(New York Times)  In Grand Olympic Show, Some Sleight of Voice.  Jim Yardley.  August 12, 2008.

Yang Peiyi and Lin Miaoke

Pigtailed and smiling, Lin Miaoke, age 9, stood in a red dress and white shoes during Friday’s Olympic opening ceremonies and performed “Ode to the Motherland” in what would become one of the evening’s most indelible images: a lone child, fireworks blazing overhead, singing a patriotic ballad before an estimated one billion viewers.

Except that her proud father, Lin Hui, noticed “that the voice was a little different from hers.” On Tuesday, Mr. Lin said in a telephone interview that he had assumed “the difference might be caused by the acoustics.”

Acoustics had nothing to do with it. Under pressure from the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party to find the perfect face and voice, the ceremonies’ production team concluded that the best solution was to use two girls instead of one.

Miaoke, a third grader, was judged cute and appealing but “not suitable” as a singer. Another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7, was judged the best singer but not as cute.

So when Miaoke opened her mouth to sing, the voice that was actually heard was a recording of Peiyi.

And it is unclear if Miaoke even knew.

“The reason was for the national interest,” explained Chen Qigang, general music designer of the opening ceremonies, who revealed the deception Sunday during a radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression.”

The Chinese government has taken great pains to present the best possible image to the outside world during the Olympics, and perfection was the goal for the dazzling opening ceremonies. The filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who oversaw the production, has earned international praise for staging a performance that many considered one of the most spectacular in Olympic history. But to achieve the spectacular, not only did organizers fake the song, but they also have acknowledged that one early sequence of the stunning fireworks shown to television viewers actually included digitally enhanced computer graphics used for “theatrical effect.”

Using recorded music during large outdoor performances is hardly unprecedented. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for example, the famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti, then 70, lip-synched an aria because of his age and the cold weather. But the recording was still his voice.

After last Friday’s performance, Mr. Zhang appeared at a news conference with Chinese reporters and praised Miaoke. “She’s very cute and sings quite well, too,” he said. Asked to name which section of the show he found most satisfying, he first mentioned Miaoke. “I was moved every time we did a rehearsal on this, from the bottom of my heart,” he said, according to a transcript of the news conference.

Miaoke’s song was considered critical because it coincided with the arrival of the Chinese flag in the massive National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest.

In his radio interview, Mr. Chen said a member of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo, whom he did not identify, attended one of the last rehearsals, along with many other officials, and demanded that Miaoke’s voice “must change.”

By Tuesday, the Chinese news media had already pounced on the story, instigating a national conversation that government censors were trying to mute by stripping away many, but not all, of the public comments posted online.  Many remaining comments expressed outrage over the cold calculation used to appraise the girls.

“Please save the last bit of trueness in our children,” wrote one person, who used the online name Weirderhua. “They think Yang Peiyi’s smile is not cute enough? What we need is truth, not some fake loveliness! I hope the kids will not be hurt. This is not their fault.” Another person added: “Children are innocent. Don’t contaminate their minds!”

Mr. Lin said his daughter had been under strict orders not to discuss plans for the performance. Indeed, he got only 15 minutes’ notice that she would be the singer, and he was thrilled as he watched on television. He learned only later of the voice switch, when he saw a video clip of the interview with the music director, Mr. Chen.

In that interview, on a program called “Beijing Music Radio,” Mr. Chen depicted a difficult process of selecting a child singer. He said about 10 children had been chosen who “had a good image and who can sing well.”

Initially, a 10-year-old girl was selected “whose voice was really good.” This girl held the role for most of the rehearsals — until Mr. Zhang decided she was too old. Then, Mr. Chen said, several younger girls, including Miaoke and Peiyi, were taken to the Central People’s Radio Station in Beijing. “After the recording, we thought that Lin Miaoke’s voice was not very suitable,” Mr. Chen said. “Finally, we made the decision that the voice we would use was Yang Peiyi’s.”

But not the face: photos of Peiyi posted online show a happy girl with imperfect teeth, hardly an uncommon problem in China. “Everyone should understand this in this way,” Mr. Chen said. “This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture, especially during the entrance of our national flag. This is an extremely important, extremely serious matter.”  He added, “I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi.”

