Discs from Hong Kong

In the teashops of lower Manhattan's picturesque Chinatown, clusters of approving residents listened last week to a novel disc-jockey show, broadcast in Chinese on WHOM's FM band. The radio voice, announcing numbers, conducting interviews and reading news summaries, was that of a young (28) housewife, Louie Rang. The records, mostly imported from Hong Kong, included Westernized Chinese pop tunes (Rose, Rose, I Love You) as well as the high-pitched metallic native songs of the country.

WHOM, busiest foreign-language station in the U.S., has broadcast shows in 12 tongues, including Swiss-German and Ukrainian, but until this summer New York's 50,000 Chinese residents had never had a regular show in their own language. The idea was dreamed up by Kang's husband, Louie Chu, proprietor of a small radio and miscellany shop on Bayard Street in Chinatown, and his friend Lyle Stuart, a novelist (God Wears a Bow Tie). Stuart, once on the staff of Variety, had friends in radio and arranged to get the program a tryout on WHOM. It was launched as a 90-minute, once-a-week show earlier this month, and went over big with its highly specialized audience; Mrs. Louie's first offer to play request numbers kept the studio phone ringing constantly. By last week two sponsors had signed up, others were interested, and the partners were planning to put the program on five days a week beginning in September.

Stuart and Louie turned out the first script, and are still writing them together. After they have done a draft in English, Louie translates it to his wife, who cannot speak English, and she transcribes it into Cantonese, understood by 90% of the Chinatown people.

For Mrs. Louie, the show's expansion may mean giving up some of her quiet life as a Chinese housewife, and becoming a career girl. Her only comment on the program was like nothing ever uttered by a disc jockey before: "I hope that I can do better than I am doing now."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.