one world, whose dream

7/31/2019 One World, Whose Dream

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One World, Whose Dream?

David Moser

2008

A teacher of mine called asking if I wanted to appear in a CCTV program celebrating the upcoming

Beijing Olympic games. This will be a very big spectacle, he said. Superstars like Jackie Chan,

and some Olympic athletes will be there. Of course, they want some foreigners to participate. He

wasnt sure what they wanted the foreigners to do, other than look foreign, but it sounded intriguing.

An inside glimpse at how the Chinese media is hyping the Olympics Sure, why not?

China television rarely broadcasts entertainment programs live, the notable exception being the

annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala, for which the immediacy of live TV creates a strong sense of

national unity. This Olympics program, calledBai Nian Yuan Meng, A One-hundred Year Dream,

was also to be aired live, and like the Spring Festival show, it was a massive undertaking, prepared

and rehearsed for months in advance, and executed with the complex logistical scope of a major

military operation.

Thus, when I showed up for the first dress rehearsal I was fully expecting a gigantic extravaganza,

but even so, what I saw knocked my socks off. Like everything about the 2008 Olympics, the

production featured over-the-top glitter, sensory overload, and almost surreal excess. No square

millimeter of visual space was wasted, and each nook and cranny of the stage vibrated with

carefully-planned semiotic significance. Waves of dancers flooded the stage constantly, computergraphics imagery morphed hypnotically on the background panels, and extra musicians and dancers

cavorted on tall platforms. It was the Olympic motto Faster, Higher, Stronger applied to a variety

show format. The goal, it seemed, was to cram all of Chinese culture and the Olympic spirit into

one 90-minute show: Peking Opera, the Yellow River Concerto, the hutong, the Olympic torch,

the Olympic theme songs, kites, kids, kungfu, and Kitsch (with Chinese characteristics), nothing was

left out. And, of course, Chinese ethnic minorities, Xinjiang and Tibetan dancers represented in

traditional costumed charm.

The cloying five Fuwa mascots were a constant presence, manifested in larger-than-life Disney

style, bouncing and waving on the sidelines throughout the entire proceedings. (During breaks the

enormous rubber Fuwa costumes would come off to reveal the sweating, exhausted young male

dancers inside. It occurred to me that this was an apt metaphor for the Chinese Olympics as a whole

a cheery fantasy exterior powered by the sweat of anonymous, underpaid workers.)

The most overworked group of performers was the audience themselves, a hand-chosen group of

participants who were required to attend each dress rehearsal to receive coaching on when and how

to applaud, how to wave the various flags, props and pom-poms, and how to shout the Olympic

slogans in perfect unison. A director in charge of the audience stood at the side and guided their

actions, at times acting like a symphony conductor, at times like a tyrannical army drill sergeant.


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For one of the sports-related songs, some of the foreigners were sprinkled into the ranks of the

background dancers, who were all dressed in sexy, navel-baring Dallas Cowboy cheerleader outfits.

Shaking their oversized pom-poms, they all joined in the bilingual refrain Come on! Jia you!

(which merely left the native English speakers groaning, Oh, come on!)

The main foreign presence, however, was saved for the big finale, a schlocky operatic choral paean

to the Olympic spirit, and the idea was to have the foreigners all colors, all ages mixed in with

the Chinese and ethnic minorities in one big One World, One Dream harmony fest. The total

number of performers was amassed on the stage, leaving hardly any room for us to stand. Our

duties were simply to crowd into the throng at the big climax, do a majestic 180-degree turn to face

the audience, wave an Olympic flag in one hand and hold a fake microphone in the other while lip-

synching the words to the song. (We were not the only ones lip-synching. In fact, not a single

singer on the program which included mega-stars Jackie Chan, Han Hong, Sun Nan, Liu Huan,

and Wei Wei warbled a single note throughout the show. Every note was pre-recorded.)

Like the annual Spring Festival gala, the final taping took place over three days. Sunday night was a

complete performance carried out for the purposes ofshencha (control, monitoring, censorship),

viewed exclusively by a small group of Party leaders, who sat emotionlessly scribbling comments

and criticisms, all of which would be incorporated into the final performance. Monday night was an

approved and finalized performance, to be recorded as a beibodai, a back-up broadcast tape. This

version would be synched up, minute-by-minute, to the live broadcast, and in the case of performer

no-shows, unsightly accidents, or politically incorrect incidents, the tape from the previous night

could be punched in and substituted at any moment, with the TV audience none the wiser.