On Monday, Peiyi appeared on China Central Television, or CCTV, the state network. “I’m O.K. with it,” she told her interviewer, even performing a song. “My voice was used in the performance. I think that’s enough.”

Miaoke’s father, a news photographer at a Chinese newspaper, was worried about how she would take the news. Since age 6, Miaoke has worked in television advertisements, even appearing with the country’s wildly popular hurdling champio, Liu Xiang. Her appearance in the opening ceremonies made her an instant celebrity in China, and her image was reproduced around the world.

“Here’s something I want to tell you,” Mr. Lin said he had told his daughter. “The music director announced just now that it was not your voice when you were singing at the opening ceremony. The song was actually performed by you two girls.” Mr. Lin said his daughter was not upset. He said that Miaoke and Peiyi were “good friends” and that Miaoke “doesn’t care who sang the song, as long as she performed.”

Then he added: “I don’t care about this either. The only thing I care about is that my daughter will not get hurt by this. She’ll understand when she grows up.”

(Telegraph)  Beijing Olympics: Faking scandal over girl who 'sang' in opening ceremony.  By Richard Spencer.  August 12, 2008.

The girl in the red dress with the pigtails, called Lin Miaoke, 9, and from a Beijing primary school, has become a national sensation since Friday night, giving interviews to all the most popular newspapers.

But the show's musical designer felt forced to set the record straight. He gave an interview to Beijing radio saying the real singer was a seven-year-old girl who had won a gruelling competition to perform the anthem, a patriotic song called "Hymn to the Motherland".

At the last moment a member of the Chinese politburo who was watching a rehearsal pronounced that the winner, a girl called Yang Peiyi, might have a perfect voice but was unsuited to the lead role because of her buck teeth.

So, on the night, while a pre-recording of Yang Peiyi singing was played, Lin Miaoke, who has already featured in television advertisements, was seen but not heard.

"This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make," the ceremony's musical designer, Chen Qigang, said. "Our rehearsals had already been vetted several times - they were all very strict. When we had the dress rehearsals, there were spectators from various divisions, including above all a member of the politburo who gave us his verdict: we had to make the swap."

Mr Chen's interview gave an extraordinary insight into the control exercised over the ceremony by the Games' political overseers, all to ensure the country was seen at its best.

Officials have already admitted that the pictures of giant firework footprints which marched across Beijing towards the stadium on Friday night were prerecorded, digitally enhanced and inserted into footage beamed across the world.

Mr Chen said the initial hopefuls to sing the anthem had been reduced to ten, and one, a ten-year-old, had originally been chosen for the quality of her voice. But she, too, had fallen by the wayside because she was not "cute" enough.

"We used her to sing in all the rehearsals," Mr Chen said. "But in the end the director thought her image was not the most appropriate, because she was a little too old. Regrettably, we had to let her go."

At that point Yang Peiyi stepped up to the plate.

"The main consideration was the national interest," he said. "The child on the screen should be flawless in image, in her internal feelings, and in her expression. In the matter of her voice, Yang Peiyi was flawless, in the unanimous opinion of all the members of the team."

That was until attention turned to Yang Peiyi's teeth. Nevertheless, Mr Chen thought the end result a perfect compromise.

"We have a responsibility to face the audience of the whole country, and to be open with this explanation," he said. "We should all understand it like this: it is a question of the national interest. It is a question of the image of our national music, our national culture.

"Especially at the entrance of our national flag, this is an extremely important, an extremely serious matter.

"So we made the choice. I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi - after all, we have a perfect voice, a perfect image and a perfect show, in our team's view, all together."

One question remains: why was Lin Miaoke allowed to give interviews in which she lapped up the praise for her singing. Mr Chen said she might not have known that the words she was singing could not be heard. She had, in fact, only known she was going to perform at all 15 minutes beforehand.

Yang Peiyi is said to have reacted well to the disappointment. "I am proud to have been chosen to sing at all," she is reported to have said.

