The day after the Beijing Olympics, Zhang Yimou ran back to the command center on Linzui Road alone, the large workroom was empty, there were no arguments, no music, and no fireworks, he fell into a great loss and sentimentality.
This loss and sentimentality began from the moment the opening ceremony ended, after all, the closing ceremony was much less stressful than it was. Zhang Yimou began to give frequent interviews.
1
During the three-year-long preparation for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Zhang Yimou’s biggest headache was the meeting: “It’s not an exaggeration, I almost had a few thousand meetings.” Zhang Yimou used the word “heart-breaking” to describe his feelings at the time, “You get a good half-day, suddenly this program does not want, and then become that, really very painful.”
He had an endless amount of information to read and reports to approve every day. However, when the design room full of sketches suddenly quieted down, Zhang Yimou’s heart also produced a certain strange feeling. He confessed that he had a little loss. “The Olympics are not slowly dispersing, it’s ‘wow’ and it’s gone. I’ve been working for a long time, and when I finally disbanded, when I stopped, ‘wow’ the next day once the plane tickets were bought, ‘wow’ the people in this building were gone. I feel a sense of loss.”
In the theme song singer selection, Zhang Yimou also had a falling out with music director Chen Qigang, “We have been planning is to let the two most ordinary volunteers sing the theme song ‘I and you’, is the two most ordinary college students, to the most original voice expression. But two weeks before the opening ceremony, the leaders said this is worried that the climax can not rise, or find two big players to sing it.”
Later, Zhang Yimou called Chen Qigang to say this change, “Chen Qigang was on the other end of the phone, the idea that we have been rehearsing for so many years, what do you say when you change people, but also scolded me for not taking a firm stand!” The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers.
2
The artist and the politician, the laws of art and the administrative rules, confront and compromise behind the stage.
Zhang Yimou’s feeling that working on such an Olympic project is equal to making 10 movies. In fact, this job does not consume the same amount of energy as making a movie. For example, if you want to recruit a director for a sub-project, when you make a movie, the general director can just listen to his own artistic feeling, but when you prepare the opening and closing ceremonies, you have to make reports and approve all the big and small things.
The original 8-minute performance of the Terracotta Warriors was cancelled.
Zhang Yimou is not in charge either. He had in the feature film “decryption of the opening ceremony” implicitly spit bitterness: the people below to give up at every turn, said “this work can not do”, and his position does not allow him to vent his grievances.
It was also in that feature film that Zhang Yimou expressed a profound compliment to his superiors: the opening ceremony ended up looking like this, and he had to thank the leaders because they were “very open-minded”.
In response to an outside comment that the opening ceremony was nothing more than “human sea tactics” and “large group exercises,” Zhang Yimou retorted: “Where the climax of a large event, is not because of the 10,000 people cheering up the momentum? That’s how to make the scene boil ah.” “Do you think Westerners don’t want to find so many people? They also want to find 3,000 actors of the same height, fat and thin, and want to engage in ‘human sea tactics’, but they can’t find so many people, nor can they afford to spend the money!”
In the central area of the Olympic Stadium, people watch one exciting performance and competition after another above ground, but in the underground part they can’t see, the maze is hidden, and every day is as crowded as a stream, bustling.
In the deep underground, a sunken circular passage connects the various venues in the central area, which is wide enough for two large trucks to drive side by side. Under the “Bird’s Nest”, there is another underground palace, which is divided into several layers, hidden organs, the opening ceremony of the huge “Earth”, hidden here, waiting for the opportunity to rise. After the Olympics, the underground “palace” is still not open to the public, and part of the underground space will be transformed into an underground commercial facilities, open for customers.
Just like the secrets that have been hidden underground, part of the story in the Beijing Olympics secrecy file has been unveiled, while the other part remains silent.
3
Once the Olympics were over (and even once the opening ceremony was over), not only Zhang Yimou, but also various “people in the know” had a strong desire to talk, and news about the “declassified Olympics” came out in a flurry.
Some people involved in the planning of the program told reporters that when the opening ceremony was first proposed to hit the fou, there was opposition from the leaders, saying “no” “fou” homophonic, can not just open the Olympic Games to “no “it. Later, after looking for a large circle, did not find a suitable percussion instrument, we reached a compromise on the percussion, no longer care about the harmonic issue.
