Chinese painting
Tsao has been publicly recognized by the World Congress of Chinese Collectors as the leading American collector of Chinese painting of his generation. Over his almost 50-year professional career based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he built and helped to build several important collections of Chinese painting, and was friends with significant figures in the Chinese art world. He authored a number of scholarly works on Chinese painting and calligraphy, and collections he assembled have been the subjects of research and exhibition projects by major museums, art academies, and publishing houses.