(08/13/2008)  The Two Pieces Of Fakery At The Olympic Opening Ceremony (Ming Pao editorial)

[in translation]

The Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was gorgeous and splendid.  More than 4 billion watched it around the world, and they were wowed and awed.  But there are two pieces of fakery in the opening ceremony.  "Fakery" in this grand event is unacceptable no matter what the considerations, reasons and excuses are, because this is basically against the Olympic spirit.  While China has the economic means to construct amazing sport facilities, it is still lagging far behind in the accompanying software.  China must correct its approach in order to become a strong nation that has the respect of people.

The two pieces of "fakery" are the 29 firework footprints and the mesmerizing song <Ode to the Motherland> sung by a little girl.

First, let us talk about the firework footprints.  When the opening ceremony began, the screen showed an invisible giant walking from Yongding River in southern Beijing towards the Bird's Nest stadium.  The footprint was realized in the form of fireworks to create the movement over space and time.  The spectators were awed beyond belief.  This opening scene opened their eyes, and the spectators thought that the 29 footprints were formed from actual fireworks that were being filmed from the air.  But the truth was that while there were fireworks at where the footprints showed up, only the last one was filmed live and the other 28 were 3D computer animations.

The BOCOG information spokesperson Wang Wei confirmed that pre-recorded footage of fireworks had been used that evening.  The mainland newspaper Beijing News interviewed people who worked on the audio-visual effects of the opening ceremony, and they said that they began working on the 3D animation last year and finished in July this year.  The workers said that the there are 29 footprints in the 55-second video and only the last one when the footprint enters the Bird's Nest was live.  The workers even used the Beijing Weather Bureau's weather report to add haze to match the weather conditions in Beijing on the night of the opening ceremony.

First of all, it is understandable that the organizers would want the opening ceremony to be perfect.  They were worried that the weather could affect the fireworks effect and they made a video beforehand in order to assure the quality.  That is understandable too.  But the organizers did not announce the details beforehand and the world knew nothing.  After the "successful" performance, the media reported the truth and the deceptive nature of the process became obvious.

Next, the world wanted to see what actually happened at the opening ceremonies and not some computer or video production that was made beforehand.  If the pre-recorded video of the firework footprints is acceptable, then every scene of the opening ceremony can in theory be pre-recorded and shown by pressing a button at the right moment.

We believe that no one will accept a pre-recorded Olympic opening ceremony.  Therefore, the deceptive 3D electronic firework footprints constitute a huge flaw in these Olympics and leaves behind an indelible blemish.  An imperfect reality is surely better than a perfect forgery.  If the technical problems of the live broadcast cannot be overcome, then either this concept of the footprints of history should be given up or else the possibility of things going wrong during the live broadcast must be accepted.  Instead, the wise people in charge of production chose "fakery" to solve this problem.  This is very regrettable.

The second piece is the song <Ode to the Motherland> sung by the little girl.  On that evening, a 9-year-old girl named Lin Miaoke in red dress was "lip-synching" on stage.  That young, sincere and touching voice was not a pre-recorded song sung by Lin Miaoke.  Instead, it belonged a 7-year-old girl named Yang Pei-yi.  The background and lyrics of the song <Ode to the Motherland> bear a special meaning for contemporary Chinese people.  On that evening, the performance of Lin Miaoke and the heavenly and pure singing captivated the hearts of the vast majority of the Chinese people.  The other 3 billion viewers around the world are probably deeply moved as well.

In an interview, the Olympic opening ceremony music director Chen Qigang said that this amazing song was not sung by the "smiling angel" Lin Miaoke and the voice belonged to Yang Peiyi instead.  Chen Qigang said that Yang Peiyi was dropped because of the her appearance and because of national interests as a result of a decision made by a member of the Politburo.  Ouch!  What kind of country would handle this matter in such an idiotic way?  This is just unbelievable.

First of all, the "lip-synching" by Lin Miaoke is marginally acceptable, because the live performances of many superstars also have similar preparations for emergency situations.  But it is wrong for Lin Miaoke to perform on stage while the voice is not hers.  Unless this was announced beforehand, this is deceptive.

Secondly, there are many lovely children in China.  Why choose Lin's looks and Yang's voice?  Is it so hard to find a child who can both perform and sing?  I believe the majority of the Chinese people disapprove of this.

