Serenading the 'enemy'

At the White House state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao, pianist Lang Lang played "My Motherland," a popular Chinese song first heard in a 1956 film about a battle during the Korean War. The film's protagonists were Chinese troops; the enemy forces were American.

Some are calling call Lang Lang's choice an insult to the U.S. The pianist says he chose the tune
"for the beauty of its melody," Paul Richter reports in the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-white-house-pianist-20110125,0,52927.story

As if the U.S.-China relationship weren't complicated enough . . .