In its coverage of Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington, the New York Times managed to find room for five sentences about the music played at the state dinner held at the White House in the Chinese president’s honor. Lang Lang, one of the best known classical musicians in this country or, as the Times describes him, “a Chinese pianist who has been a sensation in music circles,” first performed a duet with popular pianist Herbie Hancock. Then he was left alone to play what the Times says is “a haunting traditional Chinese melody called ‘My Motherland.'”

Traditional? The song was written as the theme to the 1956 film Battle on Shangganling Mountain. The movie portrays the Korean War’s Battle of Triangle Hill, in which Chinese soldiers, badly outnumbered in weaponry, held off United Nations and United States forces for over a month. The film, of course, does not treat our side kindly, and the lyrics to its theme, well known in China, include the lines “But if the wolves come / What greets them are the hunting rifles” — which the Chinese take to be a reference to Americans.