Olympic Ceremony fake-out?

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/new...v=ap&type=lgns

BEIJING (AP)—One little girl had the looks. The other had the voice. So in a last-minute move demanded by one of China’s highest officials, the two were put together for the Olympic opening ceremony, with one lip-synching “Ode to the Motherland” over the other’s singing. So the pigtailed Lin Miaoke, a veteran of television ads, mouthed the words with a pixie smile for a stadium of 91,000 and a worldwide TV audience. “I felt so beautiful in my red dress,” the tiny 9-year-old told the China Daily newspaper. Peiyi later told China Central Television that just having her voice used was an honor. It was the latest example of the lengths the image-obsessed China is taking to create a perfect Summer Games. In a brief phone interview with AP Television News on Tuesday night, the music director, Chen Qigang, said he spoke about the switch with Beijing Radio “to come out with the truth.” “The little girl is a magnificent singer,” Chen said. “She doesn’t deserve to be hidden.” He said the ceremony’s director, film director Zhang Yimou, knew of the change. He declined to speak further about it. The country’s quest for perfection apparently includes its children. A member of China’s Politburo asked for the last-minute change during a live rehearsal shortly before the ceremony, Chen said in the Beijing Radio interview, posted online Sunday night. He didn’t name the official. During the live rehearsal, the Politburo member said Miaoke’s voice “must change,” Chen said. “We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi,” Chen told Beijing Radio. “We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance.” “The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest,” Chen added. He said he felt a responsibility to explain to the country what happened but on Tuesday the link to the video on the Beijing Radio Web site no longer worked. Miaoke’s performance Friday night, like the ceremony itself, was an immediate hit. “Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke becomes instant star with patriotic song,” the China Daily newspaper headline said. Zhang, China’s most famous film director, was asked at a post-ceremony news conference about the little girl who swung on wires high above the Bird’s Nest National Stadium during the performance. “She is a lovely girl and she sings well,” Zhang said, according to a transcript posted on the Beijing organizing committee’s web site. The switch became a hot topic among Chinese and raced across the country’s blogosphere. “The organizers really messed up on this one,” Luo Shaoyang, 34, a retail worker in Beijing, said Tuesday. “This is like a voiceover for a cartoon character. Why couldn’t they pick a kid who is both cute and a good singer? This damages the reputation of both kids for their future, especially the one lip-synching. Now everyone knows she’s a fraud, who cares if she’s cute?” Others disagreed. “They want the best-looking people to represent the face of China. I don’t blame the organizers for picking a prettier-looking kid over the not-so-pretty one,” said Xia Xiaotao, 30, an engineer. “It’s the unfortunate reality that these sort of things turn political,” said marketing worker Zhang Xinyi, 22. It was not the first time an Olympics opening ceremony involved lip-synching. At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Luciano Pavarotti’s performance was prerecorded. The maestro who conducted the aria, Leone Magiera, said this year that the bitter cold made a live performance impossible for Pavarotti, who was in severe pain months before his cancer diagnosis. Pavarotti died in 2007 at age 71. Also Tuesday, Beijing organizers confirmed that some of the opening ceremony’s fireworks display—29 gigantic footprints shown “walking” toward the National Stadium—featured prerecorded footage. The footage was provided to broadcasters “for convenience and theatrical effects,” said Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. (NBC also has augmented its Olympic coverage in the past to set the right mood. That fire in the studio fireplace during the 2002 Salt Lake Games? It was just a video.) Neither of the two little girls involved could be reached by The Associated Press on Tuesday, and it was not clear how the ceremony—or the controversy— might change their lives. Peiyi is a first-grader at the Primary School affiliated to Peking University. Her tutor, Wang Liping, wrote in her blog that Peiyi is both cute and well-behaved, with a love for Peking opera. “She doesn’t like to show off. She’s easygoing,” Wang wrote. She and other school officials couldn’t be reached Tuesday. Miaoke, however, was a minor celebrity even before the opening ceremony. The third-grader appeared in a TV ad last year with China’s biggest gold medal hope, hurdling champion Liu Xiang, and she was in an Olympics ad earlier this year, China Daily reported. Her father, Lin Hui, told China Daily he learned Miaoke would be “singing” only 15 minutes before the opening ceremony began. Lin “still cannot believe his daughter has become an international singing sensation,” the report said. Chi-Chi Zhang and Isolda Morillo in Beijing contributed to this report.

I can't believe there is such a big fuss over this.

I found it quite sad. Not too big of a deal.

wanna know what makes absolutely no sence to me about the olympics? the whole idea of america playing nice with countries we are at war with. the US and the middle east countries are all having fun playing cricket, basketball, and soccerr together - yet we cant manage to leave eachother alone outside of the olympics. if somehow every single country in the world can come to 1 place and get along, why cant we all just leave eachother alone untill the olympics in the next 4 years, shit - trash talk eachother and tell them that in 4 years your going to be dunking on them like a small arab boy waving a gun in the air. but damn, blowing up eachother? that is why i think the olympics is retarded...

^did that make sence?

It's the one time people can come together without fear of hatred and backlash (supposedly anyway). And these people are just athletes, not foreign diplomats or the everyday ignorant person.

still GWBush was at the ceremonies along with some of the games (i know of a couple dunno if he went to all). Your telling me the middle eastern countries arent going, look theres the bastard that is bombing us.

wanna know what makes absolutely no sence to me about the olympics? the whole idea of america playing nice with countries we are at war with. the US and the middle east countries are all having fun playing cricket, basketball, and soccerr together - yet we cant manage to leave eachother alone outside of the olympics. if somehow every single country in the world can come to 1 place and get along, why cant we all just leave eachother alone untill the olympics in the next 4 years, shit - trash talk eachother and tell them that in 4 years your going to be dunking on them like a small arab boy waving a gun in the air. but damn, blowing up eachother? that is why i think the olympics is retarded... ^did that make sence?

That's kinda the point of the olympics. We put away the guns and break out the gymnists, or something like that.

ouch thats gotta hert china's fam

The Olympics are generally that one time for peace. As someone already said, those people are athletes, not mindless scum terrorists. President George Bush got pissed at Putin for attacking Georgia, and rightfully so. This is a time for peace, not war.

World War III, anyone?

Back to the matter at the hand - the fakery. It amuses me, and that's all I really think about it.

There's another case of fakery going on - 'tame cheerleaders'. There are a lot of empty seats at various events, so the authorities are drafting in teams of so-called 'tame cheerleaders' to sit on them and cheer. We only know this because every single one of them wears an identical yellow t-shirt. I find this amusing, too.

ya and they pre recored the fireworks and then shown them the opening day by brocasting them on the tv

i told my girlie about this, and both of us said at the same time, who cares. lol

i told my girlie about this, and both of us said at the same time, who cares. lol

Pretty much.

So what if they used two girls to sing/lip sync? What harm is done? People always find something to bitch about.

ashley simpson lip sync'd on SNL - snl is like the holyness of holy to some people - nowadays it sucks, they made a bigger deal outta that then this chinease girl.

// i say that because ashley simpson was on the news for a good couple days where as i havent seen anything on the news i watch about this little girl.

Pretty much. So what if they used two girls to sing/lip sync? What harm is done? People always find something to bitch about.

Exactly. So what. How mant of our own preformers lip sync and get caught? Jackson did it I know everyone was pissed and wanted a refund. I mean if I went to the olympics and I wasn't Chinese and was wearing a "Go China" T-shirt and cheering them on it would make the news and be bitched about for DAYS.