Consider this. Shangri-La’s first hotel in China was in Hangzhou – it took over a government-owned hotel, renovated and restored it, and opened it in 1984. Early signs of a regime recognizing it needed to change and finding comfort in an Asian-owned family-feeling kind of company.

(Picture: General manager George Wee in the cheese room)

Then slowly the group grew its network in China – today more than half of its 71 hotels are on the mainland. One of its earlier hotels and flagship in Beijing – China World Hotel – was imperial, opulent, full of reds and golds and Chinese symbolism. Early signs of a modern China rising to embrace its heritage and culture with pride, and to show that off to international visitors.

Fast forward to 2011 and the group has launched a new brand, Kerry Hotels. The first Kerry Hotel is in Pudong, Shanghai, and it is still luxurious but modern, lighter, crisper. The brand promise is “luxury in an informal setting”. Early signs of a post-modern China whose urban citizens, at least, have moved from making a living to living a lifestyle, where wine has replaced mao tai and fine cheese is the new dumpling.

There are still touches of Shangri-La in the Kerry Hotel, Pudong – the chandeliers are a giveaway, this is a group that loves its chandeliers – and the staff have to learn to relax more, be a bit more improvisational and confident and this has to come from management for the new brand to deliver on its “informal” promise – but everything about this new hotel screams “lifestyle” and “aspirations”, in line with the desires of a new generation of Chinese.

It’s also trying to tell a story through its food & beverage concept – THE BREW, THE COOK, THE MEAT. A neat idea but a lot will depend on execution of the story-telling.

The idea is you enjoy home-brewed beer, then you go onto either to THE COOK for a choice of 11 live cooking stations or THE MEAT for the finest steaks in town.

At THE BREW, master brewer Leon Mickelson (left), a Kiwi, is ever ready with his stories of beer brewing as he takes you on a tour of his facility.

At THE COOK, you can watch the chefs in action, talk to them – although they too have to learn to be more forthcoming – learn about Malaysian noodles from Sarawak and cheeses and ham from Alex, who is of Scottish-French descent.

THE MEAT has Beijing’s first meat-ageing room, I am told it helps meat age beautifully. I wish I could live in there. The signature item will be rib-eye carved from a piece of meat called the “Ningaloo Tomahawk”.

And there’s also a story attached to this wonderfully-named item. General manager George Wee was in a steakhouse in Perth when the chef brought him the biggest slab of meat he’d ever seen. The chef then proceeded to make such a performance of carving it that Wee was so impressed he asked the chef for a regular supply.

“It was just the drama of it,” he told me – a drama that will be repeated to patrons of THE MEAT/

I find this pretty symbolic. In the old days, every Chinese restaurant had to have a live noodle-making demonstration to please the foreign visitor. Today, it’s live steak-carving performances to please the Chinese traveler.

For make no mistake, while Kerry Hotel, Pudong, will have its fair share of foreign guests, most of its customers will be domestic, affluent Chinese. It is part of an integrated residential-office-retail development called Kerry Parkside in Pudong New Area, which is also home to some of the most expensive real estate this side of Shanghai.

Its conference and banqueting facilities are very impressive – so you can guess this is where the money will come from to fund the “fun” part of the hotel, stories of which will generate buzz in media, blogs and social networks like QQ and Weibo.

And oh yes, lest I forget, the hotel has the most enormous gym I’ve ever seen. So big it’s not called a gym but Kerry Sports (right). It’s about 100 times the size of my apartment, has every machine known to keep the urban body in shape and has a resident yoga teacher who hails from Kunming, China.

Ommmm, noodles and tai-chi are making way for steaks and yoga in a new China.