her if she’d do a television show in China. Which she
did. "One World." That show made her the household name in China and
single-handedly introduced the American (Western) culture to the Chinese people
as well as opening up to the whole world to the complexity and variations of
the Asian culture.
In the early 1990s, Yue-Sai was invited by the Chinese to become involved in
business in China. The business she chose was cosmetics. China up to that point
in its modern development was, in her words “the world of no color.” “The
drabness had to go,” thought Yue-Sai; “Chinese women should look
good, feel good about themselves.” Before that, Chinese women did not wear
makeup. Yue-Sai has changed all that. Today they do.
The cosmetics line was introduced in 1996 in three department stores. Today,
it is in more than 900 stores all over China and there are two different price
lines – the luxury and the everyday.
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Yue-Sai
Wa Wa (little doll)
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She
thinks of herself as more of a media person than
a businesswoman, since that was how she made her reputation (and
her living). However, her business life continues to expand. She’s
written three best-selling books including Etiquette for the
Modern Chinese. This is not, she pointed out, just a book
about the right fork to use, but instead, to introduce to the reader
the social habits, customs, manners of dress, and business, etc.
of the Western and American culture.
A few years ago, the young daughter of a friend asked Yue-Sai to bring her back
a doll from China. She was surprised to discover that she couldn’t find
a China doll. There were none. All she found were the blonde, blue-eyed American
dolls. In October 1999 Yue-Sai introduced the Yue-Sai Wa Wa (little doll). Her
retail partners are worldwide: QVC, FAO Schwarz, Toys R Us, kb Toys, and Harrod’s
of London. Her first hour on QVC, they sold out.
Yue-Sai Kan has led a charmed life since the beginning of her New York experience.
From her first day here, she has found “this great city of the world” exciting,
acknowledging that all the great things in her life have come as a result of
her coming to New York. Today she lives in a beautiful townhouse near the East
River where she often entertains. She’s a frequent presence at charity
galas and at the smart restaurants. She has a very friendly, outgoing personality
with an easy smile and is always ready to laugh. |
Albemarle,
Rufus
Aston, Muffie Potter
Basso, Dennis
Benedict, Daniel
Capehart, Jonathan
Cominotto, Michael
Curry, Boykin
Dahl, Tessa
DeWoody, Beth Rudin
Duchin, Peter and Brooke
Duff, Patricia
Eaton, Phoebe
Fales-HIll, Susan
Fekkai, Frederic
THE FULL LIST
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