12
STATE OF THE ARTS
radio and later television. Radio made its debut in Hong Kong in 1928 with the setting up of an English language station by the government, ZBW, to be followed in 1934 by a Chinese station, ZEK. Commercial interests fluffed the chance to be first on the airwaves and in any case the government felt that the best way of retaining control was to launch its own type of 'BBC', humble and amateurish though it was at first. It did however feature both local artistes and good music on records and its place in the history of Hong Kong's cultural development deserves recognition. This embryo Radio Hong Kong and the Eng- lish language press of the prewar years were the first promoters of the arts though their role remained indirect for many years. Serious criticism of the arts was never a popular pastime in the media, though in the early postwar years, the South China Morning Post's Father Ryan's comments on music and records, to be taken up in later years by Ruth Kirby, and Father Sheridan on drama, filled a void that was almost as bleak as the cultural desert itself. Today all newspapers attempt reviews and criticisms on some scale, but while those in the English press enjoy the services of professionals, those in the Chinese media, in the words of a dedicated reader, range between 'the superficial and the unintelligible.' The media does, however, open a small window on Hong Kong's artistic output, and with many people enjoying greater prosperity, more leisure time and money to spend on films, entertainment and travel, there is a rising interest in what the arts world has to offer.
Looking Back
We must keep in mind the difference between what enlightens and what merely entertains. The pop scene in Hong Kong with its hotbed of pulsating, electronically-stimulated warblers, claims far greaters devotees than the Philharmonic Orchestra or the best Chinese opera, often at far higher prices and playing to a far younger age group. While not denying the ascendancy of the Alan Tams and the Anita Muis as big crowd-pullers, man – and woman cannot live on jam alone: the bread and butter of art is equally impressive.
But before considering today's scene, it is essential to cast an eye backwards on the last 25 years since the City Hall was built to trace the development that has taken place in the years and to see how the cultural desert has turned into something of a cultural jungle.
They say that a country without history has no culture. How true in Hong Kong's case. For there are few families with long memories of the colonial past; Hong Kong attracted people to live here because it offered hope of a better way of life than in dynastic China. The population grew slowly, and when the Japanese invasion engulfed the city in 1941 it lost two-thirds, most never to return. Again, when the civil war broke out in China, Hong Kong gained a new population innocent of the ways of British colonialism and whose memories of China were dominated by the bitterness and oppression of war, suffering, hunger, sickness, torment and upheaval.
In Hong Kong, while the decade of the sixties was no bed of clover and the seventies were years of rising social expectations, a sense of attachment, belonging and stability emerged. So much so, indeed, that the events of the 1980s evoked a sense of keen disappointment and frustration, posing a dilemma in the minds of many of whether to pack their bags and leave once again or to stay and give the new Special Administrative Region a chance.
A strong streak of cynicism is apparent in much of the new work of dramatists and writers at the present time, yet it is a far more literate age and a far better and more roundly educated population than ever before. Only 12 per cent of the population are illiterate, and those mostly in an older age bracket. Whatever criticisms are made of Hong Kong's postwar education system and in spite of all the tedious gear-changing of the past three decades, the achievements are impressive not only in numbers educated but in the quality of