The warriors’ hammers fell heavily on the drums, and then the audience’s eardrums felt the tremor of the majestic sound, how could people know that there was no connection between the two? Dissatisfied with the actual sound of the percussion, the directing team finally decided that it would be better to play a more ideal sound created by electronic synthesizers for the opening ceremony.
The 29 “big footprints” open in the night sky of Beijing, perfectly presented in the TV screen, the program staff revealed that the last one over the “bird’s nest” is real, the other 28, is made by computer stunts, in order to ensure the best visual effect. Considering the air quality of Beijing, the computer stunts also include realistic “fog ami”.
The performances of the 56 nationalities were allegedly not really from the ethnic minorities; some of the Olympic etiquette girls were required to wear wigs in order to have a neat and tidy hair style.
Individual foreign media questioned the age of Chinese gymnasts during the competition, which made the Chinese public sulk a little, not because of fake ages, but because they felt that foreigners had eaten sour grapes and made a fuss about nothing. In China, people have always been a little more tolerant of forgery, not to mention forgery to showcase China’s image.
4
One morning in August, Wang Liping, a teacher at an elementary school affiliated with Peking University, received a call from an elderly man who learned that her student Yang Peiyi had bitten a row of teeth marks on her arm.
Ten days ago, at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, “Singing the Motherland” caused a sensation and deep trouble for Yang Peiyi and her parents.
The song “Singing the Motherland” that moved many people at the opening ceremony was not sung by Lin Miaoke, the “smiling angel” on stage, but by Yang Peiyi, a 7-year-old girl with a heavenly voice.
The child actor Lin Miaoke appeared in “Singing to the Motherland”.
Chen Qizang later revealed: “After the recording, I think Lin Miaoke’s voice is not particularly suitable, from the height and width of the voice is not very suitable, finally we decided to use Yang Peiyi from the voice. The child who appears is called Lin Miaoke, the voice is Yang Peiyi’s voice ……”
“This can be said to be a last minute choice of last resort, because we went through several reviews, all of which were quite strict, and we listened to a recording of Lin Miaoke, which was played on the spot, and during the joint rehearsal, people from all sides, especially the leaders of the Central Politburo, gave us their opinion and said that we had to change, and we did.”
“We felt obliged to face the Chinese audience, the audience, to make such an explanation, in fact, I think, we should have the understanding that this is a national interest, the national culture, the image of the national music culture, especially the national flag entry, which is a very significant, very serious matter ……”
“And then we made such a choice, whether it’s for Lin Miao Ke or Yang Pei Yi, I think it’s fair. That is to say, having the most perfect voice, plus an image and performance that we think is perfect, combined together in this way.”
Yang Peiyi back in the day
But the truth is that both Lin Miao Ke and Yang Pei Yi had trouble accepting the result calmly. In order to escape the complexity and noise of the adult world, their parents spread their wings and tried their best to protect their children. Lin Miao Ke’s father, Lin Hui, who is a journalist, was also instructed by the propaganda department not to give any more interviews to journalists.
Yang Peiyi’s family took her away from public opinion, not wanting their daughter to know that she could only contribute her voice because of “image problems” and that the key to the so-called image deficit was that the girl’s teeth were not as straight as they should have been when she was in the process of changing them, with a little gap.
5
On the evening of August 18, Yang Peiyi was happy to see Lin Miao Ke, who she had been spending time with, and the two children who were performing the Flying Trapeze in an entertainment program, but neither the host nor the children mentioned her in the film until the end of the program. When the commercial ended and the next program started, Yang Peiyi froze for a while and went back to her bedroom in silence.
On September 1, at the opening ceremony of the school, Yang Peiyi sang “Singing to the Motherland” again in front of more than 2,000 teachers and students of the school, and it was she herself who appeared on stage.
On September 23, Yang Peiyi told Ms. Wang Liping that she had just lost one of her teeth.
“Where’s the tooth?”
“The tooth I’m going to bring back home.”
“Right! Your tooth is most memorable, when you sang, so many pictures had this tooth in them.”
“I know, I’ll take good care of it, I still have these teeth that haven’t been replaced and are already active.”
“When all your teeth are replaced, your face grows, and your face plate gets a little bigger, your teeth won’t be crowded together and arranged neatly.”
“I know.”
Recent Comments