THERE WAS AN intriguing finale to last week's swearing-in ceremony for Tung Chee-hwa and his new ministers. After the chief executive and his team had taken their oaths, and President Jiang Zemin and Mr Tung had made their speeches, they all settled down to a brief cultural performance at the Convention and Exhibition Centre. It was not a programme of classical or contemporary Chinese music that government officials had put together. Rather, it was an eclectic collection of Western music ranging from Chopin to George Gershwin. Dressed in cowboy hats and bandanas, young Hong Kongers energetically tap-danced and sang their way through I Got Rhythm and I Can't Be Bothered Now, Gershwin songs from the 1930s, as they celebrated the fifth anniversary of the former British colony's return to the motherland. I wonder what Mr Jiang made of it. Watching him sit impassively in the front row, as the performers tapped their heels and toes in front of him singing: 'I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man, who could ask for anything more? I got daisies, in green pastures, I got my man, who could ask for anything more?', it was difficult not to imagine him, perhaps not for the first time, puzzling over what Hong Kong was all about. Why were these Hong Kong performers singing American musicals on what was a solemn national occasion? His applause at the end of the show was measured, unlike the enthusiastic applause of the Hong Kong dignitaries. Just minutes earlier, he had delivered a speech that indicated some frustration with the emotional and cultural gap that still existed between the motherland and its special autonomous region. He urged the people of Hong Kong to enhance their sense of the country and of the nation, and hoped that people of all circles would do a still better job in adapting themselves to the new Hong Kong. Here was evidence that the new Hong Kong is still a very different place from the rest of China - a case of one country, two cultures. Was this the message that the government officials who approved the show were trying to subtly convey? That Hong Kong was still an international city, as comfortable with Western culture as with its Chinese heritage, a bridge between East and West where Chinese people could sing, tap-dance and still be Chinese? It is difficult to tell. There was probably no message intended at all, and the songs and dances were nothing more than an unselfconscious showcasing of Hong Kong's talent. But to me, the choice of music and dance did reveal, whether by accident or design, the extent to which Hong Kong still is, and will in all likelihood remain, an international, Westernised city. In his speech, Mr Jiang had put his finger on Hong Kong's less than complete identification with the rest of China. Hong Kong's elite still looks to the West when it comes to educating their children, setting up second homes, or even going on holiday. The number of people with British, Canadian and Australian passports reflects that Hong Kong will always be a bridge between East and West. Will Hong Kong identify itself more closely with the mainland? Hong Kong people are nothing if not pragmatic. As the mainland becomes increasingly successful, people here will tend to identify with the motherland. On the other hand, if the reform and modernisation programme falters, Hong Kong people will tend to look elsewhere. Or, as another Gershwin song in the musical Porgy and Bess has it, they could well be singing: 'There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York. Come wid me, dat's where we belong, sister.'
