First at the Beijing Olympics Opening, there were the fake CGI fireworks of the Bird's Nest.
Then they had a fake little girl lip-synching a national song in one of the performances. I pity the little girl who was doing the real singing, being told she had a beautiful voice, but she doesn't have the looks.
Fine, it was a terrific show, who cares if it is a fake even Luciano Pavarotti faked his singing at Turin Winter Olympics 2006. But still it was his own voice!
Me the viewer was being misled that it was a live show with real people doing real stuff!
Didn't the career of one pop band in the 1980s sank when they lip-synched. I felt short-changed!
I am shocked even more so of the reply from the guy who admitted about it at a television interview. The poor chap can kiss goodbye his music career in China and probably banished forever back to France.
"The reason why little Yang (real girl singing) was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation," Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China.
- Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony
Tsk tsk Beijing, what else is there you are not telling us?
Here's the news from AP
Olympic child singing star revealed as fake
AFP - Wednesday, August 13
BEIJING (AFP) - - The little girl who starred at the Olympic opening ceremony was miming and only put on stage because the real singer was not considered attractive enough, the show's musical director has revealed.
Pigtailed Lin Miaoke was selected to appear because of her cute appearance and did not sing a note, Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony, said in an interview with a state broadcaster aired Tuesday.
Photographs of Lin in a bright red party dress were published in newspapers and websites all over the world and the official China Daily hailed her as a rising star on Tuesday.
But Chen said the girl whose voice was actually heard by the 91,000 capacity crowd at the Olympic stadium during the spectacular ceremony was in fact seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who has a chubby face and uneven teeth.
"The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation," Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China.
Lin was seen to perform the patriotic song "Ode to the Motherland" as China's national flag was carried into the stadium, a key moment in the three hour ceremony.
"The reason was for the national interest. The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression," said Chen, a renowned contemporary composer and French citizen.
"Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects. But in terms of voice, Yang Peiyi is perfect, each member of our team agreed," he said.
He said the final decision to stage the event with Lin lip-synching to another girl's voice was taken after a senior member of China's ruling Communist Party politburo attended a rehearsal.
"He told us there was a problem that we needed to fix it, so we did," he said, without disclosing further details of the order.
The Beijing Olympic organising committee confirmed the episode with spokesman Sun Weide saying the decision was taken in the interests of providing the best possible show.
"A number of girls were on the short list for the show and Lin was the best actress while Yang had the best voice," he said. "So at the end of the day they decided to have both."
The ceremony directed by China's Oscar-nominated filmmaker Zhang Yimou and featuring more than 15,000 performers won high praise in China and overseas for its breadth, scope and flawless execution.
However criticism began to build after it emerged that another part of the opening ceremony had been faked.
Supposedly live pictures of fireworks depicting footprints moving from central Beijing's Tiananmen Square to the Olympic stadium in the north of the capital were actually partly computer-generated or pre-recorded for TV, organisers have admitted.
Wang Wei, vice president of the organising committee, Tuesday insisted the fireworks had actually exploded on the night and that most of the television images used were genuine.
"However, because of the poor visibility of the night some previously recorded foots may have been used," he said.
Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet project at the University of California at Berkeley and former dissident, said the two incidents illustrated the political nature of the Games for China.
"I do not think the Chinese state realises how unethical this is, they don't understand what kind of values they are reflecting," he said.
Earlier this year Olympic organisers preoccupied with the right image for the country were criticised for insisting that only tall, slim, young and attractive women could serve as medal award ceremony hostesses.
Copyright AFP.com 2008
-
From Telegraph Uk
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 8:29PM BST 12 Aug 2008
Beijing Olympics: Faking scandal over girl who 'sang' in opening ceremony
Chinese officials have admitted deceiving the public over another highlight of the Olympic opening ceremony: the picture-perfect schoolgirl who sang as the Chinese flag entered the stadium was performing to another girl's voice.
The girl in the red dress with the pigtails, called Lin Miaoke, 9, and from a Beijing primary school, has become a national sensation since Friday night, giving interviews to all the most popular newspapers.
But the show's musical designer felt forced to set the record straight. He gave an interview to Beijing radio saying the real singer was a seven-year-old girl who had won a gruelling competition to perform the anthem, a patriotic song called "Hymn to the Motherland".
At the last moment a member of the Chinese politburo who was watching a rehearsal pronounced that the winner, a girl called Yang Peiyi, might have a perfect voice but was unsuited to the lead role because of her buck teeth.
So, on the night, while a pre-recording of Yang Peiyi singing was played, Lin Miaoke, who has already featured in television advertisements, was seen but not heard.
"This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make," the ceremony's musical designer, Chen Qigang, said. "Our rehearsals had already been vetted several times - they were all very strict. When we had the dress rehearsals, there were spectators from various divisions, including above all a member of the politburo who gave us his verdict: we had to make the swap."
Mr Chen's interview gave an extraordinary insight into the control exercised over the ceremony by the Games' political overseers, all to ensure the country was seen at its best.
Officials have already admitted that the pictures of giant firework footprints which marched across Beijing towards the stadium on Friday night were prerecorded, digitally enhanced and inserted into footage beamed across the world.
Mr Chen said the initial hopefuls to sing the anthem had been reduced to ten, and one, a ten-year-old, had originally been chosen for the quality of her voice. But she, too, had fallen by the wayside because she was not "cute" enough.
"We used her to sing in all the rehearsals," Mr Chen said. "But in the end the director thought her image was not the most appropriate, because she was a little too old. Regrettably, we had to let her go."
At that point Yang Peiyi stepped up to the plate.
"The main consideration was the national interest," he said. "The child on the screen should be flawless in image, in her internal feelings, and in her expression. In the matter of her voice, Yang Peiyi was flawless, in the unanimous opinion of all the members of the team."
That was until attention turned to Yang Peiyi's teeth. Nevertheless, Mr Chen thought the end result a perfect compromise.
"We have a responsibility to face the audience of the whole country, and to be open with this explanation," he said. "We should all understand it like this: it is a question of the national interest. It is a question of the image of our national music, our national culture.
"Especially at the entrance of our national flag, this is an extremely important, an extremely serious matter.
"So we made the choice. I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi - after all, we have a perfect voice, a perfect image and a perfect show, in our team's view, all together."
One question remains: why was Lin Miaoke allowed to give interviews in which she lapped up the praise for her singing. Mr Chen said she might not have known that the words she was singing could not be heard. She had, in fact, only known she was going to perform at all 15 minutes beforehand.
Yang Peiyi is said to have reacted well to the disappointment. "I am proud to have been chosen to sing at all," she is reported to have said.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008
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