I read a report this morning from BBC about Lin Miaoke, the cute 9 year old girl that captivated the world with her singing of “Ode to the Motherland” during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. It appears that she was not singing, but rather, miming the song of another young girl, Yang Peiyi (age 7).
Mr. Chen, the music director of the ceremony, went with the more “flawless” looking girl instead of the less presentable one because, in his words, it was a choice for “our country’s interest”. In addition, Chen stated that Lin had greater stage presence.
For me, I think it is another social commentary on the value of image over substance in humanity.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
The following is the performance that is being referenced from the opening ceremony:
Also, check out the following CNN update on the story:
This post is tagged Beijing Olympics, Image, Looks, Mime
8 Comments
Hey Charles,
I just read that report a couple of hours ago, its insane. What’s worse is the comments made by some of the local citizens condoning the actions to put on a good face for China. From what I have heard (speculation) the government/officials in charge of the event/ was/were pretty hard on the people whom participated in the ceremony. Do you know if they were compensated for the many hours that it took to practice that? …let’s not mention the thousands of people that will go hungry this month because the factories are shut down to make the city look ‘cleaner’.
I really have no idea about the compensation for those participated for the opening ceremony.
Do you have any links to stories that document the impact of factory closures on those who work there? I know that factories were closed in hopes of cleaning the air around Beijing.
Yang Peiyi has such a beautiful voice! That’s really sad that those in charge treated her like that, and thought that her stage presents was unacceptable and that they decieved the world like that. I’m glad that they didn’t totally get away with it.
The fireworks were CGI also..
did i read that a dancer was paralyzed in the ceremony as well? as far as the lead up to the games, rachel and i caught an episode of ‘lil bush’ on comedy central several months back that deadpanned the olympics with factory shutdowns and government control….
Wow – I didn’t realize that.
It’s really interesting to discover what happens in the background of such world productions… Big John, I too have read about some of the surrounding happenings to make this Olympic possible.
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