JUST KEEPING IT REAL, THE BEIJING WAY
Mark Sutcliffe
Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Canada
Who says there isn’t freedom of the press in China?
Ever since the Olympic opening ceremonies, Chinese newspapers have
been breaking one story after another about how not everything you
saw on live television was, well, live.
The latest scandal: You know that cute nine-year-old who looked like
she was lip-synching the haunting song Ode to the Motherland?
She was lip-synching. Her performance was as authentic as a Chinese
gymnast’s passport.
And, gosh, what’s worse is that Lin Miaoke (as in karaoke) wasn’t
even mouthing the words to her own pre-recorded performance.
Due to a last-minute decision by a high-ranking member of the
Politburo, Lin was pretending to sing to a recording by seven-year-old
Yang Peivi.
Some reports say Yang was supposed to sing and was yanked because of
her crooked teeth. Others contend that Lin was supposed to lip-synch
to her own recording, but her voice wasn’t good enough. Either way,
the move was made "for the national interest," according to Chen
Qigang, the music director for the ceremonies.
Bloggers were quick to denounce the decision, until their blogs were
removed from the Internet by Chinese officials.
So, Lin is now the centre of an Olymp-synching scandal. Just call
her Ash-Lin Simpson. But don’t worry, Lin really was cute. Her face
was not, as far as we know, computer-generated.
Was anything about the opening ceremonies real? The weather wasn’t; it
was manipulated by rain-dispersal rockets. The shot of the "footprint"
fireworks wasn’t real, either.
What’s next? Were those Fou drummers actually animated by those guys
in New Zealand who worked on Lord of the Rings? Does it turn out
that wasn’t Sarah Brightman, but one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s seven
other ex-wives?
Who knows? And who cares? Besides, what would a major sporting event
be without a wardrobe malfunction or a Milli Vanilli moment?
If nothing else, it shows the Chinese leave nothing to chance. If
senior members of the government are studying the teeth of
seven-year-olds, that’s control of freaking Olympic proportions. Just
be glad they didn’t try to fix Yang’s choppers with gap-dispersal
rockets.
Speaking of gaps, after four days of competition, Canadian athletes
appeared poised to close the medal chasm between us and other countries
such as Tajikistan, Togo, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Heck, even Georgia
has a medal, and let’s just say they have other things on their mind
right now.
But why is everyone worrying about Canada’s performance so far? We
had a number of second-place finishes on Day 4 in Beijing: like when
we came second in a soccer game and when we placed No. 2 in a water
polo match. What’s wrong with that?
And any day now we’ll start to see which of the following companies
sponsors the best team of Canadian athletes: VISA, Rona or
Petro-Canada. Right now, they’re all tied at zero.
Despite the loss, the soccer match against Sweden had some of the best
moments of the day, including Melissa Tancredi’s spectacular diving
header for Canada’s only goal. And it was hard not to get chills seeing
the Canadian women all singing the national anthem before the match.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress