UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has the goods — actual documents! — on the 14-year-old Chinese gymnast (the girl named “He,” not to be confused with A Boy Named Sue) who competed this week as a 16-year-old.
Good Lord … Is anything in Beijing what it seems?
I’ve already dissected China’s use of a lip-synching 9-year-old “singer” for its national anthem, the computer-generated “footstep” fireworks display, NBC’s omission of Chairman Mao from its analysis of Chinese history, the network’s quiet habit of inserting play-by-play commentary hours after the fact, and the possibility that some of China’s gymnasts may still be young enough to watch the Backyardigans.
And now this from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
In the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, a procession of children bore a large Chinese flag into the Bird’s Nest stadium, each child wearing a costume representing one of China’s ethnic minorities.
However, the children actually were members of the Han majority, an arts official said in an interview. Yuan Zhifeng, deputy director of Galaxy Children’s Art Troupe, said the children were drawn from the all-Han Chinese troupe. “I assume they think the kids were very natural looking and nice,” Ms. Yuan said …
China’s 55 minority groups are officially celebrated, often as curios in pageants to the country’s self-image as a harmonious, multiethnic society. But many live on the margins of the mainstream, poorer and less-educated than their Han countrymen.
From the time babies are born in China, they are assigned an ethnic identifier, a single word printed below their names on their national identification cards. Interethnic couples in China must choose to register their babies as one ethnicity only.
The London Times has the real smoking gun:
Olympic organisers had previously insisted that the children, dressed in minority costumes and paraded into the Bird’s Nest stadium carrying the Chinese flag in a moment that represented national unity, were the real thing.
“Fifty-six children from 56 Chinese ethnic groups cluster around the Chinese national flag,” read the ceremony programme.
That tears it. I think it’s time to go all Tonya Harding on the Chinese Politburo. Can you imagine the ca-ca hitting the fan if a similar ceremony in America used cute Caucasian children in blackface to simulate old-timey Negroes? Or little white Girl Scouts with Indian headdresses?
I’m in favor of bridging cultural divides and all that jazz, but vetting your stuff to avoid offending people is a two-way street. China is looking more and more like it’s not ready to partner with the Western world on much of anything — other than making tire-pressure gauges for our presidential candidates to use as props, of course.
Maybe they thought ‘we’ wouldn’t notice because ‘we’ all think they look the same.
Oh and i think “Negroes” is politically incorrect these days — well up here in Canada it is anyway.
Yeah, as long as they went to the trouble of procuring a costume from each of the regions, why not an actual child from each of the regions to go with said costume?
Oh right, not pretty enough.
Ouch. Well, I can’t wait for someone to come forward and explain how *this* is okay. This is pretty dang over the line, even if you allow a lot for how much reality changes for the media. Ya can’t celebrate your cultural diversity by FAKING IT.
Totally over the line, but “old-timey” should have been a clue that I was speaking metaphorically …
I would expect nothing less from the Chinese Govt
Just another reason low on the totem pole of reasons why not to watch the Olympics this year. High up is organ harvesting, torture, imprisonment etc….
China is a fake country wall-to-wall. Have we ever seen a product CONCEIVED in China? They are just good enough for putting stuff together and oppress their people.
Can’t expect anything more from them.
Even TV Guide is getting in on the fakery. Look at this picture of Michael Phelps:
http://www.tvguide.com/PhotoGallery/Olympic_Stars_to_Watch_1264/1.aspx
Their photoshopper needs practice in getting the scale right.
Ha… I saw the picture of Michael Phelps… it looks like a dolphin’s head on a whale’s body.
And as for China. I have no respect for how they treat their citizens, and no respect for all the US companies who have our products manufactured there. Everything breaks anyway. And we can’t forget about the lead in our babies’ toys, the toothpaste…etc.! Oh, and thank China for keeping your gas prices so high since they are buying up the oil in Saudi Arabia. The Olympic committee must have accepted a bribe to have the Olympics in such a despicable country.
judge not that ye be not judged goes a long way these days.
In defense of the people of China they have come a long way in 30 years and there still is a way to go. I have been living and working here in Shanghai and it is truly an exciting city. There seems to be far too much dissing of this country and its people and I can only attribute it to judgemental comments by people who really have no idea what is going on in this small planet we call earth. There are 1.3 billion people here and that cannot be changed. China is trying to control its vast population and as it moves into the future everyone is the west is worried and concerned that when this number of people desire that life style of the rich and famous that it will put a crimp in their own lifestyle. So when the cars per capita reaches that of the west say WHOA, this cannot happen. Take another 1 billion people and drop them into the good old US of A and see what happens. See what takes place in a me first society.
Yes I am just getting a little tired of all the childish comments and people wasting there time and energy whining.
There will never be another Olympics hosted by a country that invested 40 billion into putting on the show of a lifetime. Give credit where credit is due. The Chinese people paid the bill whether they wanted to or not and for the most part they satisfied with the result.
There was a cost to putting this country front and centre, but I for one prefer the expenditure in this sense rather see this kind of money being spent on a military effort in Afghanistan or Iraq.
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