In the second part of the excellent RTHK series, Success Stories (Pearl, 6.20pm), architect I M Pei talks modestly about a career that is second to none. For us, of course, his work is daily visible in the towering Bank of China Building in Central. In the United States, he is the man to call if you want a new wing for a national art gallery, a library or a museum. And in Paris, he is the foreigner who triumphed over noisy, arrogant local critics and built the famous pyramid outside the Louvre. Born in Guangzhou, he grew up in Shanghai, and emigrated to the US when he was 18, studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard and quickly leapt to the forefront of his profession. He says these days he accepts commissions on the basis of his reaction to the clients, rather than the projects. 'It is the individuals you have to work with, not the site.' It must have been the personal charisma of someone important that changed his mind and allowed him to accept the commission to take on his most recent project, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland. Originally, apparently, he rejected the job, partly because he did not know anything about rock and roll. It took a guided tour around Graceland, and lengthy explanations about the jazz, blues roots of rock and roll to convince him it was an art form all of its own. He is pleased with the result, which is as beautiful as one would expect, but some critics are disappointed with the respectability of the design. 'It does treat rock and roll as if it were dead,' said one. But that seems a deeper criticism of the whole project than a fair knock of Mr Pei's work. Mr Pei only builds Hong Kong institutions; Kai-bong and Brenda Chau, who appear in tonight's episode of A La Mode (World, 8pm), have almost become one. They even appear in tourist guide books, so it was inevitable that the A La Mode team would get around to them sooner rather than later. There has not been a huge amount of originality so far in their list of local celebs, which has included Greg Derham, Pearl Lam, Peter Lau, now the matching Chaus in all their flamboyant glory, and in the last episode, you guessed it: David Tang boasting of his plans to turn Shanghai Tang into a kind of Eastern Marks & Spencer's. We have heard it all before, but to its credit, A La Mode is irreverent enough to make it all worth hearing again. The Chaus explain how they helped to bring Carnaby Street fashion to the territory all those years ago, and show some of their newest outfits.
