WHEN business woman Zhang Lan walked away with the "The Three Gorges Project," a 10-meter-long canvas by Liu Xiaodong, for 22 million yuan (US$3.14 million) at a 2006 auction in Beijing, many people thought the allegorical masterwork would disappear from public view.However, next month Zhang will unveil the painting at her new club, LAN Lounge & Restaurant, on the Bund. The date has not been fixed, but artist Liu is expected to be there.The LAN Club, which cost several hundred million yuan, is a luxury four-story fun palace, restaurant, bar and art gallery.The painting to be exhibited at the gallery on third floor depicts the harsh reality of poor people whose lives were changed by the world's biggest hydroelectric project. Liu calls it an allegory about the price China has paid for its material progress."Frankly, I didn't consider displaying it in any of my restaurants before," says Zhang, director of South Beauty Group. "But LAN is different and I want the diners to share the charisma of this unique painting."Born in 1963 in Liaoning Province, artist Liu graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. In 2003, he started working on a series of large canvases about the changing lives of the people living around the Three Gorges Dam Project that began in 1994.Many people were forced to leave their roots and hometowns, while many arrived for construction work.Director Jia Zhangke's film "Still Life" about separation and changing life in the Gorges won the Golden Bear at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. Jia said the film was inspired by Liu's creation of the vast historical painting.Despite the powerful theme, Liu found a way to record the price of progress without sentimentality or cynicism and to create a psychic landscape of a society in transition. "The Three Gorges Project" is rather like a documentary of the social changes undergone by a group of Chinese people.The many subjects "live a true life without any guise or polishing," says Liu."I am confident that my painting is worth five hundred million yuan, even though I am concerned about the fever toward Chinese contemporary art," the artist said in an earlier interview.Zhang says that a collector recently offered her 60 million yuan for the painting that she purchased at the Beijing Poly auction."But I refused," she says. "This is my precious collection and I won't sell it to others."When asked whether the deep, disturbing meaning of the painting resonates with the luxurious atmosphere of the LAN Club, Zhang replies: "This painting focuses on people at the bottom of society. But a masterpiece should go far beyond any limitation. Art is art. I am sure that every comer to LAN Club will be touched by it."