Imagine that Rhode Island produced music that everyone in the U.S. listened to. That would be kind of surprising. Well, the triumph of Cantopop is quite a bit more astonishing. From a region of some 7 million people--smaller in population than North Carolina, smaller in size than Rhode Island--comes pop music, in Hong Kong's Cantonese language, that dominates the Chinese-speaking world. Cantopop stars are mobbed in Beijing and Taipei, in London and Las Vegas. Last Christmas, veteran mesmerizer Leslie Cheung gave a sold-out concert at Caesars Palace, where tickets went for $80 and $238. The same night, half a mile down...
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