HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
localization was put in place. The management only replaces an expatriate with a Chinese player when a suitable Chinese player is available thus the quality of the music has been maintained and sometimes even improved.
Just imagine that all of a sudden the Chairman of the Management Committee was replaced by a hardline racist. The first thing he did was to propose the replacement of all expatriate players in six months' time with local Chinese players with full knowledge that any replacement in such short notice will guarantee deterioration in the quality of the music. The Chairman is not worried as he prefers Beijing Opera to any western music and in any case he will eventually return to his native Beijing after his term of office. Above all, he will be remembered as the first chairman to have completely localized the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. That will score him high marks with folks back home in Beijing. The Chairman is no fool as he is skilled in political manoeuvres. He only made a proposal and on top of that he asked for counter proposals. His proposal will have to be approved by the Committee and therefore he will not be seen as the person ultimately responsible for the realization of his proposal. Meanwhile he also manages to replace some Committee members with well respected avant garde intellectual young politicians who are temporarily mesmerized by his dazzling revolutionary approach. I hope in time, these young politicians will become seasoned enough to realize that under the camouflage the package has devastating effects over the logical development of localization of the Orchestra. The Chairman has, in this case, under estimated the intelligence of these young local politicians. Like their compatriot in the mainland, these young people are all capable of a 180 degrees change once they see the lights.
Let us now imagine what will happen in six months time when all the expatriate players are replaced. The replacement local players are mostly players familiar with the Chinese instruments, and they excel in playing Chinese music but they are now forced to pick up the western instruments and play, e.g. Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2 in E minor Op 27. Our new replacement Chinese players are musician in their own rights, though they may not be well versed in western musical philosophy or technique, they will somehow manage to produce some sound out of their western instruments. Therefore, there will still be some kind of music produced by the new orchestra but it will not be the high quality of music we are used to in Hong Kong today. What then is the point of having an all Chinese philharmonic orchestra which can only produce second rate music. If the point is purely to have a mono skin colour amongst the membership of the orchestra then I think the Chairman has got his priorities wrong. The present Urban Council performs well in its task and its membership consists of the best of both worlds namely the elected and the appointed. There is no need to change now nor after 1997 as the Urban Council's work is different from that of the LegCo and it requires the present combination of councillors to fulfil its managerial orientated role. Even if one introduces the relevant functional constituencies into the membership of the Council, there still will be a gap of quality which will be missing in the membership. Such quality can only be found amongst the appointed members who are not keen to join the election process but are eager to contribute their expertise towards community work. In view of the fact that on many recent occasions our Council has, by vast majority, indicated our objections to the abolition, I would urge Mr. PATTEN to reconsider his proposal to abolish the appointed system in the membership of the Urban Council otherwise come 1995 our city life will only be enriched by second rate music in our ears.
With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.
PROFESSOR LEUNG PING-CHUNG (in English):-Mr. Chairman, I am afraid I will not be as political as my colleagues, but I hope my voice can be as magnetic.
Last year I talked about Hygiene Problems and emphasized particularly on food health. We have had contaminated vegetables and we were uncertain about our fresh fishes. Eating is so important to the citizens that they are uniformly understanding and tolerant towards problematic food items. When vegetables were found contaminated with insecticide, most people refrained from consuming those vegetables. A few days or a week later, people forgot about the unhappy reports and started eating those vegetables again. They had a good idea on avoiding the consumption during the acute episode of outbreak of food poisoning, but have no idea about protecting themselves in view of possible future episodes. Indeed, with this temperament of our citizens, we experienced seven to eight outbreaks of food poisoning related to insecticide contamination in the past four years, and our citizens remained calm and tolerant. Nevertheless, whenever we had a new episode of similar nature, immediately, people and the media turned panic again; only calming down equally quickly.
The cleanliness of live seafood received a similarly sensational public attention. First was the polluted sea water which was a well known fact to all. Then living fishes were kept in such water before human consumption. What an outrageous crime! Politicians and the media were all deeply concerned. A powerful group of reporters, in their zest to prove the worrying contamination, got hold of samples of seafood from various sources, kept them in ordinary plastic bags for more than a day (presumably in a refrigerator, I hope) and sent them to a private laboratory for analysis of pathogen contamination and harmful chemical contents. The results come back, as expected, were appalling. Seafood kept for a day in dry containers, formed excellent breeding ground for pathogens. The sensational reaction achieved was paramount.
I talked about scientific approach last year to practical health problems. Reacting to probable health hazards with sheer emotion does not do any real good to the problem. If for some reasons the import of insecticide contaminated vegetables continued in spite of all attempts to control, the citizens have to be warned about the constant danger and they need to start protecting themselves by proper means of vegetable washing and vegetable preparation so that
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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
localization was put in place. The management only replaces an expatriate with a Chinese player when a suitable Chinese player is available thus the quality of the music has been maintained and sometimes even improved.
