Yet ANOTHER fake from China

News surfaced over the last couple of days about yet another fake/copied product out of China, although this time I'm not sure it was done with the full knowledge and blessing of the officials.  I'm talking about the theme song to the 2010 Shanghai Expo - 2010等你來.

The song was supposedly rolled out to count down the last 30 days before the start of the Expo, and the video featured well-known celebrities such as Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, Andy Lau, Lang Lang and others.  The composer of the song is Miao Sen (繆森).  There was an earlier controversy where some members of the public questioned the similarity of the song to Welcome to Beijing (北京歡迎您), the song used for the 100-day countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Mou refuted that claim, saying he composed the song back in 2004, way before the Olympics.

Now it has come to light that the song is basically a copy of Sonno Mama No Kimi De Ite (そのままの君でいて), originally released in 1997 by Okamoto Mayo (岡本真夜).  There is enough similarity between the two songs to cause real embarrassment to the authorities, who have stopped using the song and removed it from the official website.

I've attached a video on YouTube, where someone has done a composite to show the similarities.  I invite you to see for yourself.



This is yet another egg on China's face, and will no doubt raise more questions about the authenticity of things coming out of China.  In the age where some Koreans seem to claim as their own everything/everyone from Confucius to Qu Yuan (屈原), the figure behind the origins of the Dragonboat/Tung Ng/Duan Wu Festival (端午節), this is the last thing we need...