p2pnet - rss feed: Beijing Olympics lip-syncing scandal
p2pnet news view | Music:- On the left is Lin Miaoke, 9, and she’s now a national sensation in China.
Why is she so popular?
She’s cute and she’s touted by the Chinese authorities as the girl behind the voice singing the patriotic song ‘Hymn to the Motherland’ when the Chinese national flag entered the Bird’s Nest Stadium at the opening of the Beijing Olympics.
“Her image was also on the front page of the New York Times and thousands of other print media reaching billions of readers around the globe,” says China Digital Times.
But wasn’t actually singing. She was lip-syncing.
In a recent interview with Beijing People’s Broadcasting Station, “Chen Qigang, the General Music Designer of the Opening Ceremony, revealed that the voice everyone heard singing at the Opening Ceremony was actually a pre-recording of another child, Yang Peiyi, a student of the Attached Primary School of Beijing University at Zhongguancun,” says the story.
Says Chen in the China Digital Times story »»»
We chose one ten-year-old child, whose voice was really good. All the rehearsals were using her singing… In the end the director thought her image was not the most appropriate, she was a little too old… so regrettably, we had to let her go.
Then, as we chose another singer, the standard was that she needs to be seven years old. Lin Miaoke was one of them, another was Yang Peiyi, and there were others.
Then we went to the Central People’s Radio Station to do the recording…
Finally we made the decision that the voice we would use was Yang Peiyi’s.
Why was Lin Miaoke chosen over Yang Peiyi?
For the “national interest”.
The child on camera, “should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression,” adds the post.
Ah so.
Below is a YouTube video of Lin Miaokenot not singing the anthem.
.
.Stumble It!
China Digital Times - Another Olympic Secret: Who Was Actually Singing as the National Flag Entered the Stadium?, August 11, 2008
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August 12th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Laaaaaame.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I don’t see why this is such a big deal… we do it all the time. our celebrities and political figures wear tons of makeup, have speeches written for them, and plan months ahead which babies to kiss, sooo….. we in the U.S. have no place to blame China.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:48 am
And in Canada, we treasure our own Stompin’ Tom Connors, who might say after a live stage slip - “This ain’t no Milli Vanilli show ya’ know”.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:52 am
“Ah, so” is a Japanese utterance, short for “ah so desu ka” - “Ah, so that’s the way of it”.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Ah So !
Cheers! And thanks …
August 12th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
This is the Olympics, isn’t lip-syncing kind of like doping?
August 12th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Deeply flawed government desperately attempting to project a “flawless” image.
To be fair, the US government is every bit as screwed up as the Chinese government, just in different ways…
August 12th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
That is so horrible! Gosh! They’re right. A whole generation is upturned by this. What’s up with people comparing U.S. with China? Fine. We have our flaws and stuff, but they’re using children all the way. That’s totally unacceptable.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I feel so bad for Yang Peiyi. I know that would have really hurt me. She probably spent time and money getting ready to sing to the world and be SEEN singing only to have her voice attached to another girl, last minute. And on top of it all, the government basically called her ugly.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Unbellievable! Just another example of why China can’t be trusted. They never should have been awarded the Olympics in the first place due to their politics and their terrible air quality.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Yang Peiyi - she is beautiful to me. She survived birth in China as a female. I imagine the attention she is getting now will help her career as a singer.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Next time when you watch a Hollywood movie, make sure you DEMAND the prints are BIG enough to inform you that the actual singing is not done by the performing actors and the stunt are not done by the actors. Make sure your demand on China’s being upfront also applies to your own country, then ok, we are on the same level playground, there are already too many double standard hypocrites out there,
August 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Has anyone defended for the girl on the TV that her voice is not good enough, instead of trash talk about her, she is just as innocent as the other girl!!! Maybe her feeling was hurt a little too, right??? Human being, listen carefully now, you always make a mistake by picking good vs. evil, friend vs enemy, and you are doing exactly the same thing that you are criticizing China of. Stop your righteousness by patronizing and criticizing, just to be KIND and fair, eliminate trash talk of anyone!!!! Then China will respect and take your opinion seriously!!!!
August 13th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Chinese has different culture in the way of interacting with children, not like Americans put children above everything else, like they are the first class citizen, the old people in American are the lowest class citizen!!!!