"In consideration of international image and national interests" was the reason for discarding Yang Peiyi.  Such a decision is frankly infuriating.  Many people who have seen the photo of Yang Peiyi thought that she was lovely, and she would win applause if she dressed up on stage.  Why are the organizers demeaning Yang Peiyi?  How does Yang Peiyi hurt the international image?  How are national interests being hurt?  I think that the relevant people should apologize to Yang Peiyi and her family, and to the people of China.  Those words were verbal violence that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

Overseas media report described the firework footprints in terms of "fakery."  Mainland netizens said that Lin Miaoke "lip-synched," Yang Peiyi was debased and the matter was called the 'fake singing affair."  Many unfriendly people said that China is a "grand nation for fakery" since contrabands made in China can be found everywhere in the world.  The Olympics is a mega-event that draws wide attention.  The organizers have now been found to have "motive, method and purpose" in making politics override all else.  This is truly damaging to the international image and national interests.

Fakery is not a traditional virtue of the Chinese people, and it also runs against the Olympic spirit.  Even athletes and judges take the oath not to take drugs, not to cheat and to deal with matters in a fair manner.  But in the opening ceremony that is supposed to embody the Olympic spirit, there was fake videos and singing.  This is no way to use the hosting of the Olympics to rise up with the rest of the world.  Many Chinese people are excited and touched when they see the Chinese athletes train hard, suffer injuries and then win medals in the arena.  We sincerely hope that the the extraordinary achievements of these athletes will win international respect and not be affected by the incomprehensible actions taken by the organizers.

(08/15/2008)  This was too good to sit just in Comment #117 by JXie at Fool's Mountain's The cruelest insults come from ones pretending to speak as the righteous.

Personally love a good puzzle ...

* First a google news search with keyword “teeth opening ceremony”, there are a lot of returns.

* Take out those who picked up from AP (”-AP”).

* Further limit with dates 8/12 to 8/13, when the “crooked teeth” meme first broke in the English world.

* Now the number of returns is more manageable. Reverse sort by dates. Look over the first 20 or so pages. The google spiders work pretty hard, and pieces from major news outlets rarely take more than a few minutes to hit the google news.

* This is the source in the English world, especially given the richness of its content that wasn’t fully picked up by others: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4512250.ece

* It credits china.com.cn for the picture. Now use baidu.com instead since its spiders on Chinese contents are more reliable. The keywords are “site:(china.com.cn) 林妙可 杨沛宜”. The page was removed by china.com.cn. However there was a baidu cached page: http://tinyurl.com/62oyun. No mention of crooked teeth and chubby/fat face.

Conclusion: the meme of “crooked teeth” and “chubby cheek” was started by Jane Macartney and Ashling O’Connor of The Times (The UK newspaper).

(SCMP)  Lip-synch furore surprises director.  By Vivian Wu and Peter Simpson.  August 14, 2008.

The music director of Friday's opening ceremony for the Olympics says he's surprised by the outcry over his revelation that producers had arranged for a girl to lip-synch a song sung by another child because she was supposedly unattractive. But he also said "it's wise to speak out about it now".

Chen Qigang , chief music director of the extravaganza, said the event's directors, including filmmaker Zhang Yimou , decided to reveal the lip-synching after Lin Miaoke became a national star when she took centre stage in a red dress and sang a revolutionary song which, it turned out, was  recorded by another girl, Yang Peiyi .

Mr Chen disclosed in interviews that producers had pulled Peiyi, a seven-year-old Beijing girl with a "flawless voice", from appearing on stage because her "chubby face and uneven teeth" did not satisfy the national interest in "presenting the perfect face with the most perfect voice". The decision also involved intervention by a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party.

His remarks were quickly picked up by local media on Tuesday before a blackout on coverage was imposed hours later. Nevertheless, word spread on the mainland among people disappointed by the substitution and lack of transparency. Overseas media also widely reported the incident, creating an embarrassment to the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the  government.

But Mr Chen yesterday stressed that arranging the lip-synching was a group decision and defended his move to speak out. "We didn't expect Miaoke to become so popular overnight and it would be a big embarrassment if Miaoke was shaped into a singing star, but ... later it was discovered that she had no musical talent," he said. "This is a smarter way of letting the public know something that it will know sooner or later. But I don't think this thing was a big thing to start with."

