China and Fake Singers

I think that the US and World media is starting to get a little desperate to make their point that China fakes things. The most recent example is that the cute little girl who sang during the opening ceremony was not really singing. It was actually a chubby little girl behind the curtains.

"So in a last-minute move demanded by one of China’s highest officials, the two were put together for the Olympic opening ceremony, with one lip-synching “Ode to the Motherland” over the other’s singing. The real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, wasn’t good looking enough for the ceremony, its chief music director told state-owned Beijing Radio."

Like the computer generated fireworks, I don't think that people should really care about this. I watched the Opening Ceremony and it was glaringly obvious that she wasn't singing. I could have cared less whose voice it was.

Here are some Chinese citizens' thoughts...

“The little girl is a magnificent singer,” Chen said. “She doesn’t deserve to be hidden.”

“The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest."

"The organizers really messed up on this one,” Luo Shaoyang, 34, a retail worker in Beijing, said Tuesday. “This is like a voiceover for a cartoon character. Why couldn’t they pick a kid who is both cute and a good singer? This damages the reputation of both kids for their future, especially the one lip-synching. Now everyone knows she’s a fraud, who cares if she’s cute?"

"They want the best-looking people to represent the face of China. I don’t blame the organizers for picking a prettier-looking kid over the not-so-pretty one,” said Xia Xiaotao, 30, an engineer."

So, I'm torn. It seems that China is really worried about portraying this (false)image of perfection to the world, yet as I mentioned before, they don't seem to care that they are fanning the "everything in China is fake" flames.

If I were to give advice, I would tell the world media to calm down and realize that we already know what China reputation is. Let it go. And China should stop trying so hard as well. It makes them look desperate for acceptance. You're a major world player, you're nowhere close to perfect (like all nations), so stop lying to yourselves.