Just imagine that all of a sudden the Chairman of the Management Committee was replaced by a hardline racist. The first thing he did was to propose the replacement of all expatriate players in six months' time with local Chinese players with full knowledge that any replacement in such short notice will guarantee deterioration in the quality of the music. The Chairman is not worried as he prefers Beijing Opera to any western music and in any case he will eventually return to his native Beijing after his term of office. Above all, he will be remembered as the first chairman to have completely localized the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. That will score him high marks with folks back home in Beijing. The Chairman is no fool as he is skilled in political manoeuvres. He only made a proposal and on top of that he asked for counter proposals. His proposal will have to be approved by the Committee and therefore he will not be seen as the person ultimately responsible for the realization of his proposal. Meanwhile he also manages to replace some Committee members with well respected avant garde intellectual young politicians who are temporarily mesmerized by his dazzling revolutionary approach. I hope in time, these young politicians will become seasoned enough to realize that under the camouflage the package has devastating effects over the logical development of localization of the Orchestra. The Chairman has, in this case, under estimated the intelligence of these young local politicians. Like their compatriot in the mainland, these young people are all capable of a 180 degrees change once they see the lights.
Let us now imagine what will happen in six months time when all the expatriate players are replaced. The replacement local players are mostly players familiar with the Chinese instruments, and they excel in playing Chinese music but they are now forced to pick up the western instruments and play, e.g. Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2 in E minor Op 27. Our new replacement Chinese players are musician in their own rights, though they may not be well versed in western musical philosophy or technique, they will somehow manage to produce some sound out of their western instruments. Therefore, there will still be some kind of music produced by the new orchestra but it will not be the high quality of music we are used to in Hong Kong today. What then is the point of having an all Chinese philharmonic orchestra which can only produce second rate music. If the point is purely to have a mono skin colour amongst the membership of the orchestra then I think the Chairman has got his priorities wrong. The present Urban Council performs well in its task and its membership consists of the best of both worlds namely the elected and the appointed. There is no need to change now nor after 1997 as the Urban Council's work is different from that of the LegCo and it requires the present combination of councillors to fulfil its managerial orientated role. Even if one introduces the relevant functional constituencies into the membership of the Council, there still will be a gap of quality which will be missing in
Page 95 of 126
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
167
the membership. Such quality can only be found amongst the appointed members who are not keen to join the election process but are eager to contribute their expertise towards community work. In view of the fact that on many recent occasions our Council has, by vast majority, indicated our objections to the abolition, I would urge Mr. PATTEN to reconsider his proposal to abolish the appointed system in the membership of the the Urban Council otherwise come 1995 our city life will only be enriched by second rate music in
our ears.
With these remarks, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.
PROFESSOR LEUNG PING-CHUNG (in English):-Mr. Chairman, I am afraid I will not be as political as my colleagues, but I hope my voice can be as magnetic.
Last year I talked about Hygiene Problems and emphasized particularly on food health. We have had contaminated vegetables and we were uncertain about our fresh fishes. Eating is so important to the citizens that they are uniformly understanding and tolerant towards problematic food items. When vegetables were found contaminated with insecticide, most people refrained from consuming those vegetables. A few days or a week later, people forgot about the unhappy reports and started eating those vegetables again. They had a good idea on avoiding the consumption during the acute episode of outbreak of food poisoning, but have no idea about protecting themselves in view of possible future episodes. Indeed, with this temperament of our citizens, we experienced seven to eight outbreaks of food poisoning related to insecticide contamination in the past four years, and our citizens remained calm and tolerant. Nevertheless, whenever we had a new episode of similar nature, immediately, people and the media turned panic again; only calming down equally quickly.
The cleanliness of live seafood received a similarly sensational public attention. First was the polluted sea water which was a well known fact to all. Then living fishes were kept in such water before human consumption. What an outrageous crime! Politicians and the media were all deeply concerned. A powerful group of reporters, in their zest to prove the worrying contamination, got hold of samples of seafood from various sources, kept them in ordinary plastic bags for more than a day (presumably in a refrigerator, I hope) and sent them to a private laboratory for analysis of pathogen contamination and harmful chemical contents. The results come back, as expected, were appalling. Seafood kept for a day in dry containers, formed excellent breeding ground for pathogens. The sensational reaction achieved was paramount.
I talked about scientific approach last year to practical health problems. Reacting to probable health hazards with sheer emotion does not do any real good to the problem. If for some reasons the import of insecticide contaminated vegetables continued in spite of all attempts to control, the citizens have to be warned about the constant danger and they need to start protecting themselves by proper means of vegetable washing and vegetable preparation so that
Page 95 of 126
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