Stop saying “Oh, so poor……, I feel for her, oh, can you imagine the impact on her, blah,blah……” , that girl might be stronger than you think, maybe she doesn’t measure her confidence from being told about her appearance, I would say it’s a good thing not to be measured your value by being told you are good looking at your young age, you know what, for years to come, you may not grow as pretty as the everyone expected, then what??? Your self esteem are going to be crushed???? She will be told she is a beautiful measured by her true quality by her parents and friends, don’t worry about her, pay more attention to you own girls that start putting on makeup at their early teens!
August 13th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
@ dohumanmakesense
Points taken, and thank you …
Cheers!
Jon
August 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
yeah, chinese do treat their children differently, not above all, if it’s a girl it can also end up in the trash right after the birth!
yeah, china treats their children much better then the west!
Stupid commi idiot fakers!
August 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
to Reader’s Write —–
You owe it to yourself, read up more about China, instead of getting information only from your biased media, or from shows like say “National Geographic” or “Discovery Channel”, haven’t you noticed your media will show you, here look at China’s growth, but look, underneath the growth, there are the dark sides, and let’s LOOK at the dark sides and let’s delve into it. There are lots of happy Chinese out there, and we are the majority not the minority, be fair to the majority, they are just as human like minority!!!!
By the way, your twisted interpretation of my comment does not get you anywhere! I emphasize on difference, not better or worse, please respect the difference!
August 13th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Hi, i believe lip synching is OK had they used Lin Miaoke’ s voice herself. Productions do that all the time to ensure quality of output, safety of performers, or electro-mechanical difficulties.
I feel for the 2 little girls involve. These are children. Their image need not be the most appropriate. They need not be perfect. They need not be flawless. How sad that the Beijing Olympics productions think otherwise.
My heart goes out to Yang Peiyi; she did nothing wrong except being called “not flawless” enough to sing for China. Honey, You may not be the look of China, BUT YOU SURE ARE THE VOICE OF CHINA…
August 15th, 2008 at 2:45 am
SOUR GRAPES is the false denial of desire for something sought but not acquired; to denigrate and feign disdain for that which one could not attain. This metaphor originated from the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop, where the protagonist fox fails to reach some grapes hanging high up on a vine, retreats, and rationalizes that the grapes are probably unripe anyway. The phrase is sometimes also used to refer to one expressing, in an unsportsmanlike or ungracious way, anger or frustration at having failed to acquire something (i.e. being a “sore loser”), regardless of whether the party denies their desire for the item (e.g. a hypothetical girl Joumanna being jealous of the fact that no one buys her lunch). Not including the denial of desire is technically a slipshod extension of the metaphor because it is inconsistent with the phrase’s origin in the fable and the notion of the grapes being declared “sour”.
THE OPENING OF THE BEJING OLYMPICS WAS THE BEST EVER. IT HAD TASTE, IT HAD ORIGINALITY, IT HAD CREATIVITY, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY IT SHOWED THE WORLD THAT AS MUCH AS YOU THINK CHINA IS “BACKWARDS,” WITHOUT ITS INVESNTION, THE WORLD WOULD HAVE NEVER PROGRESSED TO WHAT IT IS TODAY.
ARE PEOPLE SO NAIVE TO THINK THAT HUGE GIGANTIC PRODUCTIONS SUCH AS THIS ONE, IS NOT ENHANCED BY TECHNOLOGICAL TROUBLE-SHOOTING AND “JUST IN CASE” RED BUTTONS. GIVE IT UP PLEASE, SOUR GRAPES OUT THERE. YOU ENJOYED IT, YOU CAN’T DENY THAT, SO JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT. CAUSE IF AMERICAN SINGERS CAN LIP-SYNCH IN CONCERTS AND SATURDAY NIGHT “LIVE” THEN FOR THIS KIND OF EVENT, I THINK IT IS SAFE TO SAY THAT WE CAN FORGIVE A LITTLE (AND REALLY IT WAS JUST A LITTLE) HELP FROM TECHNOLOGY.
SOUR GRAPES.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:13 am
What really is despicable is that the media actually reported the names of the girls and showed the photos of the girls. To the one who dug up this story: If you kid ain’t pretty, maybe you also like others to broadcast their photos and names for you?!
August 16th, 2008 at 9:38 am
“What really is despicable is that the media actually reported the names of the girls and showed the photos of the girls. To the one who dug up this story: If you kid ain’t pretty, maybe you also like others to broadcast their photos and names for you?!” ————————
Well put, if people really believed this reporter’s intention is that he really cares about that girl, than you are fooled by him too!!!!!
He is the real fake righteous hypocrite!!!!