Mr Chen, a French national, admitted he had come under pressure for speaking out, but the pressure was from the public's disappointment, which he guessed was "embarrassed that their beautiful dream of the patriotic song had burst". He said he was also surprised to receive calls from many overseas reporters who assumed he was a dissident and saw the case as a human rights issue.

In response to the uproar, officials from the International Olympic Committee and Bocog defended the substitution as necessary for technical reasons. Bocog spokesman Sun Weide said the pre-recording was a combined decision by the artistic directors and broadcasters. "There were a number of candidates to sing the song, and the artistic directors just picked the best voice and the best performer," he said.

Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli said the case had to be considered in the context of the opening ceremony and the complexity of staging 15,000 performers. "You have to make sure the performance and the song are at the highest level. It is a casting or a technical decision by the producer," he said. He also likened the substitution to a sporting coach's decision to put one player on the bench so another could take the field. "You can have different opinions, but sport is exactly the same," he said. "If your son is playing on a football team, suddenly the coach may decide that he's not playing, that he's going to stay on the bench.

"I think maybe on this one some people would believe that maybe it was not appropriate, but the others would have said it's fantastic because the performance was great. That's what it is in sport and in life." Mr Felli added that the performance on Friday was "fantastic". "We were very pleased with its outcome ... of one of the most complicated events to organise in the world," he said.

(ESWN Comment: "chubby face and uneven teeth" was put in quotes and seemed to be attributed to Chen Qigang, but he said nothing of the sort during his Beijing radio interview.  If he did, it would be during some other interview (since SCMP referred to 'interviews' in the plural).  Where is that other interview published?  That may clear up many things.  When re-interviewed by SCMP for this article, Chen did not repeat the description.  Did the SCMP ask him directly again and did he decline to answer?  It is not clear.)

(Washington Post)  Pretty Face and Voice Didn't Belong to Same Girl.  Ariana Eunjung Cha.  August 12, 2008.

The ponytailed girl in a red dress who sang "Ode to the Motherland" during Friday's Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics was fit for the event, but apparently her voice was not.

A Chinese government official acknowledged Tuesday that the girl was actually lip-syncing at Beijing's "Bird's Nest" stadium; the real singer's face was deemed "not suitable."

In an interview with Beijing Radio, Chen Qigang, a musical director for the ceremony, said that organizers concluded during a rehearsal that the voice of 9-year-old Lin Miaoke, who appeared before a television audience of tens of millions, "must change." Yang Peiyi, the 7-year-old girl whose voice was judged superior, would actually sing the song.

"We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance," Chen said. He added: "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest."

"The national interest requires that the girl should have good looks and a good grasp of the song and look good on screen," Chen continued. "Lin Miaoke was the best in this. And Yang Peiyi's voice was the most outstanding."

The adorable Lin, who is in the third grade, has become an "instant star" since her performance, said the state-run China Daily newspaper. Her father said in the report that he learned only 15 minutes before the ceremony that his daughter would be performing. Lin was already a familiar face to Chinese sports fans -- she had been featured last year in a television ad with Liu Xiang, the hurdling champion who is a favorite for the gold medal.

In contrast, Yang, who is in the first grade, is described as more shy and modest. In her blog, Yang's tutor, Wang Liping, said that Yang "doesn't like to show off. She's easygoing." In a CCTV interview, Yang was asked how she felt about having her voice used for the opening ceremony. She responded that it was an honor.

The Chinese audience did not appreciate the last-minute switch.

In blog postings, some Chinese expressed anger about the decision, saying that the stunt would lead children to believe deception is acceptable and that it could ultimately hurt China's image.

(ESWN Comment:  Now this WaPo article is completely consistent with the known facts.  This is textbook journalism.  You don't need the non-existent "Uneven/Crooked/Buck Teeth and the Fat/Chubby Face" to make the point.  Is this so hard?  Compare this to the articles/columns that follow ...  I get the sense that some of those essays were written before the incident even occurred.)

(New York Times)  I’m Singin’ in Beijing.  Op-ed columnist Gail Collins.  August 13, 2008.

Did you realize the Chinese Communist Party was that much into cute?

The world knows now that the adorable little girl we saw warbling “Ode to the Motherland” at the Olympics opening ceremony was not really singing. She was a Potemkin performer. A Trojan tyke. Lin Miaoke, 9, was fronting for Yang Peiyi, 7, the girl with the best voice but imperfect teeth.

