Tuesday, August 12, 2008 5:51 AM
Blatchford: The fake voice of an angel
cblatchford
Globe readers will know now that while I adored much about the opening ceremonies –the fireworks, the pageantry, those drums -- my cynicism got the best of me in the end.
What they couldn't know is that I had a thought even too cynical to voice, or write.
It was when that astonishingly cute little pigtailed girl in the red party dress was singing a patriotic song called Ode to the Motherland. I was in the Bird's Nest, which for journalists is also equipped with work tables in the seats, and small TVs to monitor the broadcast. As I watched her on my screen, I thought the words she was mouthing seemed out of whack with the words I was hearing.
But I don't know Mandarin of course – for all I know this is how it was supposed to look and sound – and dismissed my suspicions as merely unworthy and the product of my latent Reductive Orientalism.
Well if it doesn't turn out the little doll was lip-synching after all.
Agence France Presse reports today that she is one Lin Miaoke.
But the real singer was one Yang Peiji, who sadly, didn't make the cuteness cut because she has a chubby face and uneven teeth, though a voice like an angel.
Yang, as the Fool's Mountain blog reveals, is nine, and cute as a bug herself. The blog has a picture of her, with a pink flower barrette in her hair.
“We were thinking about what was best for the nation,” Chen Qigang, the general music director of the ceremony, said in all apparent seriousness an interview with a state broadcaster.
“The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image,” Chen said in the interview, which lived but briefly on the popular news website Sina.com on Tuesday before it was wiped from the Internet.
“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression,” Chen said. “Lin is excellent in those aspects.
“But in terms of voice, Yang is perfect.”
Best for the nation how exactly? Break one little girl's heart, teach another that fakery is okay, and pull the wool over the eyes of the vast motherland. Bet mother is not impressed with the news of the fraud getting out.