HAVE you ever seen a European in a cheong sam?'' composer Noel Quinlan asked Lo King-man, vice chairman of the Urban Council and adviser to Quinlan's soon-to-be staged music and dance extravaganza, Tales From The Middle Kingdom. ''That's what I don't want to look like,'' explained Quinlan, when asked by the professional arts patron what he was expecting in the way of advice. Although a resident of Hong Kong for the past 25 years, Australian-born Quinlan is acutely aware that he is treading a fine line with Tales From The Middle Kingdom. In effect, he is taking Chinese folklore and traditional music and giving it a Western, modern appeal. As author, producer, composer and music director, he has woven traditional stories into a series of fast paced sequences of modern dance - performed by choreographer Willy Tsao's two dance companies, City Contemporary Dance Company and the Guangdong Modern Dance Company - and set them to a combination of traditional singing and music performed live and hi-tech music, which will be delivered via a digital surround sound system. In many ways it is a first for Hong Kong and, Quinlan hopes, a new force in entertainment which will help catapult the local industry into the international spotlight. In Hong Kong terms, this is a lavish and expensive production. It will cost over $3 million to put on the five performances at the Academy For Performing Art's Lyric Theatre from November 10. For this short run, Tales From The Middle Kingdom will make a loss. Its staging is mainly due to a cash injection from the Shun Hing Group. The show involves 50 people on stage and just as many make up the behind-the-scenes technical crew. Giant puppets, horses, dragons and peacocks have been created by The Theatre Workshop. The partnership behind this company, Paul Fowler and Simon Wong, isalso creating 220 costumes for the show. With 16 scene changes, all to be carried out in front of the audience, this is a particularly challenging assignment. ''It is unusual to work on a show where the music comes first, normally a show is built around a strong story line, so there is more responsibility on us than in a lot of shows to visually give the production continuity and an entity,'' explained set designer Fowler. To help them in their planning of what it should look like, Wong came up with his ''folding dynasty theory'', where the history of China was compressed into four important dynasties to be illustrated through the sets and costumes - the Qing, Tang, Ming dynasties and modern, industrialised China. ''It was obvious from the start that this wasn't going to be a traditional Chinese dance and music performance. This is a big production with lots of elements, but we had to try to help make it more than a hollow spectacle,'' added Wong. As for Quinlan's approach: ''I tried to steer away from any perception of it as an arty fartsy cultural show, that's not it. It's a new vehicle.'' Quinlan's first foray into this arena happened back in 1991 with Middle Kingdom, his first reworking of traditional Chinese music, which he was invited to take to the 14th Party Congress in Beijing for a staging. Tales From The Middle Kingdom takes this concept a giant leap forward. ''What I wanted to do, after a lot of research, was make Chinese melodies palatable to Western ears. I didn't think that Asians, and Chinese in particular, would enjoy them so much. ''When Middle Kingdom first came out I had reservations - I don't think the English would be too happy about a disco version of Land of Hope and Glory. I thought I might be treading on people's toes, but it was done with respect. I don't want to trample on people's culture,'' said Quinlan. ''With Tales From The Middle Kingdom, I wanted to make it into a bigger show - something for a broadly-based popular international market. ''There is no large scale theatrical product from China or about China, unless you include something like Madame Butterfly, but they are off the beaten track - quaint. ''I wanted to do a show that was of Hong Kong, that was peculiar to Hong Kong, that we could do concerning Chinese culture that no one else could do. ''I don't think there is enough original material being produced here. Cantopop business has nothing to do with music, nothing to do with art, it's strictly making money. ''There seems to be a lack of motivation to produce something different.'' But Quinlan has high hopes when it comes to Hong Kong, Asia, the arts and the future. In his vision, Asia will be one of the centres of art and entertainment over the next 20 years. It will be Asia's swelling affluence, if nothing else, that draws the West East, believes Quinlan. Modern communication, especially satellite television, will, he believes, also play a commanding role. But there will have to be a turnaround before that happens. According to Quinlan, Asian ideas are not making notable inroads into the western mainstream. ''It's really obvious that we're looking at an avalanche of Western culture coming into Asia, but in Asia's case, there is virtually no flow the other way. ''In the whole history of pop music, there has only been two times songs from the East have been hits in the West - Sukiyaki and Rose, Rose I Love You. ''We hope that Middle Kingdom will establish itself as an entity, as a way. It's perfect festival fair - it's something that can travel well and I'd love to take it on the road.''