“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression,” said Chen Qigang, the music director, who went public with the news that the dual-little-girl strategy was concocted after a member of the party Politburo intervened at the last minute.

Now this is an Olympic crisis everybody can get into. While your heart goes out to the athletes suffering the agony of defeat, very few of us can internalize the trauma. Really, you have to be able to imagine yourself getting onto the balance beam before you can relate to the pain of falling off.

But having the whole world know that you’ve been deemed insufficiently attractive — now there’s Everywoman’s nightmare. When Peiyi told a Chinese TV station that just being able to sing was an honor, you could imagine her in 10 years insisting that she didn’t care about going to the school dance since she was having so much fun sewing carnations onto the homecoming float.

If she grows up to discover a cure for cancer, when they hand over the Nobel Prize, will everybody say that it was nice that she found a way to make up for those unfortunate front teeth?

The idea that appearance is valued more than performance is one of those painful facts of life that people always hate to be reminded of. But Andrew Nathan, an expert on Chinese politics and human rights at Columbia, seemed puzzled by why anybody would be surprised by this kind of switcheroo in a country where help-wanted ads make it clear that job candidates must be good-looking and the 380 hostesses to the Olympics were all required to be the same height and weight.

“This particular technique seems so standard. I’m a little puzzled about why everybody’s stuck on this example,” he said. “I really don’t know how a little girl in China might respond to being told your teeth are not good enough. But doesn’t that happen all the time in Hollywood?”

Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, saw the story more in terms of consumer fraud. “What she sings is a very moving nationalistic song,” he said. “The people were so emotionally involved. If you asked them what’s the most moving episode, I think the majority would tell you that moment, with the little girl in red clothes. Now the Chinese people feel they are fooled. The psychological hurt is enormous.”

One could certainly argue that American outrage over Peiyi’s situation is overkill, given the fact that families here gather together in front of the TV to watch reality shows in which unattractive people are permitted to audition for talent contests so that the judges can make fun of them. And in China, the fact that authorities were trying to put one over on the viewers was somewhat undercut when Chen, the music director, disclosed the switch in an interview on Beijing Radio.

“The little girl is a magnificent singer. She doesn’t deserve to be hidden,” he told AP Television News. How he felt about his moment of candor once it became an international story is yet to be determined.

Actually, the organizers had started with a completely different little girl, 10, who was fired at the last minute when the ceremony’s director, Zhang Yimou, decided she looked too old. We do not want to imagine the repercussions when this kid hits her 30th birthday.

Miaoke then got the part — until a senior Communist Party member, sitting in on one of the final rehearsals, announced that her voice “must change.”

It’s not actually clear whether it was the party boss who decided that while the voice had to change, the cute exterior needed to remain. But Zhang, a well-known movie director, seemed to start channeling “Singin’ in the Rain.” Peiyi (whose teacher described her as a well-behaved child who didn’t like to show off) got the Debbie Reynolds part — the nice girl singer doing all the work behind the curtain while the star mimed under the spotlight.

Meanwhile, Miaoke was apparently singing her 9-year-old heart out on stage under the illusion that the world was hearing her voice. According to Jim Yardley’s report in The Times, Miaoke’s father said he had to tell her that everybody was hearing Peiyi instead. “The only thing I care about is that my daughter will not get hurt by this. She’ll understand when she grows up,” he added.

You have to wonder. Miaoke may turn out to be the real victim in this story. It’s one thing to be thrust into the role of Debbie Reynolds. It’s a lot worse to go overnight from symbol of the Olympics to Ashlee Simpson.

(ESWN Comment:  A meme is defined as "a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."  I wish that I can track down where the meme of the "uneven teeth" began, but my life is too short and there has to be better things than to nail this down.  What is for certain is that the primary material (in the interview with Chen Qigang) does not support this.  At some point, one reporter wrote it somewhere and others picked it up.  After a few cycles, this becomes a meme.  In comment 91 of The cruelest insults come from ones pretending to speak as the righteous, VOA was asked and replied that since other western news agencies are reporting it, they will take it to be true unless proven otherwise.  Such being the case, Yang Peiyi is now and forever associated with "fat/chubby face" and "uneven/broken/buck teeth" unless she can prove otherwise.)

