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 on 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 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.
”This illustrates an important aspect of these Olympic Games,” said Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet project at the University of California at Berkeley and former dissident.
”It is all about projecting the right image of China with no respect for honesty or for the audience.
”I do not think the Chinese state realises how unethical this is, they don’t understand what kind of values they are reflecting.”
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.
Reports in the Chinese press concerning the faking of the song were sparse but internet chat rooms have attracted debate with most people critical of the decision to fake the performance.
”This is an insult to the real singer and to all the people who listened,” said one commentator on popular portal Netease, reflecting the general tone. — AFP
