ENG-1988 — Page 25

STATE OF THE ARTS

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that education. Ninety-six per cent of children leaving school these days have at least three years of secondary schooling with some formal music tuition or group choral experience, such as choirs or recorder bands. One pleasing development is the significant increase in the publication of books in Chinese in the past 10 to 12 years, even if most of it is what Urban Councillor Lo King-man would describe as ‘leisure reading'. However, he believes this is stimulating public interest in reading with the possibility that it could lead to deeper and more serious subjects.

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In the field of culture, many of the children at local schools vie for annual awards in the Schools Music Festival and its accompanying Speech and Drama Festival. Launched more than 40 years ago by the late Donald Fraser, the festivals today attract more than 120 000 – or about one in 10 of the school population and last three weeks each. Leading international musicians and instrumentalists attend as adjudicators. The lists of past winners include some of Hong Kong's most talented performers and instrumentalists, including the Wu sisters, Melody, Enloc and Mary, violinists Raymond Leung and Ivan Chan, Violet Lam, a film music composer, Julia Hsiao, associate concert master with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others. So popular is the event that many of those who took part have kept their school choral groups together, providing about 90 per cent of the choirs active in Hong Kong today. The festival secretariat not only holds annual competitions - and its prizewinners' festival is a major event in the musical calendar but is also involved in teaching students and holding workshops for teachers in instruments; these range from the humble recorder to the piano. It also helps teachers develop their proficiency in organising choral speech.

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The Schools Music Festival is one of a number assisting in the musical training of students, though pride of place at the tertiary level goes to the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club-funded $308 million Academy for Performing Arts. The Jockey Club has, in addition, pumped $31 million into performing arts groups since 1971, donated $4 million to the Hong Kong Arts Centre and given numerous scholarships to help students with their education. Its next venture is to set up Hong Kong's third university at a cost of $1.5 billion. Let none say that the punter's passion to plunge money on horses in an exercise in futility; the community certainly gains handsomely in this and many other ways.

If the sixties were years when the population demonstrated increasing self-consciousness and maturity, particularly following the bank runs of 1965, the Star Ferry riots of 1966 and the backlash of China's Cultural Revolution in 1967, Hong Kong also realised it needed more than housing schemes, primary education and a dash of social welfare to build a sense of belonging. There were large gaps in our social planning and the arrival of a dynamic Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, the former Political Adviser to the Hong Kong Government, raised hopes that some of the more glaring of these gaps would be filled. He governed somewhat ruthlessly by postwar standards, but with a Legislative Council and a civil service that stood in awe of him, many new initiatives were launched, and no part of local life fared better than the arts, sports and recreation.

It was not one man alone who achieved this breakthrough; rather it was his recognition of what others were saying and doing, and the encouragement he gave them. MacLehose was not the only strong-minded activist of those years. Another who deserves credit was the Chairman of the Urban Council, Mr A. de O. Sales, who brought an imperious Iberian determination to the task of spreading the cultural gospel to many parts of the territory. With government funds and active Urban Council support, new town halls were built in Tsuen Wan, Sha Tin and Tuen Mun, while multi-purpose facilities such as the Ko Shan