Olympic-sized Orchestration: China faking it up as it goes along

Our future Chinese overlords are doing all they can to impress their eventual minions, from digital fireworks to lip syncing little girls to government-approved throngs of fans.

Ironic that the culture known for inventing fireworks decided to add some during the opening ceremonies. The man responsible for pulling it off said later in an interview with the UK Sky News, "Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks. But most of the audience thought it was filmed live - so that was mission accomplished. Sky News explained that "the designers even added some haziness to simulate the polluted Beijing skyline." Check out the article to learn about other details like added "camera shake".

While searching for mythical China's poster child to sing their national anthem, the ruling Communist party found that no single poster child existed. China did what any good Milli Vanilli fan would expect: they had the cute girl on camera and the good singer on the mike. The cute girl's father noticed something was amiss with his daughter's voice. Check out the details here.

The Olympic opening ceremonies have always inspired host nations to go to extremes to entertain and impress the world. Certainly Beijing is not the first to fake it up a bit for the benefit of global bragging rights. Yet this year's orchestration extends beyond the first night and into some aspects of the competition.

Michael Barry, pro road cyclist, author, and contributor to VeloNews.com and the New York Times, placed 9th in the Olympic road race. A top 10 finish is noteworthy, but Barry took note of something fishy along the 152-mile course. A few excerpts from his NYTimes.com article:

• "In Europe, the spectators are cycling fans. Many idolize the riders, hunting for autographs and searching for souvenirs from the race and the teams, and madly cheering us on. In China, the crowds seemed orchestrated, lined along the roadside, holding Chinese flags every 20 meters with an Olympic flag in between, many uniformly dressed in yellow T-shirts. They encouraged us with military-like chants, a conductor cueing the crowd while police faced them to ensure they stayed in their spots."
• "Like the athletes’ village, aptly called the Dream World, the course was eerily clean as if it had been staged for television... Olympic banners covered the unsightly shacks. Buildings on the circuit were vacant. Policemen could be seen hiding in the woods, motionless, and focused on everything but the race."
• "I think we found reality, where people lived in shacks, with mounds of garbage in the streets, and chaotic pedestrian, bicycle and automobile traffic overwhelming the roads."

All praise our future Chinese overlords! What's sinister about police in the woods and conductors cueing the cheering throngs to begin their military-style chants? China just wants to present the cutest possible face to the world, to help us see that life under the overlords is quite nice, where every shack sports its own Olympic banner.

Update 8/25: NPR's Morning Edition reports that the Chinese may have stolen our national anthem! (or at least one arrangement of it)

Update 8/29: Three Chinese gymnasts just might have been underage after all. Some internet sleuthing finds Chinese documentation of their ages. China claims a mistake in paperwork is to blame for this misunderstanding, yet the gymnast's age was found to be underage on several documents from several sources.