<p>"BEIJING - A 7-year-old Chinese girl was not good-looking enough for the Olympics opening ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched “Ode to the Motherland,” an official said.</p>
<p>In the latest example of the lengths Beijing took for a perfect start to the Summer Games, a member of China’s Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl’s face with another’s voice, the ceremony’s chief music director said in an interview with Beijing Radio.</p>
<p>“The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest,” Chen Qigang said in a video of the interview posted online Sunday night…</p>
<p>Lin Miaoke’s performance Friday night, like the ceremony itself, was an immediate hit. “Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke becomes instant star with patriotic song,” the China Daily newspaper headline said Tuesday.</p>
<p>But 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. Her looks apparently failed the cuteness test with officials organizing the ceremony, but Chen said her voice was judged the most beautiful.</p>
<p>“The national interest requires that the girl should have good looks and a good grasp of the song and look good on screen,” Chen said. “Lin Miaoke was the best in this. And Yang Peiyi’s voice was the most outstanding.”
[Young</a> Olympics singing star didn’t really sing - Beijing Olympics News - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26153578/]Young”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26153578/)</p>
<p>I’m missing something. I looked at the two pictures, and immediately mixed them up, assuming the “cute” girl was the singer and vice versa. How odd to judge a 7-year-old’s cuteness. I did wonder during the opening why they showed only a brief moment of the little girl on center stage. I guess the network knew ahead of time?</p>
<p>Apparently people in China’s idea of cuteness and beauty differs a great deal from how people in the U.S. assess beauty.</p>
<p>I have an acquaintance who is Chinese, and in her mid 20s. Here, she is regarded as “hot.” In China, however, she’s considered to be ugly. In fact, when she was born, her parents said that she’d have to be smart because she was so homely that she couldn’t rely on her looks to open doors.</p>
<p>Why is she considered to be ugly in China? She told me that she’s a size 4, which is considered fat by Chinese standards. The Chinese think if you’re more than a size 2, you are fat. Her features – including her eyes and nose – also are typical Chinese. Her skin is dark by Chinese standards. The Chinese think that white skin and European features are beautiful.</p>
<p>I also read the articles this morning about how most of the venues have half of the seats, or more, empty despite the Chinese assurances that everything was sold out and all the venues would be packed. Apparently they’ve massively screwed up the issuing of tickets such that those that got tickets had little interest in attending the games while those that actually wanted to attend are left standing outside. </p>
<p>In response, the Chinese have rounded up armies of ‘stand-in’ fake crowds to fill up seats for the TV cameras. These folks were given colorful shirts and things to wave and are led by minders that tell them when to cheer.</p>
<p>What these moronic Chinese official fail to understand of course is that in most other parts of the world we have a free press that reports all these silly antics to everyone so they’re not fooling anyone! ;-)</p>
<p>They’re both little cuties. So this little singer will go through life thinking she was too ugly to be seen on camera? Unbelievable. But at least she’s not being run over by a tank, like some of her fellow countrymen.</p>
<p>I wonder how to explain the unbelievable crowds & enthusiasm for the Olympic women volleyball players if being a size 4 or larger is “fat?”</p>
<p>From reading the article, it seems that the girl who DID appear was originally scheduled to do the actual singing but her voice wasn’t good enough during the live rehearsal. They then made the decision to use a recording of one of the other girls who had auditioned for it originally. I think that’s a little different than the way that MSNBC is trying to spin it, even if it was a case of physical appearance that originally was the determining factor. They’re both cute kids!</p>
<p>I think the bigger issue is people expecting China to do things the way they’re done elsewhere in the world. I’m not even talking about this particular situation with the singers and wanting the ‘cutest’ one, but the larger issues of a country where the government can and will do ANYthing to ensure that these Olympics are successful. What other country has been able to spend $40 billion without opposition, build facilities wherever they want without regard to current residents, etc. Simply put, it’s a different world there. It is a country with strong positives, but with possibly even stronger negatives.</p>
<p>Is using stand-ins not old news in certain cultures? It is most definetly known when it comes to standardized tests. After all, only the results matter.</p>
<p>It would seem that most of the world is infected with this thinking, the white skin imperative, especially. It’s extremely sad and self-erasing, in a sense, when an entire people reject their own primary physical features as “non-aesthetic”.</p>
<p>poetsheart: "It’s extremely sad and self-erasing, in a sense, when an entire people reject their own primary physical features as “non-aesthetic”. "</p>
<p>These were my thoughts years ago when I honeymooned in Japan, and saw only Western models on billboards. One large department store had gigantic photos of Catherine Deneuve everywhere!</p>
<p>The prizing of lighter skin in the Asian cultures is not a new (European) thing. Dark skin = laborer. White skin = higher class who doesn’t have to labor in the fields.</p>
<p>In the west, we have the opposite cultural strain. Tan = able to afford leisure activities, healthy. Pale = has to works in an office, spends too much time in front of TV or computer.</p>
<p>Hah Hah. We all are programmed for some sort of golden mean and we must work hard to get over it. It is so totally sad. It has taken me cancer and aging to make the great leap. Beauty is everywhere and that little girl is wonderful.</p>
<p>That would be my d. She is considered quite ordinary (I will NEVER consider my children ugly) by Chinese standards. She is dark skinned and has a perfectly round face and a size 4, I kinda felt sad when she was a baby because I thought she didn’t have the same good looks her brother has (fair complexioned, high nose) . Well, nowadays, if we are at a gathering , the non-Chinese will compliment my d’s looks and the Chinese will compliment my s’s looks. </p>
<p>My h use to joke that it’s just our luck, because in western tradition the bride’s family pays and in Chinese tradition, the bridegroom’s family pays for everything. We may end up footing both bills. :p</p>
<p>It not just the Chinese who prize a fair complexion - the Indians, Koreans & Japanese do as well. Just google on Dove ads on utube. Supposedly woman loose their boyfriends when they are dark complexioned. :rolleyes:</p>
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