More ceremony fakes unearthed

Reuters

GET REAL: Children representing China's 55 minority groups carry their country's flag during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

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The Olympic opening ceremony featured faked fireworks, a fake singer who lip synced to another girl’s voice and now it appears that the children appearing in costumes representing China’s 55 minority groups were also fakes.

The Wall Street Journal today quoting an official saying that the children were were performers at the Galaxy Children's Art Troupe, an artistic group which only comprises children drawn from the dominant Han minority.

"I assume they think the kids were very natural looking and nice," Ms Yuan Zhifeng, the deputy director of the troupe, told the newspaper.

Han Chinese constitute about 92 per cent of the population with the 55 other ethnic groups, or nationalities as they are called, making up the rest.

The children were wheeled out during last Friday’s extravaganza dressed in costumes which identified them as belonging to, for instance, the Tibetan minority, the Mongol minority, the Kazakh minority and so on.

After years of inter-marriage, many of the minority groups have lost their blended in with the Han majority, in some cases even losing their native dialects.

However, some groups, like the Russian minority found in China’s north-west, are clearly distinguishable by their fair skin and fair hair.

China often trundles out minority groups in costumes to represent the unity of the nation and the harmony among the various nationalities.

It was earlier reported that some of the fireworks shown on the live broadcast of the opening ceremony were digitally enhanced shots taken days earlier.

It was also revealed that the sweet nine-year-old shown singing a stirring rendition of “Ode to the Motherland” at the opening ceremony – a la Nikki Webster at the Sydney Olympics – was in fact only mouthing the words.

Moreover, she wasn’t even lip syncing to her own voice. Authorities later admitted that Lin Miaoke was just chosen to be the public face of Yang Peiyi, the girl with the voice of an angel, but with the teeth of a developing seven-year-old.

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