The opening this week of Shang Palace restaurant will at long last answer an unresolved question: Is Paris ready for truly gourmet Chinese cuisine and the prices that come with it?

That the capital of fine dining might give an ambitious Asian eatery the cold shoulder is not unimaginable.

For most French people, Chinese eats rhymes with bottom-of-the-food-chain takeout, not 80 euros for lunch and 120 for dinner per head.

Only one Chinese establishment in Paris has ever shined in the Michelin Guide firmament, and then only fleetingly. Modest by comparison, Chen Soleil-Est earned its lone star — literally front page news across France — in 1999 and lost it in 2007.

In April 2009, Louis Vuitton installed a trio of beehives on the roof of its Parisian headquarters. Since then the hives have welcomed as many as 200,000 bees.

Hives installed in the middle of a city can actually yield up to four times the amount of honey those in the country produce according to French beekeepers association.

Two years later, the buzzy guests have gathered 75kg of nectar and produced enough honey that Vuitton decided to bottle the fruits of its apiculture.

Paris will be hosting the first combined culinary and couture show next week in which some iconic fashion and pastry houses collaborate for an outdoor, sensory exhibit.

In the grandeur of the city’s Palais Royal, fashion houses like Christian Dior and French celebrity chefs like Jean-Francois Piège and Jean-Georges Vongerichten will exhibit their interpretations of how haute cuisine and haute couture merge.

Artisans in both trades must master techniques, a “savoir-faire” and possess a vision to reach the height of their craft, organizers point out.

The Mandarin Oriental opened its doors in Paris on Tuesday, becoming the third top-end Asian hotel brand in less than a year to put out its shingle and woo rich visitors to the French capital.

Newly built behind a 1930s facade, the eight-story property on fashionable Rue Saint Honore boasts 99 rooms and 39 suites going for an average of 950 euros a night.

“We absolutely wanted to be in the best arrondissement, the best location for leisure travellers,” said Christoph Mares, director of operations for Europe.

Hotel chain Mandarin Oriental will open its first Paris branch on June 28, the latest of several Asian firms to enter the competitive French luxury hospitality market.

The 138-room hotel is in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore in central Paris, not far from traditional French rivals such as the Meurice and the Ritz.

French tourism authorities last month launched a rare new hotel classification, crowning eight of the most chic with “palace” status, which goes beyond five stars to reward what they call “French-style excellence.”

London will lead the world in terms of international tourist arrivals this year, according to new research released June 1 by MasterCard.

The new index of Global Destination Cities predicts London will receive 20.1 million inbound passengers in 2011, slightly more than Paris’s 18.1 million.

Bangkok is expected to welcome the third-highest number of visitors, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong — in fact, cities in Asia-Pacific account for eight of the top 20 global destinations.