Power couple of Chinese art world sell pieces as market falls

Almost a decade ago, Liu Yiqian and his wife Wang Wei went on an art-buying spree in Hong Kong. After swiping his American Express card two dozen times at Sotheby’s, Liu celebrated by drinking from a small cup.

It was a 500-year-old Ming dynasty Meiyintang “chicken cup” for which he had just paid $36.6 million.

The couple bought a Ming dynasty “chicken cup” for $36.6 million in 2014

CORBIS

The couple’s lavish spending from 2014 onwards drew gasps in the art world, viewed as perhaps the most ostentatious example of China’s super rich flexing their muscles on the international stage.

“I have a museum opening to the public,” Liu, a former taxi driver who amassed a fortune betting on China’s booming stock market in the early Nineties, would later explain to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

“If