Why ugly people shouldn't go to China

Hopefully most of you were able to watch the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. If you’ve read my recent posts, you are aware of some of the extremes China has gone to for the big show. Things like shipping out the homeless and asking their citizens not to pee in public are two good examples of this “commitment to excellence”.

I thought I had heard it all, until I came across this story.

Remember that precious little girl in pigtails who sang that beautiful song as the flag was carried into the stadium? Yea - she lip-synched the entire thing. The voice we heard was that of Yang Peiyi, who has a chubby face and uneven teeth. Way too ugly to be seen in public. I mean look at her - she's hideous!

“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression," said Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony. "The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation," Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com (right before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China - hmmm).

Apparently the final decision to go Milli Vanilli was made after a senior member of China's ruling Communist Party politburo attended a rehearsal. "He told us there was a problem that we needed to fix it, so we did," he said, without disclosing further details of the order.

It’s a good thing Mick Jagger wasn’t born in China.

As if that weren’t enough, organizers have also admitted that those really cool “live” pictures of “firework footprints” Tiananmen Square to the Olympic stadium in were actually partly computer-generated or pre-recorded for TV.

Wang Wei of the organizing committee insisted the fireworks had actually exploded on the night and that most of the television images used were genuine. "However, because of the poor visibility of the night some previously recorded foots may have been used," he said. Maybe they were obscured by Beijing’s unique “oxygen to crap ratio” hanging in the atmosphere.

I can not tell you how disappointed I am. I wonder what schmuck had to tell Yang Peiyi that she was too ugly to be on camera, so a prettier girl will go instead. And even better, that prettier girl will be pretending to sing with your perfect voice, so she’ll be even more perfect. We want the ceremony to be perfect, don’t we?

I hope the Chinese government offered to pay for the lifetime’s worth of counseling she’s going to need.