BEIJING — China's $100-million Olympics opening ceremony wowed its global TV audience with a lavish spectacle and pizazz that tried to present a perfect image of China to the world, right down to the perfect teeth of the little girl who took center-stage and sang an ode to the motherland.
Except the voice was not hers. It was recorded and belonged to another girl, with better pipes but crooked baby teeth and a chubby face.
Nor was all quite what it seemed with the dazzling fireworks sequence watched by a billion or more television viewers. Worried about the difficulty of cameras capturing 29 sequential explosions from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Village, the Chinese visual effects team re-created all but one of the big bangs in an animation studio, and inserted the 55-second clip into the live TV coverage.
Perfection, it seems, must sometimes be faked.
The revelations of dubbed voices and phony pyrotechnics renditions at the opening ceremony have lighted up the Chinese Internet, with many online users condemning the apparent bait and switch at the government's big show.
"Fake singing for national honor? What kind of lessons are we giving such a small child?" asked an anonymous posting on 163.com, a news portal. "Is this national honor or national shame?"
The child in question was 9-year-old Lin Miaoke, who was seen belting out "Ode to the Motherland" as the Chinese flag entered the National Stadium. She became an instant celebrity and was quickly christened a "smiling angel." The image of her in a pretty red dress appeared around the world.
But it wasn't Miaoke who was singing. Chen Qigang, the ceremony's music director, told state broadcaster Beijing Radio that the voice heard around the world belonged to 7-year-old Yang Peiyi.
Peiyi had the voice and was supposed to perform, but was yanked at the last minute because her looks were deemed not suitable by a senior Communist Party official, Chen said.
"It was for the national interest," Chen told Beijing Radio. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression."
The other sleight of hand involved the massive fireworks display at the culmination of the ceremony showing 29 pyrotechnic "footprints" a second apart in recognition of the 29 Summer Games, as if the past Olympics were walking toward the stadium.
