The story of Au Bak Ling is somewhat of a Hong Kong legend. At eight years old, he started work to help support his family. In his early 10s, when the city plunged into Japanese hands, the young Au Bak Ling not merely survived, but started his own business, Ling Kee, which would become the largest supplier of school textbooks in Hong Kong and an international conglomerate. While his name is known to many as a publisher, there's a less-familiar side of him: a Chinese Ceramics collector. 

His first foray into the ceramic world was in 1974, when he attended an auction with a friend. At the time, he was a total novice: no catalogue, no knowledge, and no one to advise him, but he simply grabbed a paddle, bidding on anything that appealed to him. That day, he walked out the door taking fourteen lots home, with a newfound passion that would last until his death. 

Through rigorous effort and a drive to pursue the very best, Au Bak Ling became one of the most esteemed collectors in the field, amassing what is known as the best encyclopedia on imperial Chinese porcelains. 

Now, for the first time ever, pieces from this renowned collection will be offered in the auction market and on view in Asia. In celebration of Christie's relocation of Asia-Pacific headquarters to The Henderson, on 26 September the auction house will present The Au Bak Ling Collection: The Inaugural Sale, which features 19 pieces from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, as well as the early 20th century; alongside the auction will be a special exhibition showcasing further highlights from the collection. 

Although successful in any field he pursued, Au Bak Ling always maintained a low profile. His collection, therefore, is well-known by its reputation but few actually have a chance to view what's inside it. Two known pieces, though, are sufficient enough to speak for its quality. 

The first is a Ming-dynasty "chicken cup", the holy grail of China's art world. Named after their imagery of cocks, hens, and chicks, these tiny porcelain wine cups, created in the Chenghua reign (1465-1487) in the doucai palette, have been praised and desired by emperors and literati collectors through the centuries for their tactile material, new range of colors, and uncontrived painting style. Already at its time, it held a reverence similar to that for the jeweled fabergé egg of Russia. 

Today, no more than twenty authentic examples of a Chenghua "chicken cup" are known to have survived, with most in public museums and only around four in private hands, making them extremely rare finds on the market. In 2014, when another example came up for auction in Hong Kong, it fetched a whopping HK$281.2 million (US$36 million), setting the then-auction record for Chinese porcelain; the buyer was Liu Yiqian, the billionaire collector behind Shanghai's Long Museum. 

A doucai "chicken cup" | Mark and period of Chenghua | Sold: HK$281,240,000 (US$36 million), Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2014 (Not from the Au Bak Ling Collection)

The second crowning glory of the Au Bak Ling Collection is the fabled Ru guanyao, the official ware of the late Northern Song (960-1127) court. Renowned for its ethereal shade of sky blue and muted elegance, over the course of a millennium the Ru has gained mythical status and been regarded as the pinnacle to which each successive generation of collectors – including numerous emperors – has aspired. 

Besides its distinctive luminous glaze, part of the Ru's allure comes from its outstanding rarity – they are and always were virtually unobtainable. With a limited scale of production spanning merely around twenty years, the quantity ever made was inevitably small, and even today less than 100 complete ones are recognized in international collections, the vast majority in museums. 

What Au Bak Ling held in his collection was a Ru dish previously in the esteemed collections of C.T. Loo and Stephen Junkunc III. He snapped it up in 1992 at Christie's New York, for a stunning US$1.54 million – a world record price for Chinese porcelain at the time. In 2017, another Ru ware, a brush washer, sold for HK$294 million (US$37.7 million) also to Liu Yiqian, once again setting a then-auction record. 

In 1998, for the first and only time, a selection of Au Bak Ling's ceramic treasures was unveiled at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. That exhibition, titled 100 Masterpieces of Imperial Chinese Ceramics from the Au Bak Ling Collection, was the first ceramics exhibition from a single private owner to be held at the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. 

At the time, the show's curator Regina Krahl revealed, "The value of the collection is pretty phenomenal. We are talking about a tremendous number of zeros if you tried to give a total figure – we are probably talking about something close to £100 million." 

On display there was a relatively small proportion of his encyclopedic collection of best pieces from the 12th to 18th centuries, many never before been seen in public. Notably, at least two highlights from the exhibition will be on view at Christie's Hong Kong: the top lot of the augural sale, a Yongle blue and white pear-shaped vase (pictured above), which is the only example of this pattern in private hands, and a unique, not-for-sale Chenghua doucai stem cup with birds on fruiting branches (pictured below), which will be included at Christie's special exhibition in Hong Kong from 22 to 25 September. 

A typical self-made man, Au Bak Ling was born in 1928 into a family of meager means in Hong Kong and had to start work at the age of eight. When he was ten, he was forced to leave the free school he was attending, in order to help his father run a small second-hand bookstall. 

In December 1941, war broke out in Asia-Pacific and Hong Kong fell into the hands of the Japanese troops. Au was thirteen at the time, but found himself saddled with the responsibility of supporting the whole family throughout the three years and eight months of painful war days: many died of starvation, while Au himself fortunately escaped a bomb blast. Nevertheless, two years later, he formally started a business under his own name, Ling Kee. 

Soon, he realized the only way forward was self-cultivation, and his first step was to study English. With one dictionary and two pronunciation guides, he went on to attain an excellent command of both spoken and written English that allowed him to gain knowledge on diverse European subjects – as a Chinese kid he knew about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, as well as the works of the great German writer Goethe. 

Talent plus this self-enhancement, ultimately transformed him and changed his destiny. The young entrepreneur later expanded his stock, ordered new books from England, and entered the wholesale side of the book trade – a market the British publishing houses had dominated in Hong Kong for over 120 years. Yet under Au's prudent management, Ling Kee became the city's largest supplier of school textbooks. 

His success in publishing led him to diversify his business interests, and today Ling Kee Group operates as a global conglomerate with six divisions – including educational publishing, IT, land development, property investment, manufacturing, and hotel – comprising almost 50 companies worldwide.

"What you have gained from the community must, at least in some measure, be returned to the community," Au Bak Ling once said. 

In 2008, when the global financial crisis hit hard and caused mass layoffs in Hong Kong, Au saw on television men in suits scrambling for food from garbage cans. Deeply shocked and saddened by the scene, he founded the Au Bak Ling Charity Trust in 2009, which has, as of this year, donated more than 3.2 million kg of rice to more than 60,000 poverty-stricken families and individuals. 

As a successful educational publisher, Au also spared no effort in helping the young. The Au Bak Ling Charity Trust Scholarship Scheme, for instance, is established to support disadvantaged students studying to become teachers in Hong Kong, China, and Canada. It was his hope that the aspiring teachers would view a lifelong career of educating youth as a sacred mission, and would devote their efforts to nurturing tomorrow’s leaders.

While Au lived with his collection, he always reminded himself that he was just "the custodian and not the owner of the piece in perpetuity". It was therefore his wish to release part of his prized collection to the next generation of collectors after he passed away. Honouring his philanthropic spirit in giving back to society, a portion of the proceeds from the Au Bak Ling Collection sale will be donated to charitable causes. 

Auction Details:

Auction House: Christie's Hong Kong
Sale: The Au Bak Ling Collection: The Inaugural Sale
Date and Time: 26 September 2024 | 7:00 pm (Hong Kong local time)
Number of Lots: 19
Auction Preview and The Au Bak Ling Collection Special Exhibition: 22 - 25 September 2024
Address: 6/F, The Henderson, 2 Murray Road, Central, Hong Kong