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Chinese Authorities Embarrassed Over Miming Singer and Fake Fireworks at Olympics

by Gopalan on Aug 12 2008 8:38 PM

The small Chinese girl who shot to national fame after singing at the Olympic opening ceremony did not sing at all. Nor were some of the fireworks seen on TV real.

Olympic meets are supposed to promote noble values. But China seems to have started on a very wrong note.

Right after the Muslim separatist attacks and the stabbing of tourists, more embarrassments for the authorities have surfaceed.

A pretty girl who won national fame after singing at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only miming, it turns out.

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of “Ode to the Motherland.”

She was selected to appear only because of her cute appearance and she did not sing a note, Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony, said in an interview with a state broadcaster aired 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.

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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.

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"The reason for this is that we must put our country’s interest first," he added.

Singer Lin, who is being called the "smiling angel", has already become a media celebrity because of her performance.

She told state-run China Daily that she felt "beautiful" in the red dress she wore during the performance.

Her dad told the newspaper that she already had fans all over the country.

According to Chinese news reports, Yang said she did not regret the decision, saying she was satisfied to have had her voice featured in the opening ceremony.

This is the second "fake" story about the opening ceremony

Some of the fireworks broadcast on television were actually computer-generated images.

A number of state owned Chinese media outlets are reporting that near the start of the ceremony a 55 second edited sequence was inserted in the live TV coverage, according ABC’s John Taylor.

A series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Stadium were visual effects.

Real fireworks did go off at the same time, but they were too hard to capture on television. So the organizers created their own with a bit of camera shake to make it look convincing, it was stated.



Source-Medindia
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