The Chinese apparently love Milli Vanilli & other Olympic trickery

Read my lips ... Lin Miaoke miming the song on Friday. Inset: Yang Peiyi, the face of the real voice.

Oh those Chinese are so clever. Remember what everyone was talking about Monday around the water cooler? I certainly do. How the opening ceremony of the Olympics was so grand and no one will ever be able to out do them. Blah Blah Blah

Well in less than a week and we now see how things aren’t always as they seem in the worlds most popular and lovable Communist country.

If you watched the opening ceremony last Friday night you saw an adorable little girl and heard her song. For some reason this actually captivated millions of viewers. But what you saw was not what you or they heard.

Yes folks that’s right. China pulled a Milli Vanilli on the world. The bastards! The little girl everyone saw, Lin Miaoke, was paraded Friday into Beijing’s National Stadium, was not singing at all.

Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not adorable enough.

Didnt they do this with C&C Music Factory where they replaced CeCe Peniston with some non-fat chick?

“The reason was for the national interest,” said Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s musical director, in a state radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression. … Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects.”

Apparently she is a flawed singer though and I just love the comment about “national interest.”

Oh, I’ll pass judgment on THIS.

Oh hells yes. “For the national interest” my ass. Do they honestly think this is going to IMPROVE their image with the world, because they told a seven year old KID that she wasn’t cute enough to sing on stage in front of the world, even though she has a great voice?! Yeah the rest of the world will really forget the millions of forced abortions in China now.

Those who watched the Olympic ceremony never realized the deception & the state controlled press were no help either. “Tiny singer wins heart of nation,” was the headline in Tuesday’s China Daily newspaper.

“Lin Miaoke might be only 9 years old but she is well on her way to becoming a star, thanks to her heartwarming performance,” the article stated — without mentioning the very important fact that she never sang a note.

Let’s chalk this on the ever growing list of why I had China.

• Biggest violators in human rights
• Links to the genocide in Dufur.
• The whole Tibet issue.
• Yao Ming (OK I don’t hate Yao but I’m not putting General Tso’s Chicken on this list 🙂 )

But there’s more trickery my friends.

When the opening ceremony got under way with the dramatic, overly-drummed countdown, we were watching at home and on giant screens inside the Bird’s Nest National Stadium a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square.

George Lucas eat your heart out buddy.

What we did not realize was that what they were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.

The trick was revealed in a local Chinese newspaper, the Beijing Times, at the weekend.

Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, said it had taken almost a year to create the 55-second sequence. Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible: they sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s air pollution that could kill a cow…twice smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate fake the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.

“Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” he said. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live – so that was mission accomplished.”

He said the main problem with trying to shoot the real thing was the difficulty of placing the television helicopter at the right angle to see all 28 footsteps in a row.

The Chinese government assigned one of their country’s best film directors to plan the opening ceremony. Now we know why….

One advisor to the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOCOG) defended the decision to use make-believe to impress the viewer:

“It would have been prohibitive to have tried to film it live,” he said. “We could not put the helicopter pilot at risk by making him try to follow the firework route.”

A spokeswoman for BOCOG said the final decision had been made by Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, the joint venture between the International Olympic Committee and local organizers that is responsible for providing the main “feeds” of all Olympic events to viewers around the world.

“As far as we are concerned, we let off the fireworks – that’s what’s important to us,” she said.

I’m beginning to believe that 1.3 billion people don’t live in China. Maybe 500,000 and the rest are CGI’d in.