It was interesting to see to what extent the Party officials micro-managed the details of the

performance. Following the firstshencha, a set of recommendations and corrections came down

from the censors, including a request that we foreigners not wear the white Olympic T-shirts we had

been issued, but rather come decked out in our native dress. (Native dress? What did they

mean, exactly? For example, what was my Canadian friend supposed to wear? A lumberjack

outfit?) None of the various mandated revisions were based upon artistic or commercial decisions on

the part of television professionals, but rather on the esthetic and political whims of this small group

of Party bureaucrats.

Other condescending touches were added. Appearing on the show was a phenomenally popular

Russian singer named Vitas, whose claim to fame is an almost impossible castrato-style high-C

range. Having quite a following in China, he is one of the foreign performers invited to perform at

the opening Olympic ceremonies. At the end of his number, the singer was coached to say Wo ai

ni Beijing. Nimen zhen pang!, the last intended word bang(great/awesome) being intentionally

mispronounced aspang(fat) resulting in the meaning I love you Beijing. You are all fat!. This

lame joke evidently fulfilled the obligatory stereotype of the cute foreigner who actually tries to

speak Chinese.

The night of the live broadcast, as we took our places, the director of the show, frazzled andexhausted from lack of sleep, pleaded with the collected ensemble, When the leaders come in


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tonight to watch the show, please, please be sure to give them a standing ovation! And so, as the

leaders were escorted in just before the 7:50 starting time, we all dutifully stood and applauded

them. Relaxed and casually dressed, the group included Li Changchun, ranked fifth in the CCP

Politburo Standing Committee and considered Chinas propaganda chief, and Liu Yunshang, head of

the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee and head of the Propaganda Ministry. Also inattendance, sitting in the front row in his wheelchair, was Deng Pufang, Deng Xiaopings son.

The show began on schedule, and as program took its course, I couldnt help but note the contrast

between all this frenetic razzle-dazzle on the stage and the calm, dispassionate demeanor of the

handful of leaders in the front row. What were they feeling? Were they nervous about the upcoming

Olympic games? Proud of their role in Chinas rapid development? Just enjoying the show? It was

impossible to tell; their faces were blank. (CCTV cameramen have privately told me that one of

their headaches during the taping of the annual Spring Festival Gala is that they are obliged to get a

few good close-ups of the CCP leaders in the audience, but they can never catch them on camera

with anything but a bored, passive expression.)

The only leader who seemed to be enjoying himself at all was Deng Pufang. Deng became a

paraplegic in an incident at Peking University in 1968, in which he fell from a 3-story building

during a struggle session. Now, 40 years later, what was he thinking of all this? Was he reflecting

on all this science-fiction modernization made possible by his father, the beady-eyed pragmatist who

had set China on a new economic course, while also ordering the bloody massacre in Tiananmen

Square? Or was he just happy to be alive?

All this seemed so strange. Who was the audience here? It certainly wasnt the audience ofordinary Beijingers in their color-coordinated shirts, since they were coached and rehearsed just as

the performers were. This elaborately staged show was really for the benefit of just this handful of

leaders. In Chinas dynastic past, we know there were many extravagant performances in the

imperial palace involving hundreds of singers and dancers performing energetically for an audience

consisting of only the emperor and a few concubines. Was this really that much different?

What about the TV audience? Note that the show had been designed by producers and directors

who were assigned to this duty by the State propaganda apparatus which is essentially controlled

by the very leaders in attendance that night. The artistic talents behind the show were creating their

product, consciously or unconsciously, with this small number of leaders in mind. In essence, a

small coterie of Party officials had ordered the show to be made, checked its content, ordered

changes, tweaked it according to their tastes and agendas, and approved it for final broadcast. If you

want to know why so much of Chinese TV is so vacuous, consider: An audience of a billion people

were being treated to a variety show that basically reflected the esthetics and mindset of a tiny group

of powerful oligarchs. Whether anyone really liked the finished product was just an afterthought.

And finally, what about we foreign well-wishers, sitting comfortably in our seats wearing our

native dress? We were not merely invited guests, whose only obligation was to be foreigners. In a

sense we were foreignersplaying therole of foreigners in a kind of elaborate political theater. Andpart of the function of our role was to convince the TV audience that this Olympic event was


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