Eason and Hacken feel honoured to sing

August 8 2008 is Beijing's Olympic Opening Ceremony. Because of this, mainland organisers deliberately chose Peida Jin to compose and Keith Chan to lyricise "We Are Ready" as the "one year to go countdown" themesong. As mainlanders found out on July 1 that Hong Kong had "There's Still You" as the handover 10th anniversary themesong, they felt the idea was a good one. And so for a themesong to countdown a year to the Olympics, they had to invite Hong Kong to cooperate.

Because due to the lack of time, this song only took 18 hours to reach completion. Also, as no one wanted this song to sound like any other pop song, the Chinese Symphony Orchestra was invited to perform. The Olympics commitee will hold a media conference on August 4th in Beijing, but there will also be celebrations on August 8th. Mainland, Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers have all been invited leading to a total of 133 performers to sing the themesong and there will also be many versions. Hong Kong has 6 singers that will be represented in the recording. They include Alan Tam, Eason Chan, Gigi Leung, Leo Koo, Hacken Lee and Joey Yung. The day before yesterday, Alan went to Beijing to record and yesterday and today, the rest of the artists recorded in Hong Kong. Mainland and Taiwanese singers that are joining the recording are Bibi Chow, Chris Li, Sun Yue, Elva Hsiao, Ah Niu, Chris Yu and Mindy Ke. Recently, Beijing has begun recording and is constantly communicating with Hong Kong. Everyone can view the progress on the internet. Peida remains in Hong Kong and Keith has flown to Beijing.

Hacken recorded for an hour. He expressed that the song wasn't hard to sing, but he had to sing out with emotion. He revealed that Hong Kong had 6 representative singers. The other 5 would be present at the countdown on August 8th. Hacken hopes that he will be able to attend but recently he agreed with CWCB to attend a summer holiday exercise program. But he feels that the Olympics countdown event is more meaningful and hopes that the exercise program can be rearranged.

When asked whether he's afraid of offending CWCB, he claims that this is not the station's problem. This countdown for the Olympics is a meaningful event. He had already accepted CWCB's invite and if they insisted, then he could only be a gentleman and attend. Recording the Olympics themesong was with RTHK, will CWCB find it difficult because of this? Hacken decided to let his manager handle this. He feels that getting stuck in the middle is a difficult position to be in, but with 6 singers like 6 strong soldiers attending, it would really be an honour. He also does not know how the singers were selected for this event, but says he feels loved and respected. He says that he would want to go watch the Olympics and on the matter of hotels raising prices to HK$8000-10000 a night, he commented "Wah, that's so cheap!" He points out that watching the Olympics is like watching the World Cup. No matter where it is held, prices will surely rise and so it's a very normal thing to happen. At some point, World Cup tickets went for HK$60000 a ticket and so that year he snatched the role of host for the World Cup program.

http://www.takungpao.com/news/07/07/30/UL-772697.htm