August 17th, 2008 at 5:01 am
You are all fuckers. China this china that. They made a fantastic opening ceremony. I don’t know what the fuck is going on in tibet but neither do you assholes. I would give you a bitchslap you shitheads. Greetings from Hungary you motherfuckers!
August 18th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
According to other news Peiyi said “I am proud to have been chosen to sing at all.”
Perhaps most of us who aren’t Chinese don’t fully understand or appreciate how seriously the Chinese take national pride. Maybe this is an example of that. “Maybe” even their children understand the necessary sacrifices and trade-offs one has to make for one’s country. I can respect that.
However, I would like to say that the people responsible for this swapping and lip-synching decision are … monsters. She probably did say the above statement but I can only imagine what this incident will do to her self-esteem. She will grow up with that and I just hope she will actually be able to forget it. She was chosen to sing, she rehearsed, then was replaced at the last minute because she “wasn’t pretty enough”? I’ve read about criminals doing horrible things to children and this just made it in that list.
The officials responsible for this obviously had time to prepare. Why didn’t they just scout for a very pretty Chinese girl with an equally angelic voice? I’m more than certain that she’s out there somewhere.
P.S. Asdf, if you have nothing better than that to say I would suggest you return your hands back inside your pants and resume “massaging” your brain. Thank you.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:27 am
o Rationalization~ creating false but plausible excuses to justify our failures, shortcomings, or unacceptable behavior. In the sour grapes situation, a person who is unable to attain a desired goal rationalizes it after the fact by telling himself the goal was probably not worth it after all. In the sweet lemons version of rationalization, a person who has had to accept what he at first thought was a less desirable goal than another, rationalizes his situation by telling himself that it is really sweeter than he originally thought.
o Denial ~ refusing to admit or face a threatening realities or situations by denying their seriousness.
I will maintain that there really is nothing wrong w/ lip syncing. Pavarotti, Ashley Simpson & Lea Salonga did it due to health & technological constraints. But they USED THEIR OWN VOICES.
This isn’t sour grape. But your insistence that we turn a blind eye & accept a despicable injustice sure is sweet lemon, my dear.
Producing a spectacular olympic opening doesn’t make this right! Blaming it on the media or the person who leaked the truth won’t be any consolation either. Don’t go on barking on wrong trees. Better yet, don’t call it what it was NOT - technological enhancement(?!). Focus, people. Who got 8years (minimum) preparation into Beijing? These girls were yet to be conceived! Who got more than 1billion brilliant heads to pull one hell of an olympic event? If only 1 smart head out of there had said, “Stop! this can’t be done, Yang Peiyi deserved better than this, CHINA CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS, THE WORLD DESERVE WAY MORE THAN THIS.”…
August 19th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Did you read the report from your new source, or did you actually “understand Chinese language” and listen to the music dept. official explain the whole process of picking the candidate????
Originally they picked a 10 year old girl who will sing and show up in front of 91000 people, but they thought 10 year old is still too old to present, now tell me, are you going to accuse China of age discrimination???????????
I just saw the whole conversation of the interview conducted by 2 Chinese Radio talk show in Chinese, asking the music department official of the opening ceremony, NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY, IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND, because the girl on TV, her voice range is not wide enough, can’t quite hit the high note and low keys, so they use the other girls’ voice.
So stop accusing China calling the other girl UGLY, IT’S JUST NOT TRUE, again you will only believe your western media, have you heard of “LOST IN TRANSLATION”, this may or may not be the case of lost in translation, it may be just another case of selected bias done by another media, and coincidentally by the British, who will host the 2012 Olympics, hum………….
If you have a bias mind, you are going to see every flaws from a microscope lens, and they become very huge and unforgetful, and do you view yourself or your own country the same way?????????
August 19th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
words correction ———
unforgetful should have been “unforgiving”
August 20th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Calm down, we wouldn’t want to start a new age descrimination tread…. We’re all on the same page here:
A flawless girl was asked to lipsync the angelic voice of a not flawless girl.
Was it necessary? Was it fair? Was it right? Would the opening be any less spectacular if they had not done so? Would China be any different? NO, not at all. It isn’t right, fair or necessary. It would still be the grandest, most magnificent olympic opening. China’s greatness is intact or may have soared to new heights.
Is it forgivable? Definitely, after apologies & reparations, that is. Could we stop talking about it? In time, we will. Could we move on & forget about it? Move on, yes. Forget, never - we wouldn’t want the person/s responsible to get away with tainting innocence & brilliance….