China Olympics restrict singer with crooked teeth

BEIJING, Aug. 12, 2008
Lin Miaoke (林妙可)，the sweet nine-year-old girl who sang, lip-synched(in flawless voice of Yang Peiyi (杨沛宜) ) “Paean to the Motherland” 《歌唱祖国》when the Chinese national flag entered the Bird’s Nest Stadium during the Olympics Opening Ceremony, is now the hottest child star in China.




The real voice behind the tiny, pigtailed girl in the red dress who wowed 91,000 spectators at the National Stadium on opening night really belonged to 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Peiyi is a first-grader at the Primary School affiliated to Peking University. Her tutor, Wang Liping, wrote in her blog that Peiyi is both cute and well-behaved, with a love for Peking opera.


Many are not amused to learn that the nine-year-old whose coy smile and pigtails won the hearts of the world during Friday night’s opening extravaganza was chosen more for her cuteness than her talent.

Miaoke, however, ws a minor celebrity even before the opening ceremony. The third-grader appeared in a television ad last year with China's biggest gold medal hope, hurdling champion Liu Xiang, and she was in an Olympics ad just before Chinese New Year, China Daily reported. Lin Miaoke's blog

Other moments of Olympics Ceremony diverged from reality:
a) The opening fireworks were computer graphics of the “footprints of fire” inserted into coverage.
b) Deploying "cheer squads" to create atmosphere and disguise blocks of empty seats in the sports venues.

It was the second straight Olympics where the opening ceremony involved lip-synching.
RECAP: Luciano Pavarotti's performance at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin was prerecorded. The maestro who conducted the aria, Leone Magiera, said earlier this year that the bitter cold made a live performance impossible for Pavarotti, who was in severe pain months before his cancer diagnosis. Pavarotti died in September 2007 at age 71.

VIA

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