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BEIJING — The order was handed down from the highest levels of the Chinese Politburo. The little singing girl must be “flawless.”
And so it was that viewers heard the beautiful voice of seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, but didn't see her slightly chubby face and uneven teeth during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Instead, they saw lip-synching nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, who was judged to be the flawless girl. With her pigtails and her apple-cheeked smile – and her experience in television commercials – she was deemed cute enough to be portrayed as the official singer of Ode to the Motherland, the patriotic song that accompanied China's flag as it was carried into the stadium in the opening ceremony.
“I think the viewers should be able to understand that, in the national interest, for the perception of the country, this was an extremely important and serious matter,” Chen Qigang, the ceremony's chief music director, said in an interview with a Beijing radio station.
Seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, left, is the real singer of the patriotic song Ode to the Motherland at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, right, is the girl who lip-synched at the opening ceremony. (AFP and AP)
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“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression,” he said. “We felt the coupling of a perfect voice with the best appearance produced the most optimal result.”
This latest example of Beijing's obsession with perfect optics at the Olympics has triggered a heated debate among Chinese citizens on the Internet and in conversations.
This, after all, is the government that evicted beggars and sidewalk vendors from Beijing, sent most migrant workers home, and shut down unsightly shops and cheap restaurants.
It also put up huge billboards to conceal construction sites, and built special walls to conceal ugly shacks – all to maintain the Potemkin-like illusion of aesthetic perfection for the Olympics.
The government also decreed that every hostess at an Olympic medal award ceremony must be a tall, slim, attractive young woman. Even in the opening ceremony, live shots of fireworks were replaced by computer graphics at one key point to ensure the perfection of the sequence.
The decision to use one girl's image and another girl's voice was ultimately a political one, Mr. Chen said. “We had no choice.”
At first, China's propaganda organs were happy to play along with the illusion that Lin Miaoke had sung the patriotic ode. “Tiny singer wins heart of nation,” a glowing headline in China Daily read. It called her an “international singing sensation” who “already has fans all over the country.”
But when the deception was revealed, a fierce debate erupted on the Chinese-language Internet. Many comments were quickly deleted by censors, but others popped up faster than they could be deleted. Most reaction was negative.
“No matter what you say, this is a disgraceful decision,” said one commenter on Baidu, a popular website. “China has always been this way: one person does all the work, and another person stands in front of them and takes all the credit.”
On another Chinese website, one person asked: “What kind of moral values are these? Like foreigners are really going to care whether the little girl is pretty or not? I say the two girls are both angels, both beautiful.”
In interviews Tuesday, many Chinese citizens said they were shocked by the news of the lip-synching. “It's unacceptable, I hate it,” said Chen Gang, sales director of a multinational company in southern China. “It is deceiving the audience.”
But even among those who were surprised by the move, some said it was an understandable decision. “As long as the girl didn't feel humiliated or insulted, I don't think it's worth criticizing,” said Nie Wenwu, an IT engineer. “Every Olympic host city will try to show a perfect ceremony, won't they?”
Li Hong, a university instructor in Guangzhou, said she didn't care about the deception. “Did anybody demand that there must be real singing in the opening ceremony? What the audiences like is a good show with wonderful performances. … So what if it is false singing?”
As for the girl who was bumped from the ceremony, she seemed to accept the decision without any hard feelings. “My voice was used in the performance,” Yang Peiyi told state television. “I think that's enough.”
