Hong Kong and Taiwan have spearheaded the Chinese mainland's pop industry, churning out a steady diet of pop idols. Beginning in 1987, pop singers from Hong Kong and Taiwan began to perform on the mainland, so fans could actually see their idols, including Hong Kong's "Four Heavenly Kings".

The talented Jay Chou (left), whose music draws on everything from popular culture at one extreme to classical Chinese at the other, also enjoys a huge following.

Today, music schools have incorporated pop music into their curricula. However, singing styles, from Western opera to Chinese opera (once known as "Chinese folk"), have not changed much in the past three decades. Some new styles are emerging, such as "primitive singing", usually by ethnic minority groups without academic training. Some call these "real Chinese folk songs", but even as a group, they have yet to match the commercial success of Jay Chou.

What we watched

Thirty years ago, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture was The Deer Hunter. Not only was it not shown on the Chinese mainland, but few Chinese even heard of it.

The next year, Kramer vs. Kramer won the Oscar and was mentioned in the Chinese press. Pundits discussed it as if they had seen the movie. They tried to analyze the sociological implications of the story - how marriage as an institution was breaking down in the "decadent and bourgeois society".

Such was the state of China's exposure, or lack of it, to entertainment from abroad 30 years ago. When the door finally opened, Western classic literature poured in. But when it came to movies and television, the culture watchdogs seemed to be overwhelmed by the possibilities, new and old.

Movies produced before the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976) came out in droves for re-release, and that included many imports. The most popular was not Hamlet by Lawrence Olivier, or Jane Eyre, a 1970 version starring George C. Scott, but Awaara, an Indian movie with a theme that struck a chord with Chinese audiences.

In the 1951 film, a judge loses his son, who grows up to be a thief. In the end, the father has to face the fact that the son of a judge may not be a judge, which shatters everything he believes in. In China, during the age of class struggle, one's fate was determined mostly by the social class of his or her family, which created many tragedies.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, foreign movies were devoured as if every release was a major event. People did not know when the films were originally released or how they had been received in their home countries. Occasionally, there was a "contemporary" import, such as the first installment of Rambo. But overall, what mattered was not the artistry, but the relevance to Chinese filmgoers.

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