An Inner Mongolian milk mogul builds his own Xanadu

Somewhere outside the city limits of Ordos, far from the coal piles that dot the plains of Inner Mongolia, a freshly-paved road leads the eye across the tall grass of the Gobi desert towards a faded blue sky. This is a picture postcard view of Genghis Khan's fabled frontier, a placid scene of dunes that stretches so far it's easy to see why the Mongolian conqueror kept pushing forward, first across ancient China, then into Persia, and on to the gates of Vienna.

Today, however, piles of freshly dug earth along the highway speak of an altogether different frontier. Past the dunes, the modern granite and glass façade of the 2,700 sqm Ordos Art Museum rises into view, like an unused set piece in an Orson Welles film. What makes it even more striking is that it's practically the only building visible on the windswept steppe.

But not for long. If all goes according to plan, within a decade the museum will be surrounded by a brand new city boasting 100 villas, an opera house, residences and a business center on a 30-acre patch of land – each to be designed by a leading international architect. "It's crazy," says Ai Weiwei, the Beijing artist who designed the grouping of artist studios that sit next to the museum.

Echoing these sentiments, Michael Tunkey, another architect, points out, "It's one of those projects that could only be done in China."

The museum and the surrounding new town are the brainchild of 40-year-old entrepreneur Cai Jiang, who made his fortune with a uniquely Inner Mongolian combination of coal and milk. His low, raspy voice and ever-present Cuban cigar suggests 1970s Las Vegas by way of 13th-century Mongolia. As with most ethnic Mongolians, Cai counts Genghis Khan as an ancestor, and wears a tattoo of the conqueror on his left arm, a relic of his days spent driving trucks in the military. In the late 1990s, Cai developed a taste for contemporary Chinese art.

"Mostly it's a hobby," he says. Nevertheless, his collection includes eminent artists such as Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi and Miao Xiaochun, whose works hang in the mansion he keeps in Baotou, his industrial hometown. The rest of his collection hangs in the Ordos museum. "As long as it's contemporary art, I'll collect it," he says. "I've got no specific, personal preference."

Cai may have no pretensions as an art expert, but he's eager to offer his opinion on how his "cultural city" can improve the art world. "You don't need to know how a cow makes milk, but you do need to know how to sell it," he says.

Unlike many of the country's elite developers, Cai describes his RMB 7 billion project – known rather clumsily as the Jiangyuan Culture Creative Industrial Park – with a sense of social concern. "Right now, Inner Mongolia and Ordos are very rich. But I realized there is something missing from the city, like a culture of art," he says.

Underscoring his commitment to mixing art and urbanism, Cai intends for each building at Jiangyuan to have its own star architect. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the architects of Beijing's new 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium, have visited the site and may design a master plan for it. Already they've helped Cai develop a list of 100 international architects. British-Iraqi sensation Zaha Hadid has been asked to build an opera house, and another large building, Cai says, could be built by Frank Gehry. But for now, the only completed building on-site is the excellent museum, designed by rising Chinese architect Xu Tiantian, head of Beijing-based firm DnA.

Luxury villas, large apartment buildings, a university, exhibition center, opera house, cinema, and even a Harley Davidson Cafe (Cai owns four of the American motorcycles) are all slated to rise within the next five years.

The grand, Dubai-esque architectural flourish, he hopes, will be enough to draw crowds, even international visitors, to the city, which lies 600 kilometers from Beijing, and is not easily accessible by air. Concerts, performances, exhibitions and international conferences will help.

With its vision and location – on the Mongolian hinterlands and the heady frontier of China's new-moneyed urban landscape – Cai's new city evokes Xanadu, the fabled summer home of the Mongol empire (made world famous by Coleridge's masterly yet unfinshed poem), the ruins of which lie some 300 kilometers to the east of Ordos. It also hints at the other Xanadu, the lavish, unfinished estate of Charles Kane, the fictional American media baron in Orson Welles' film 'Citizen Kane'. The film's famous opening sequence describes that palatial manor as "the costliest monument of a man to himself." Quite.

Yet the resonances with the Mongolian Xanadu, at least, are not lost on Cai.

"I want this to be the best cultural and economic center in all of the north," says Cai, tapping his Cuban cigar and smiling with pleasure, "or even in China herself."