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All Isn't What It Seemed

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 13, 2008

BEIJING - One little girl had the looks. The other had the voice.

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.

So the pigtailed Lin Miaoke, a veteran of TV ads, mouthed the words with a pixie smile for a stadium of 91,000 and a worldwide TV audience. "I felt so beautiful in my red dress," the 9-year-old told the China Daily newspaper.

Peiyi later told China Central Television that just having her voice used was an honor.

It was the latest example of the lengths image-obsessed China is taking to create a perfect Summer Games.

In a brief phone interview with AP Television News on Tuesday night, music director Chen Qigang said he spoke about the switch with Beijing Radio "to come out with the truth."

"The little girl is a magnificent singer," Chen said. "She doesn't deserve to be hidden." He said the ceremony's director, film director Zhang Yimou, knew of the change. He declined to speak further about it.

China has been eager to present a flawless Olympics face to the world, and that quest for perfection apparently includes its children.

A member of China's Politburo asked for the last-minute change during a live rehearsal shortly before the ceremony, Chen said in the Beijing Radio interview, posted online Sunday night. He didn't name the official.

During the live rehearsal, the Politburo member said Miaoke's voice "must change," Chen said.

"We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi," Chen told Beijing Radio. "We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance."

"The switch became a hot topic among Chinese and raced across the country's blogosphere.

"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?"

Also Tuesday, Beijing organizers confirmed that some of the Opening Ceremony's fireworks display - 29 gigantic footprints shown "walking" toward the National Stadium - featured prerecorded footage. The footage was provided to broadcasters "for convenience and theatrical effects," said Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee.

As anyone who has watched women's beach volleyball can attest, there's not much to the beach volleyball uniforms.

But apparently officials with very good eyes detected something amiss with the uniforms that Mexico's Mayra Garcia and Bibiana Candelas intended to use in their first match Sunday, because the bathing suits were banned, leaving Garcia and Candelas subject to disqualification.

So Garcia and Candelas, who played indoor volleyball for USC, borrowed uniforms from Germany for their first-round loss to Brazil.

According to the Mexican daily El Universal, the uniforms the Mexicans brought had three problems: They were made by Atletica, which is not an approved Olympic sponsor, and the Mexican flag on the front of the top was in the wrong place. And the logo of the Mexican Olympic Committee, also on the top, isn't permitted at all.

So the Mexicans played Sunday in Germany's colors, black with red-and-gold trim. On Tuesday they were back in more traditional sky blue tops and white shorts in a victory over Greece.

While Kerri Walsh and Misty-May Treanor have been next to unbeatable in beach volleyball, Walsh did lose something in the duo's first match in Beijing - her wedding ring. It came off in the drizzle as she attempted a block.

"It just rocketed into the sand," Walsh said. "I looked for it, but couldn't find it."

The two kept playing and beat Japan in that match. Then several more matches were played on the court, kicking up the sand everywhere.

Yet the ring was eventually found. NBC used its slow-motion cameras to determine approximately where the ring had landed, and then volunteers wielding metal detectors scoured the sand until they came across it.

"I met the volunteer who found it and gave him some Olympic pins as a thank-you," Walsh said. "He was very sweet."

Reigning Olympic champion Mizuki Noguchi of Japan has pulled out of Sunday's women's marathon because of a lingering left thigh injury. ... The 1,600-meter relay world record set by the U.S. in 1998 was scrapped because of Antonio Pettigrew's admission of doping. Michael Johnson, Tyree Washington and Jerome Young also were on the team that set the record of 2 minutes, 54.20 seconds in Uniondale, N.Y., on July 22, 1998. The previous world record of 2:54.29 was set by the American team of Andrew Valmon, Quincy Watts, Butch Reynolds and Johnson at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. ...

China's official news agency said three officers were killed in a knife attack on a security checkpoint in the country's western Xinjiang region. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said an unknown number of attackers jumped from a vehicle at a road checkpoint in Yamanya at about 9 a.m. and stabbed four security officers. Three of them died. The attackers fled and were still at large, Xinhua said.

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