In the wake of the lip-syncing controversy that surrounding the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, Chinese culture has been made the culprit.
Last week, I was invited on National Public Radio to discuss the controversy in which a high-ranking Chinese official ordered seven-year-old singer Yang Peiyi cut from the opening ceremony because she was deemed not cute enough. A pretty, pig-tailed nine-year-old replaced her, but lip-synced the song to Yang’s recorded voice.
I was asked to talk about the column I wrote last week for this newspaper, “Yang Peiyi, You’re Not Ugly; They Are.” In that column, I argued that it was the Communist regime’s single-minded focus on portraying a perfect image to the world, even at the expense of the Chinese people, that was behind this incident.
The last caller who joined us on the show was a Chinese-American woman who expressed ambivalence: on the one hand, she sympathized with the girl; on the other hand, she said, Chinese culture so emphasizes “appearance” that perhaps the swap was understandable. Maybe seven-year-old Yang Peiyi was not even hurt by it, she said.
Unfortunately, time ran out before I could respond. But hearing such comments I am reminded of a saying that has become popular among Chinese today: “It’s your bad luck to have been born in China.”
This saying expresses the habit Chinese have developed of excusing the status quo. All too often, Chinese culture has become that excuse.
First of all, keep in mind that this was not merely a case of judging someone by their appearance. Neither Yang nor her replacement knew in advance that one would lip-sync to the other’s voice; viewers of the opening ceremony were not told either. Only later did a director admit to the lip-sync, explaining it was to “put our country's interest first.”
To excuse such fraudulence as Chinese culture is a stretch. Traditional Chinese culture is broad. It also teaches, for example, to “treat other people’s parents as your own, and treat other people’s children as your own.” One wonders if the official who pulled Yang Peiyi would have done the same were it his daughter.
Unfortunately, under the Communist regime, “traditional Chinese culture” has been made a trash bin of cultural garbage—a hodgepodge of undesirable traits that can help justify otherwise inexcusable deeds.
Take, for example, the official slogan of “harmony.” The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games included a Confucius-themed segment in which the Chinese character for “harmony” was displayed.
Confucius taught a harmony founded in respect for different opinions. He said, “righteous men live in harmony while differing.” One only needs to look at the conspicuously empty “protest parks” in Beijing to understand the Communist regime’s theory of “harmony.” It is conformity based on repressing any dissenting thoughts—the opposite of what Confucius taught.
It is not a unique phenomenon in China that beautiful people are more popular and welcome. If Hollywood is any indication, this is a universal truth. However, had the opening ceremony been held in the U.S., would Yang Peiyi have been cut so arbitrarily by an official? Would she have been replaced by a prettier girl miming her voice? And after the scandal had been exposed, would Americans have defended the decision with comments like, “The national interest is most important” or “It’s just part of our culture”?
Even if we accept that face is more a part of Chinese culture than the West, culture is still no excuse. For centuries, the binding of women’s feet was part of Chinese culture. Would we all consent if the dancers in the opening ceremony had their feet bound to make them lovelier, then? While the binding of feet is now widely seen as inhumane, is it not also inhumane to disallow a little girl from showing her face simply for her crooked teeth? When facing unreasonableness, one needs to question it, not excuse it.
The radio caller is not alone. Many Chinese know the bad deeds of the Chinese regime but feel uncomfortable hearing criticism when it relates to China. They’d sooner use the excuse of Chinese culture—something mysterious and complex to most Westerners.
To these people, I would like to say: If you really love China’s culture, please treasure its reputation.
Masha Ma is a graduate of Peking University in Beijing and holds an M.A. degree from the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. She is now completing a degree for juris doctor at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law and writes a weekly column on culture for the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times.
