COLONIAL TWILIGHT GOING ON THE BOOKS : TEXTS CHANGED TO SUIT BEIJING'S VIEW.

Byline: Edward A. Gargan The New York Times

Change, historic and ordinary, awaits Hong Kong as Chinese rule approaches. British rule is ending. Colonial privilege, attitudes and instincts are giving way to China's desires, and demands.

The vocabulary and world view of colonialism are fading - from Hong Kong's classrooms, even from the sporting ground.

Sun Yat-sen, the first Chinese revolutionary of the century, never, ever, cooperated with warlords, it now appears.

Badgers and foxes, the fauna of the shires, are passe. Pandas and golden monkeys are to be preferred.

No one is to refer to the governor anymore; he's being replaced by a chief executive.

And forget the backstroke. After July 1, the day China retakes Hong Kong, the territory's swimmers will be doing the ``yeung wing'' - the ``face-up swim.''

Hong Kong's schools are preparing for the new order: adopting mainland expressions, revising school textbooks, focusing more on things Chinese.

For several years, Hong Kong's educational bureaucracy has been working on revisions of textbooks for the territory's 932,165 students. And it all would have happened largely out of public view if China's foreign minister had not staked out his own views last week on what children here should be taught.

``The contents of some textbooks currently used in Hong Kong do not accord with history or reality, are not suited to the changes after 1997, contradict the spirit of `one country two systems' and the Basic Law, and must be revised,'' the foreign minister, Qian Qichen, told Chinese legislators, referring to the shorthand for Hong Kong's autonomy and the mini-constitution for the territory.

Qian, who has overseen the creation of the new government for Hong Kong that will begin work on July 1, offered no details on offending texts or passages, and there were no suggestions that Hong Kong embrace the sharply skewed versions of history and politics promulgated by texts used in mainland Chinese schools.

But his comments made people jittery, because no one knows just how the new Chinese administrators will treat the teaching of history. For now, at least, many people here were pretty sure they knew what Qian was talking about.

``One of the textbooks used here explains the reason why Hong Kong was ceded to the British 150 years ago was because of a clash of Eastern and Western cultures, or because the British wished to do business and the Qing dynasty did not,'' said Tsang Yok Sing, the principal of a local left-wing high school and leader of a pro-Beijing political party. ``No opium sales were mentioned in that textbook.''

And while Hong Kong schools will still be permitted to choose whatever texts they wish, and though most textual changes are relatively minor, some people here expressed alarm at the foreign minister's statement.

``What we think is that Hong Kong is a free society,'' said Cheung Man Kwong, the chairman of the union representing Hong Kong's 63,000 teachers and a member of the territory's legislature. ``Every publisher has the right to publish what they want. There will be different views of history. If you are a teacher, you are free to chose what text you want.''

Even Chris Patten, the last British governor here, entered the fray. ``Naturally schoolchildren will need to be taught after 1997 about their new sovereign power, about the Joint Declaration'' - the agreement between Britain and China on the return of Hong Kong to Beijing - ``the Basic Law and `one country two systems.' ''

But, he added, ``in a free society, teachers are not told what facts they can teach and what fact it is politically wrong for them to teach. This is a time when responsible spokesmen should be saying things which increase confidence in the future, not raise questions about it.''

Then Patten's successor, Tung Chee-hwa, a shipping tycoon chosen by Beijing as its first chief executive in Hong Kong, weighed in. ``There are areas where textbooks need to be rewritten,'' he said at a news conference last week, ``and other issues which refer to the colonial past that need to be looked at.''

``Why are the foreign press making such a fuss about this,'' said Richard Bernard at Oxford University Press, which is one of the territory's textbook publishers. ``Textbooks are subject to revision every year. These are minor technical changes related to the handover.''