China - The 'Perfect' Land Or So It Seems

Is perfection so crucial that you are willing to create a fake persona to cover up what seems imperfect? That seems to be the case for China during this Beijing Olympics so much so that the singer of the Olympics song who is deemed not adorable enough to appear on international tv has been sneaked backstage only to be using her voice on the face of a better looking and more adorable young girl. When the press found out that that was not the actual voice of the girl, the press went into a media frenzy. Yes, no dout the opening ceremony was all beautiful and grand but can't they accept a small girl with chipped tooth and slanting eyes who possess one of the most beautiful and powerful voice for a 6-year old? Even the fireworks during the opening ceremony are fake just in case the actual fireworks didn't turn out as beautiful as they wanted.

In the Chinese community, 'face' or what we normally call it as status symbol is of extreme importance. It is better to lie and hide than to look poor and imperfect. Which explains why everything has to be done in such grandeur fashion befitting the purpose of certain events. Marriage is one where so much money is spent in organizing one dinner banquet and everything that goes along with it like the rental of wedding attires, cars, make-up assistants, fashion stylists, tables and food for relatives and friends and the beautiful hotel suite that the lovely wedded couple will stay in. Even more outrageous is the practice of eating sharks fin where it becomes customary to serve on every wedding dinner despite how costly, distateful and cruel it is to kill sharks just to eat its fin. Chinese are willing to harm others at the cost of looking good for themselves.

Is having the Olympics in Beijing too early to allow a country like China to shine too soon only for the detriment of the country once the Olympics is over? I am not so sure but talks of how the economy in China and some parts of the world will spiral down after the Olympics is strife. I will know more about China when I am there but will have to reserve that for my future posts. But it certainly is the land of promises for now. But it will definitely be more beneficial if the media does not get filtered by the whole nation just to display what is deemed 'perfect' by the government, depriving the people of real news and emotions. As we all clearly know, nothing is too perfect!