VANCOUVER — The Chinese-language Internet is lit up with details that the buyer of a $51.8-million Vancouver mansion was once a duck farmer who became a hotel developer, and is now head of a China-based conglomerate and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a high-profile advisory body in China.
The Vancouver Sun reported last week that businessman Chen Mailin and his Vancouver-based company Chunghwa Investment (Canada) Co. bought the 25,000-square-foot home on three lots in Point Grey.
The deal, which closed December 2014, is thought to be one of the biggest residential sales in B.C.
The sellers were former Vancouver tech entrepreneur Don Mattrick, who is now CEO of San Francisco-based social media gamemaker Zynga, and his wife, Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien-Mattrick, a tech investor and heiress to a Quebec telecom fortune.
Company filings show that in 2014, Mattrick’s pay package at Zynga topped $57.8 million, making him the second highest-paid executive in the Bay Area, after Oracle’s Larry Ellison, according to CNBC.
News of the sale set off interest by Chinese language media outlets based in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, highlighting Chen’s rags-to-riches story, which starts in the Pukou district of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, near Shanghai.
According to media reports, Chen came from a poor family and didn’t finish high school before becoming a labourer and then a factory worker. In 1992, he poured his savings into a duck farm. When that failed, he borrowed money to start a hotel, leading him into the construction business and the realm of real estate development in China.
Today, the website of Nanjing Dingye Investment Group, which builds skyscrapers and has business divisions in property development, pharmaceuticals, hotel management and textiles, lists Chen as its chairman.
Chen’s company bio says he was born in 1969 and represents Nanjing city at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which has thousands of delegates.
In Canada, Chen has bought and sold other properties in Metro Vancouver, including the most recent sale of a $10.5-million Shaughnessy home at 1550 Laurier Ave in December.
According to agents, the high end of the city’s luxury market is drawing interest from buyers with cash from mainland China, including Canadian citizens, residents and visitors.
