The Portrait of a Deceitful "Olympic Host" -- Girl lip-synched another's
performance at Olympic opening / IHT

International Herald Tribune

Girl lip-synched another's performance at Olympic opening
By Jim Yardley

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

BEIJING: Pigtailed and smiling, Lin Miaoke, age 9, stood in a red dress
and white shoes during the Olympic opening ceremony last Friday and
performed "Ode to the Motherland" in what would become one of the
evening's most indelible images: A lone child, fireworks blazing
overhead, singing a patriotic ballad before an estimated one billion
viewers.

Except that she was not really singing.

Her proud father, who learned of her singing role only 15 minutes before
the ceremony, watched on television and noticed "that the voice was a
little different from hers."

On Tuesday, Lin Hui said in a telephone interview that he had assumed
"the difference might be caused by the acoustics."

But acoustics had nothing to do with it. Under pressure from the highest
levels of the ruling Communist Party to find the perfect face and voice,
the ceremony's musical director concluded that the only solution was to
use two girls instead of one.

Miaoke, a third-grader, was judged cute and appealing but "not suitable"
as a singer. Another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7, was judged the best singer but
not as cute. So when Miaoke opened her mouth to sing, the voice that was
actually heard was a recording of Peiyi.

It was unclear whether Miaoke knew she was being dubbed.

"The reason was for the national interest," Chen Qigang, general music
designer of the opening ceremony, explained during a Sunday radio
interview. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal
feeling and expression."

China has tried to make the Olympics a stage to present a
picture-perfect image to the outside world, and perfection was clearly
the goal for the opening ceremony.

The filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who oversaw the production, has drawn raves
for a performance considered one of the most spectacular in Olympic
history. But to achieve the spectacular, Zhang faked more than the song.
Organizers also have admitted that one sequence of the fireworks shown
to television viewers was actually digitally enhanced computer graphics
used for "theatrical effect."

Dubbing music during large outdoor performances has been known to
happen. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the great tenor Luciano
Pavarotti, then 71, lip-synched an aria because of his age and the cold.
But the recording was still his voice, as is usually the case when
performers resort to lip-synching.

After the performance Friday, Zhang appeared at a news conference with
Chinese reporters and praised Miaoke. "She's very cute and sings quite
well, too," he said.

Asked to name which section of the show he found most satisfying, he
first mentioned Miaoke. "I was moved every time we did a rehearsal of
this, from the bottom of my heart," he said, according to a transcript
of the news conference.

Miaoke's song was considered critical because it coincided with the
arrival of the national flag inside the massive National Stadium, also
known as the Bird's Nest. In his radio interview, Chen said that an
unnamed member of the ruling Communist Party's powerful Politburo
attended one of the final rehearsals, along with other officials, and
demanded that Miaoke's voice "must change."

By Tuesday, the Chinese media had pounced on the story, instigating a
national conversation that government censors were quickly trying to
mute by stripping away many, but not all, of the comments posted online.

The outrage was especially heated over the cold calculation used to
choose between the girls.

"Please save the last bit of trueness in our children," wrote one person
with an online name of Weirderhua. "They think Yang Peiyi's smile is not
cute enough? What we need is truth, not some fake loveliness!"

Another person added: "Children are innocent. Don't contaminate their
minds!"

Lin, the father, said he learned of the voice switch when he saw a video
clip of the interview by the musical director, Chen. In that interview,
on a program called Beijing Music Radio, Chen depicted the process of
selecting a singer as a tortured ordeal. He said about 10 children were
chosen who "had a good image and who can sing well." Initially, a
10-year-old was selected "whose voice was really good" and who had held
the role for most of the rehearsal - until Zhang decided she was too old.

Then, Chen said, the desired age of the singer was lowered and several
young girls, including Miaoke and Peiyi, were taken to the Central
People's Radio Station in Beijing.

"After the recording, we thought Lin Miaoke's voice was not very
suitable," Chen said. "Finally, we made the decision that the voice we
would use was Yang Peiyi's."

But not her face: Photographs posted online showed a happy girl with
imperfect teeth, hardly an uncommon problem in China.

"Everyone should understand this in this way," Chen said. "This is in
the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national
culture, especially during the entrance of our national flag.

"This is an extremely important, extremely serious matter."

He added: "I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi."

On Monday, Peiyi appeared on China Central Television, the state
network. "I'm O.K. with it," she told her interviewer, even performing a
song. "My voice was used in the performance. I think that's enough."

Miaoke's father, a newspaper photographer, was worried about how she
would take the news.

Since age 6, Miaoke has worked in television advertisements, even
appearing with the country's hurdling champion, Liu Xiang.

Her appearance in the opening ceremony made her an instant celebrity in
China, and her image was reproduced around the world.

"Here's something I want to tell you," he said he told her. "The music
director announced just now that it was not your voice when you were
singing at the opening ceremony. The song was actually performed by you
two girls."

To his relief, Lin said his daughter was not upset. He said that the two
girls are "good friends" and that Miaoke "doesn't care who sang the
song, as long as she performed."

He added: "I don't care about this, either. The only thing I care about
is that my daughter will not get hurt by this. She'll understand when
she grows up."

Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

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