THE TREASURE HUNTER

Haidhi Angkawijana, the owner of the boutique hotel and restaurant chain Face Asia, is excited about his latest personal project. He is shipping two wooden Chinese houses he bought in an old village in Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province to Bali, where they will be reassembled.

“They are beautiful houses, built without nails, only wooden pegs. They might have been homes for rich Chinese men in the past, but nobody lived in them when I found them,” says Haidhi with eyes shining, full of the same excitement and enthusiasm as a child playing a game of treasure hunt.

Haidhi bought the houses two years ago, hiring locals to dismantle them and carefully pack their pieces into two 15 meter-long trucks for the 1,261 kilometer drive to Shanghai. Four carpenters from Shanxi then spent three months reassembling the houses there. Not long ago, Haidhi decided to dismantle them and set them up in Bali.

The houses are one of many similar projects Haidhi has undertaken. For the past 15 years he has been collecting art works and antiques during his travels around Asia, often shipping them for display in his restaurants, hotels and bars in China, Thailand and Indonesia.

Born in Indonesia and educated in the U.S, the 40 something Haidhi owns the hospitality chain, Face Asia, which includes upscale restaurants serving food ranging from Thai and Indian to Moroccan, a spa and wellness center and a French Patisserie. In Beijing he has Face Bar along with a 16-room boutique hotel called Face Residence located on Gongti Nanlu.

Haidhi’s first restaurant venture was an Indian restaurant in Jakarta. Prior to opening Haidhi had traveled around India with his friend, Frank Drake who soon afterwards became the interior designer for Face. During their trip, they studied the culture, met people, read books, experienced the food and purchased loads of antiques. They shipped the antiques to Jakarta where they decided to use them to decorate the new restaurant.

The venue quickly became popular and once it was successfully established Haidhi and Drake travelled to Thailand with the aim of recapturing the same kinds of experiences they’d had in India. During this trip, they discovered the “Face”, which has since become the logo for all Haidhi’s Face restaurants in Asia.

Haidhi and Drake were driving in the Chiang Mai countryside when they passed a two-meter wooden sculpture of a face lying next to the road. It appeared to have been abandoned, as it was covered in mold. The owner of a nearby shop told Haidhi that an Italian man had wanted to buy it but never returned to pick it up after paying a deposit. Drake remarked to Haidhi, “It is a nice piece. If you want to open a bar someday in the future, you can put it in the bar.” And, so Haidhi bought the sculpture

Today the “authentic” Face sculpture is on display in Haidhi’s Jakarta restaurant. The one on display in Face Bar in Beijing is a copy that was made by a local artist. “Face has many uses in English, such as ‘face-to-face’, ‘let’s face it’, ‘face off’,” says Haidhi. “I have the first Face Bar and I took this word even before Facebook came out.”

Now Haidhi goes on annual treasure hunts for antiques. He is familiar with the markets and antique dealers in India, Thailand and Indonesia and knows where to get authentic artworks at a reasonable price.

“The [shipping] container is very cheap. It costs thousands of dollars, but you can put a lot in if you ship things all at once,” Haidhi says. “You can move things easily. The documentation is a bit troublesome.”

Dressed in a well-tailored suit jacket and blue jeans, Haidhi seems more like an energetic tour guide than a businessman. Passionate about what he displays in Face Beijing, he speaks quickly as he gives us a tour.

“ Look at this one,” he says, gently resting his hand on the arm of a black wooden Buddha statue. “His face is so peaceful. Isn’t it nice? I make a lot of money from my restaurants. All of the money I spend myself, not on BMWs, but collecting antiques.”

The building that houses Face Beijing was originally a primary school with three stories, six classrooms and three laboratories. It was built right after Cultural Revolution. When he took over the space, Haidhi found two school photographs in a desk drawer in one of the classrooms. Haidhi hung one of the photos in the exact same spot where the teacher is standing in the picture.

Haidhi displays more than 100 antiques from his vast collection at Face Beijing. There are wooden doors, windows, beds, birdcages, dowry cases, Buddha statues, pieces from an old temple roof, posters, photos, and pillars, all shipped in from other countries.

One of the special items in his Face Beijing collection is the golden statue of Deng Xiaoping holding up two fingers, with two cats milling about his feet. He bought it at Panjiayuan, the antiques market in the south of Beijing.

“We often see Chairman Mao’s statue, but not Deng Xiaoping’s,” says Haidhi, “This statue implies his famous saying – ‘It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’”

During the early 1900s in Shanghai there were often signs displayed in the city’s public gardens stating, “No Dogs and Chinese Allowed”. After World War II, some Chinese made signs saying, “No Dogs and Foreigners Allowed”. Haidhi came across one in Panjiayuan and put it on the wall in Face Shanghai as a joke.

At one point, Haidhi began collecting Chinese traditional beds. Some of them are now used in the rooms of his hotels, while others are set up in his bars. He recalls the first time he decided to put some of his beds in his Shanghai bar in 1999. An official came and asked him to remove them, because the venue was not a hotel. Haidhi explained that the beds were being used mainly for decoration but had a useful secondary function. People did not sleep on them, but they could sit, rest and chat with friends. He also argued that by placing the traditional beds in his bar he was helping to promote Chinese culture. He managed to convince the official to let him keep the beds, and as others followed it gradually became a trend.

Haidhi currently lives in Singapore. Whenever he visits Face Beijing he brings with him recent purchases from his travels, although he says recently he has been trying to buy less.

“One day if I don’t have anything to do, and I have enough space, maybe I will have a museum to display the antiques and show their stories,” he says.

Judging from his passion for his current collection, opening a museum would likely inspire Haidhi to continue to hunt for more perfect treasures to fill it.