04:45 pm
Controlympics: More Fakes Than a NYC Street Vendor
Yes, it was the Opening Ceremony, so our standards should start out pretty low. The Chinese, of course, were not content with that. So they put together a show to end all shows. And almost everyone was blown away.
Except now, all those journalists running around Beijing keep discovering problems. First it was the lip-syncing 8-year-old. Then it was the computer-generated fireworks. Then it was forcing the hostesses to audition naked; the go-go girls forced to rehearse until their faces almost froze in a smile; and the soldiers moving the giant scroll forced to wear diapers. Now, it turns out all those annoyingly happy children in ethnic costumes — the ones I complained about during my blogging of NBC’s tape-delayed coverage, the ones who handed the Chinese flag off to goosestepping soldiers — also were fake:
[During the] opening ceremony. . .the children supposedly representing the country’s 56 ethnic groups were in fact all from the same one, the majority Han Chinese Race.
The children carried the national flag into the Bird’s Nest National Stadium, before handing it over to soldiers to raise at the most solemn moment of the ceremony.
They were dressed in costumes associated with the country’s ethnic minorities, including those from troubled areas such as Tibet and the muslim province of Xinjiang. Such displays of “national unity” are a compulsory part of any major state occasion.
But the children were all from the Han Chinese majority, which makes up more than 90 per cent of the population and is culturally and politically dominant, according to an official with the cultural troupe from which they were selected. . . .
This point was put to Wang Wei, executive vice-president of the Beijing organizing committee at a press conference today. “I think you are being very meticulous,” he said. He said it was “traditional” to use dancers from other ethnic groups in this way. “I would argue it is normal for dancers, performers, to be dressed in other races’ clothes,” he said. “I don’t know exactly where these performers are from.”
. . .The mother of one of the children involved. . .said [the children's performance] involved grueling days of rehearsal, from 3 pm sometimes until 2 am the next morning.
Meticulous? As opposed to forcing children to rehearse for twelve hours after school? I think the word you’re looking for is exploitative. In most of the rest of the world, forcing kids to spend twelve hours doing anything would be called child labor.
Photo: Andy in Beijing via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.
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