truecon on August 12, 2008 at 7:37 PM

Funny how you haven’t figure out China, yet you seem to have America all sewed up in your mind.

The problem isn’t that the girl lip synched the song; it’s WHY she lipped synched it! Because the STATE wanted to put forth a pretty face. The original singer did not represent what the STATE felt was a “true representation” of China.

Do you get it now?

And did you know the ChiComs contracted the son of Albert Speer for their Olympic architecture? Nothing like keeping the old and new traditions of totalitarianism alive huh?

Moral and political relativism…aren’t they great?

2) how do you think 90% of performances in america are staged? and what do you think drives them? how do you think britney spears or lindsey lohan or countless others ever got a singing career? yes, it is a little different if they are lip syncing their own songs, but not much. they are celebrated because of their appearance. period.

3) i live in china, so maybe i am getting a skewed perspective and need to get home sooner rather than later. but the government aside, the people here that i meet seem a lot happier than the people i meet in america (granted, i lived all of my life on the coasts surrounded by liberals who can be pretty bitter). that does not mean they don’t want things or their lives are perfect or better. but i am a smiler. i like to smile at and to people. in america, i am just as likely to get a frown or a questioning look or a scowl in response as another smile. but in china, i always get a smile. i am not sure what that means, but it might mean something (this sounds like a flippant and silly thing, but i am seriously trying to figure out its deeper meaning – lots of time on my hands…..).

4) i was flying on a domestic flight and they had an article about the beauty pageant they held for their new batch of stewardesses (no, not a dude in the bunch – so not flight attendant). yup, they are pretty up front in this country about appreciating and rewarding beauty in places people might like to see beauty. sounds good to me as oppposed to all the pretend blindness to beauty we are supposed to have in america.

so they got the cutest girl and the best singer to combine for the ‘best’ show. it is only in our own particular kind of brainwash (and culture brainwashes us all – it is just for us to determine which is the good kind of wash and which is the bad and try our best to overcome the bad), that we think how horrible that girl must feel, because in america we teach pity and victimization and how we must feel awful at even the slightest injuctice. maybe in china they just teach beauty is beauty, appreciate it, and the girl feels good that she got to sing at such a big event.

i openly admit to not really having things figured out for myself yet on china, so i am open to being universally corrected in my mistakes.

cheers!

Fixed it for you.

Did any right thinking person think it would be any other way? I’m surprised this actually came out in the open – what’s going to happen to the whistle-blower?

Try and tell me THAT wasn’t it’s “original intended purpose.”

That “Chinese folk hymn” is constructed of Western melodic quotations and harmonic progressions.

From headlines, I noted those Chinese bloggers critical of the Opening Pageantry denouncing the Director’s omission of China’s modernity, idealizing instead China’s past. Would then the Western musical traditions mimic placate or antagonize those critics–is “modern China” a Western phenomena after all?

For altheltes to come together and compete, may the best man/woman/child win.

For all the fakery and mockery generated, Olympics has not served its original intended purpose.

Poor little girl, that actually sang. Somebody smuggle that family out in their luggage or something.

Blue Screen of Death at the opening ceremony.

Rhinoboy on August 12, 2008 at 12:32 PM

That is freakin’ hilarious.

… I don’t care if the girl lip synced.

This does not change my view of the world, my station in life, my perception of the Olympics, or my view of China’s totalitarianism.

I agree with you in all you say here. My wife is Chinese. She and her ex used to spend the big bucks to board her son at the best of schools just to give him that leg up when they were in China. It’s been acculturated by her son and now that he’s in college here, the pull to come home that we grow up with is not as great, though he calls everyday. She misses him dearly when he is gone but always explains it away because he will go far now and learn how to make it in the world alone.

I can’t say it is tougher for me than for her, but if it was my decision he’d be home much more often because, as you say, it is alien to me.

I work with a flaming liberal who took two weeks of her vacation to watch the socialist/Communist show.

The Olympics? LOL… ok.

2008 Peking or 1936 Berlin? Who can tell?

Outside of the parade of athletes I’d rather watch paint dry, or if none is wet within walking distance then soccer, than the Olympics.

I really can’t believe they were sat like right next to each other. This was opening night…when did news of the violence actually break?

jimmy the notable on August 12, 2008 at 12:25 PM

Remember that the Bush family relationship with China goes way back to the 70s. Bush may have arranged to have Putin seated next to him so they could have a nice frank discussion.

I thought from the body language that Putin was pretty shocked, and Bush was ready to spring.

I’m gonna call that Bush 1, Putin 0. I also think it was a subtle way for the ChiComs to let Putin know that they don’t have his back in Georgia.

but I’m just a housewife

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 12:47 PM

Funky Chicken:
I tend to agree with you. Marshaling forces close to a border and getting a large number of units ready for combat are not things that can be easily masked these days and the Russians may have been betting on us not paying too much attention to that part of the world. Bush may have just said nothing more than. “Have you tried the mongolian beef at the Happy Dragon? So what is your 58th Army up to these days?”.

b4, the national anthem is March of the Volunteers. It was written in 1935, around the time of the fall of dynasties and the rise of the Republic via Sun Yet Sen, in response to the tyranny of the occupation by Japan and Western Powers, not to mention their loss to the Japanese in the first Sino-Japanese War and suffering disgrace in havng to agree with Russian territorial demands before that. It became the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” when the Chinese were invaded in 1937 by the Japanese.

The lyrics were butchered by the ChiComs to tout Mao thinking but it wasn’t the national anthem, IIRC. The lyrics now are the original ones and it was codified as the National Anthem in the constitution in 2004.

Yeah, the view of the military representing ChiCom history is easy for us but it means more to the Chinese than Communism. It’s too bad the Chinese finally won their independence of outside influence, occupation and warlordism via Mao. It should have been Chiang so our view of the military stagecraft would’t be so vituperative. I would have liked that immensely, but it wasn’t and nothing will change that now.

He said there were police around them constantly and that the locals fled when they’d approach to ask questions, so fearful they were of the police state.

Police and what some whackjob called “patriotic volunteers.” When I pointed out on another forum they were police informants and don’t be so fkn naive, I got bounced.