(Globe and Mail)  Beauty masks an authoritarian state.  August 14, 2008.

The unmasking of the ruse by which China attempted to pass off one girl's beautiful face as belonging to another girl's beautiful voice is also the unmasking of the new China, and the propaganda purposes of the Beijing Olympics.

It would not have done to have Lang Peiyi, the seven-year-old singer of China's patriotic song, Ode to the Motherland, be seen by the world or her own country during the opening ceremony of the Games: She has uneven teeth. Those teeth, and her bowl-cut hair, do not suggest wealth or modernity. Her replacement, nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, is a pig-tailed, Asian version of one of the Olsen twins at that age. She is the ideal, the new China.

This particular lie was perhaps fairly harmless, but it's a signal of how empty the images may be at the Beijing Games, whether in the building of walls around shacks, the clearing out of beggars, the fudging of pollution figures or the insertion of digitally produced fireworks in place of seemingly live fireworks at the opening ceremony.

A far more damaging lie is to be found that goes to the very heart of China's medal successes. In China, small children are spotted by athletic scouts as early as age four and enrolled in sports schools; within a few years, the best are sent to live-in training schools in Beijing. The images from these schools are truly heartbreaking. This is not sport but child labour in the service of the state, and it is abusive.

And so the lie of the new China, as embodied by Lin Miaoke, points to larger lies about Chinese advances. Even the ability of the People's Republic to win the most gold medals, which its rulers believe demonstrates its success as a society, really shows the ruthlessness of the state. China is willing to subvert the real meaning of sport - fun, healthy living, expression of the self - for its larger political goals. And who pays the price? Those least able to bear it, the children.

Authoritarians don't allow free expression because their reign depends on the myth of near-perfection, and as soon as people are free to speak they explode the myth. The Soviet Union offered up the New Man - selfless, industrious and interested in the collective, rather than himself. And in the new China, a pig-tailed, brightly smiling nine-year-old girl stands in for that country's wonderful progress.

This wasn't, then, merely about putting a beautiful face on display as part of the show, as might happen almost anywhere. This was about the state at its highest levels trying to paint a false picture of its achievements, and in so doing to help ensure the long-term survival of a repressive system.

How beautiful in her imperfection Yang Peiyi would have been on the world's stage, singing her country's ode. And how sad that authoritarian China could not allow such a thing.

(Baltimore Sun)  The Beauty of Imperfection.  By Kathleen Parker.  August 15, 2008.

Even as China's opening ceremonies for the Olympics inspired awe, there was something repellent in the exactitude of such mass perfection.

The military precision of 2,008 drummers moving in perfect synchronicity, pounding out the sound of a billion hearts beating, was both mesmerizing and slightly creepy.

If they can do that, what else can this giant power do with a limitless supply of human resources and dedicated discipline?

Inevitably, comparisons have been drawn to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. Just as China's selection as host country signaled its emergence as a global power, Germany's marked that nation's return to the international community following its defeat in World War I.

Although Adolf Hitler was already busy rounding up Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others for detention and/or sterilization, the Games allowed him to pull a propaganda coup of peaceful tolerance. The Holocaust and World War II soon followed.

Like Germany, China has aimed to make a good impression. So determined were the Olympic hosts to project a positive image that officials even swapped out the adorable child-performer who sang "Ode to the Motherland."

The little girl in the red dress who captured hearts around the globe wasn't really singing. She mimed.

The real singer was a less-adorable child, by China's judgment. Her chubby cheeks and crooked teeth made her face "not suitable," officials said, giving new meaning to the expression "game face."

Thus, Yang Peiyi was replaced by Lin Miaoke. Apparently, the Chinese hadn't met Paul Potts, the chubby-cheeked, crooked-toothed tenor who became an overnight sensation when he wowed Britain's Got Talent judges with his rendering of Puccini's aria Nessun Dorma. Mr. Potts, now the beneficiary of recording contracts and millions of fans, has had his teeth fixed, but part of his initial charm was his ordinary packaging. There was this heavenly voice residing in the human equivalent of a tract house.

