A lot of changes occurred in Shanghai while Charlie Tu was in Norway for 17 years but he was able to put the experience he  gained abroad to good use on his return. Douglas Williams talks to the entrepreneur in one of his Shanghai properties, the Scandinavia bar.

Charlie Tu, owner of the Scandinavia bar at 1875 Nanjing Road W., spent 17 years in Norway before returning to Shanghai, his hometown. — DW

Take two imaginary Shanghainese men and one who is real. Imaginary Chen wears a tailor-made suit that looks the business but actually cost him around 200 yuan (US$24.69). He wears a fake Omega watch, 30 yuan; a heavy-looking necklace, 80 yuan; shiny shoes, 160 yuan and has a 10-yuan haircut. He rides a girl’s bicycle that’s 10 years old, works for a graphic arts company and lives with his folks. He makes 1,600 yuan a month.
Next, there’s imaginary Zhu who has a suit that looks very similar to Chen’s but his was bought at Ermenegildo Zegna and cost 10,000 yuan. His Omega is real and cost 60,000 yuan. His shoes are handmade and cost 6,000 yuan, his heavylooking necklace is actually platinum, 400 grams and worth 150,000 yuan. His hair stylist comes to him and bills every six months. He is chauffeurdriven in a Lexus, is in real estate and manufacturing, has several properties and spends a lot of his time in Sanya on Hainan Island in South China.
Nobody’s very sure how much money he makes, least of all Zhu.
The point I’m trying to make is that Chen and Zhu look very similar but are actually rather different.
Then we have Charlie Tu (the real thing), owner and manager of the Scandinavia bar at 1875 Nanjing Road W. near its junction with Wulumuqi Road N. When we meet, he is wearing a loose muscle T-shirt, track suit bottoms and flip flops. He owns a car but has only driven it four times because he prefers to use his scooter. He has over a dozen substantial properties in Shanghai including his Scandinavia bar, two properties in St Petersburg, Russia, and he has spent 17 years living in Oslo, Norway.
That’s his story up to now; much more is afoot, more of which at a later date. He is also, somewhat idiosyncratically,one of the first people to perform country and western music to a Chinese audience back in 1983. More importantly, Tu is a very happy chappie. Those who say that the clothes make the man are wrong.
Tu left China in 1987 travelling overland via Mongolia, Moscow and Budapest to Oslo. Not long after arriving there he was arrested on suspicion of espionage, his self-taught English going against what the Norwegians expected of a Chinese. However, a kindly vicar helped Tu out and before he knew it, he had a Norwegian passport. “I remember my early days in Norway as very hard and lonely,” Tu says. “I found the Norwegians not very accepting of foreigners, it was a valuable lesson. Now in my bar I make sure everyone feels totally welcome.”
Using skills he’d learnt in Shanghai in anticipation of his trip he finally got a break in Oslo as an interior designer. “I worked for an interior designing company with this graphic artist. I’d come up with the ideas, he’d draw them and we’d work together till his drawings were exactly the same as my ideas,” says the guitar and piano player and speaker of five languages. Word soon got round and demand for Tu’s interiors rocketed. “Norway is a rich country, many people don’t worry about money, when they want something doing they just want it doing in a particular way, they don’t ask how much it will cost,” Tu says.
Romance, in the shape of Tu’s now ex-wife, took him to Russia and the beautiful city of St Petersburg where she resides today with his son. But by now his hometown of Shanghai was calling. He’d read about the changes taking place in Shanghai, he’d seen the pictures so home he came and to a very different city than the one he’d left 17 years before. “I couldn’t believe it. When I left, the Park Hotel was the highest building; when I returned it was dwarfed. Pudong had been just a marsh with some huts but now ... and all the highways and fly-overs it was just unbelievable,” Tu says with perhaps a touch of emotion in his voice.
Now Tu’s thing is renovating old villas in the former French concession area of the city. With his business partner and his knowledge of interior design he is transforming 1930s properties and leasing and on-selling them.
“When I first returned to Shanghai I was spending a lot of time in bars and clubs so I decided, partly just for fun as a hobby, to open my own bar,” he says, and the Scandinavia came into being. “It used to be just 1.6 meters high and it was really dirty and horrible. We spent a month on reconstruction and another on the interior which is all handmade.”
The result is a proper, oldfashioned pub complete with lovely horseshoe bar. Cozy and friendly and with a better-thanaverage pool table it is, nevertheless, in a slightly out-of-the-way part of town. Tunes are of The Eagles/Rod Stewart era but played at an unobtrusive level. A pint of Carlsberg is 40 yuan.
“The quality of your life depends on the quality of your decisions. My decision to leave China when I did was the right one and my decision to return was also right,” says the sartorially challenged, though otherwise gifted, Tu in philosophical mode. It’s a mode, one suspects, he’s never far away from.