TWENTY-FIVE years ago, a film crew went to China with the violinist Isaac Stern to make a documentary about a nation learning to flex itself after the rigid torments of the Cultural Revolution. They created a little masterpiece: the Oscar-winning From Mao to Mozart. As an intensely moving exercise in charting that moment, in 1979, when China, bruised and yearning, was holding its breath and waiting for a different leap forward, it is exceptional.
On his trip, Stern - all chubby benevolence, like Mr Pickwick with a violin, a cigar and a pair of dark glasses perched on top of his head - meets the country's finest young musicians. At the Shanghai Conservatory, a skinny, nine-year-old boy plays the cello for him. It's a brief vignette of puckered intensity, and the child - performing in his red Young Pioneer scarf - reappears when the film's credits roll, as if the filmmakers see the entire essence of what has gone before encapsulated in his tiny, brilliant fury. At the last moment, he smiles and salutes the camera. Cut.
That boy was called Wang Jian. The brilliance did not dwindle when the cameras were switched off. He grew up, moved to America, then London, then Portugal, learning how to master his instrument. This week, he is in Hong Kong, performing as part of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra's Dragon Stars Series.
Sitting in a suite at the InterContinental Hotel, he is still recognisably that serious child with the sudden beam of a smile. A close friend has recently died in a car accident and his thoughts are sombre, but when he is touched by the memory of something absurd or vividly close to his heart, he expresses himself with great openness.
He manages to look younger than the man he was five years ago, when Stern (gasping at what 20 years had done to the mainland) returned to China to do a follow-up documentary. Indeed, he almost manages to look younger than he was when he was nine. 'That's because there was a camera in front of me,' he says, grinning. 'When I'm nervous, I look intense.'
Viewing the original Stern documentary now, he says, is 'like seeing an old shirt. You smell something and there's a flood of memories.' What sort of memories? 'For me, 1979 was almost like a vacuum,' Wang says, slowly. 'I didn't have any experiences or points of view to balance my thoughts. It was all music.' Was happiness possible? After a pause, he says: 'To be happy is a luxury. It happens once in a while. It never stays with you. I think I was ... content. Content is the word. For everyone, it was a hard time. Basic needs in life, like getting food, were not satisfied. My father sheltered me from that.'