People identified with his imperfections and loved him all the more for his humility and transcendent performance. He was so ... human.

China isn't burdened by such concerns. Sentimentality doesn't enter into the totalitarian equation. In such a world, innocence is irrelevant and deceit is a lesson best learned young. Who cares that a little girl was told she wasn't pretty enough to be seen by the world, and that her voice - though lovely - belonged not to her but to the homeland?

That single gesture, relatively small amid the extravaganza, said more about China than all the fireworks, human kites and dangling dancers. It said: The human being - the individual - is of no importance. The objectification of that child, her voice commodified for the purposes of the state, was the real ode to the motherland.

The absolute uniformity of movement we witnessed, meanwhile, was a vivid expression of the communist machine and the mandate to honor the whole over the individual.

A friend impressed by the opening ceremonies joked to me that the U.S. wouldn't be able to find that many fit individuals to man so many drums. Although she was sort of kidding - in fact, China has an obesity problem - she may have been on to something. That degree of robotic perfection is hard to imagine beyond the military in a country not lately known for rigid adherence to rules or patient with delayed gratification.

It's easier to command a cohesive performance from people who live under tyrannical rule than it is, say, in a democratically elected republic where obsessive-compulsiveness is considered a treatable pathology.

Democracy is messy. And free people understand that being human means being imperfect, that protest is healthy, that cracks can be stepped on, sins forgiven - and teeth fixed.

That's not to say that the Chinese performers didn't earn awe and applause. They were breathtaking. But it is useful to peek behind the thin veil that separates cooperation from coercion. Those 29 colossal "footprints of fire" that marched through the city sky began, after all, at Tiananmen Square, where in 1989 the Chinese government massacred hundreds of students and activists demonstrating for democratic reform.

Allowing China to host the Olympics may have been a wise decision for unexpected reasons. At the risk of falling under the spell of the greatest show so far on Earth, the world was given a glimpse not only of China's massive power but also of its immense capacity for unfettered resolve.

Chen Qigang was the music director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.  It was he who disclosed during a Bejing radio that the voice of Lin Miaoke actually belonged to Yang Peiyi.  In the September 7, 2008 issue of Yazhou Zhoukan, there is an interview with Chen Qigang.

At 8:08pm on August 8, 2008, the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony commenced.  The success of the event showed the might and dynamism of China to the world.  But at the same time, there was the revelation that Lin Miaoke was lip-synching.  This drew lots of criticisms.  The person who revealed the story to the world was none other than the music director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Chen Qigang.

The disclosure that Lin Miaoke was lip-synching allowed the western media to finally find a point of attack against the Beijing Olympics.  Chen Qigang was outraged.  He thought that the western media used a double standard.  He criticized the western media as being interested only in a small detail for a malevolent purpose.

Chen Qigang said that at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, there was a brass band of 1,000 persons running in different formations.  But the sound was not being captured by microphone.  At the  Athens Olympics opening ceremony, the drummers were playing on vehicles and there were no microphones.  So the music was pre-recorded.  This is common knowledge at all large-scale events, and nobody feels the need to talk about it.

After the Beijing radio interview, some western media described Chen Qigang as a representative of the Chinese government who tossed out the factoid on Lin Mialoke during an interview in a callous manner.  Other western media described Chen Qigang as a political dissident who had to disclose the facts as a matter of conscience.  Those two versions cannot both be correct.  The truth is that both are lies.  Chen Qigang may have been the first person who revealed the lip-synching episode, but he did so at the behest of the director and he was not trying to do an exposé.

Chen Qigang said that the western media have been hostile to the Beijing Olympics.  From the reporting on the Tibet riots to the Olympic torch relay, the western media showed persistent contempt of China.  For political reasons, they often magnified certain minor matters out of proportion.  For the opening ceremony, none of the western media (including Reuters, AFP and CNN) bothered to interview the director team.  But on account of the Lin Miaoke affair, the western media suddenly found unlimited "kindheartedness" and "humanity."  Every day afterwards, they pursued Chen Qigang in the hope that he would come out as a dissident who is willing to reveal more "dirt" that would lead to more chaos.

Chen Qigang actually cursed the western media out.  He accused them of being totally disinterested in anything positive.  It made him wonder just what their mission is.