China's propaganda ministry moved in Tuesday, deleting many online discussion entries and blocking access to video links showing Miaoke's lip-syncing.
The Beijing organizers weren't the first to use lip-syncing for an Olympic performance. The late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, in great pain from pancreatic cancer, did so at the Turin Winter Games in 2006, although the voice that was heard was his own.
But China has suffered a string of recent scandals involving fake news stories, bogus photos of a rare South China tiger and a sham TV report that vendors filled dumplings with cardboard. Social experts bemoan the lack of morality or trust among government agencies, companies and individuals.
Kang Xiaoguang, a social science researcher with the Chinese Academy of Science, welcomed the online debate over the government's big show, saying it was a sign the society is maturing. But he added that the singing and fireworks misrepresentations are disconcerting.
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http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-fg-lipsync13-2008aug13,0,3009926.story?page=2
It is quite unpleasant, I am sure, to be put in the background because of one's looks or physique. I think part of the furore is also a cultural disconnect between East and West. American actors, for example, are expected to sing their own lines in musicals, whereas in India, for example, plain-looking playback singers belting out songs for younger and more flexible actors on screen and on stage has been the way it's been for practically the entire history of Indian cinema.
She is already being called a little Milli Vanilli. That may be unfair as well. Perhaps they will now call lip-sync events "miaoke", as it is the opposite of, but kind of rhymes with "karaoke".
