Music
Chinese singer caught lip syncing after holding microphone upside down
by Jeremy Mersereau
February 25, 2016
Lip syncing is banned in China with musicians punished by losing their license to perform.
Pro tip to all the musical mimers out there (Disclosure, I’m looking at you): if you’re going to fake your way through a performance, make sure you familiarize yourself with which end of the microphone goes up.
Chinese folk singer Sa Dingding was performing at a gala event broadcast live on Chinese Central Television when viewers noticed she was holding her microphone upside down. Her pristine singing voice suspiciously still came through just fine, with no noticeable change in the audio when she caught her mistake and flipped the mic the right way up with a smile.
Miming might not seem like a big deal for expensive, state-propaganda-level productions in 2016; I mean, does anyone really care that Coldplay weren’t actually playing their dull-ass jams at the Super Bowl?
That’s not the case to the Chinese government, however: lip syncing has been banned in China since 2008 when the CCP was embarrassed by some bad PR. At the Beijing Olympics, presenters were criticized for having a 7-year-old girl lip sync “Ode To The Motherland” and not the original singer, who was deemed ‘not pretty enough’ to take the stage at the opening ceremonies.
These days, performers who mime are called out by China’s Ministry of Culture, and those who are caught twice risk having their performing licenses revoked. Sa seems to be taking the incident in stride, though: on Chinese social media after the incident, the singer said she’d “sharpen her acting skills” for next time.
[h/t The Mirror]
