The Day After
This blog has gotten a lot of feedback in the last 24 hours. If you haven't read the original story, read that first to catch up. Today, the story continues.
In addition to the outpouring of mirrors and support for preserving the information I discovered, I've also received some very helpful information from other Google hackers. Specifically, I was encouraged to check out the Chinese version of Google: google.cn. Presented here are the results, not all of which I can take credit for.
What about google.cn?
When I woke up this morning, I ran my existing search string against google.cn. Interestingly, I got back two spreadsheet results: the original spreadsheet I blogged about, zctc.xls, and a new spreadsheet I hadn't previously discovered, 05ticao.xls. Here's a screenshot.
A few hours later after moderating comments, I refreshed my search. And wow, was it eye opening.
Expunged entirely from google.cn's search index is my original find, zctc.xls. Down the memory hole. If the documents are false, why remove them? Why wipe their existence from the search index? I was intrigued. I decided to follow the trail of the second spreadsheet, 05ticao.xls.
Always one step ahead of me, the document was again missing from its original home, the home page of the General Administration of Sport of China. Undeterred, I decided to look again to Baidu to see if I could retrieve the results.
Could it be? More documentation? I followed the document cache link...
There's He Kexin again, listed with a birthday of 1-1-1994, fourteen years old. Running that line through Google Translate, the chances of a case of mistaken identity diminish rapidly:
799, BB He Kexin CC female AA 1994.1.01 Beijing and
Beijing Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau, First Note
It is my suspicion that First Note is a mistranslation of First Place, as her world class gymnastics record speaks for itself. For those working to cache these documents, the direct link to the Baidu cache, for as long as it lasts, is here: cache link (update Baidu cache is dead now, here's a mirror at heathershow.com.
Conclusions
What is this post really about? I don't really feel that it's about the gymnastics age limit, or even really about whether fraud occurred. At this point, I believe that any reasonable observer already understands that age records have been forged. This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet. Will this stand?
For those interested in pursuing facts on their own, I should at this point cite my inspiration. If Johnny is the godfather of Google hacking, then his seminal book on the subject can be considered the bible of the field. There's nothing I've done here that you can't teach yourself from that book. Who knows what else can be accomplished; I am one, but You are Many. Good luck.
Updates
- The power of crowds is already hard at work. Check out this link found by Digg user Karate3409, posted in the Digg story on this blog: Link.
10 何可欣 He Kexin 女 F 1994 11 1994 1 1 北京体育局
Beijing Sports Bureau 武汉体育局
Wuhan Sports Bureau 2年 2 years
That's a nice piece of research!
I have no affiliation with this book, make no money from referrals, and all profits from its sale go directly to the organization Hackers for Charity. If you want to know where I got my start, well, there you go.
97 comments:
I wonder why the Chinese government would even risk putting a girl that young in the olympics - of course assuming they knew about it beforehand. Somehow I think faking documentation is much more prevalent in China than we realize. All China could do is react to it, and they decided to bury it instead of investigate.
There is a new version of the book: http://www.amazon.com/Google-Hacking-Penetration-Testers-2/dp/1597491764/ref=pd_sim_b_1
The document doesn't prove girls fraud their ages in the olympic game.
Very likely that those girls could make their age younger be able to participate China national city games, where there is a top limit for age.
"First Note" is not a mistraslationg for "First Place". It may be an abbreviation for "first-time registration".
Disgusting.
Have you tried the Internet Archive yet?
http://web.archive.org/
The translate "Link" now claims that this is most probably a adware/virus and google refuses to translate.
This is just too good. American ingenuity and freedom discovers the truth while Communist corruption attempts to cover the tracks making themselves look even worse all along.
You deserve a gold medal for finding this.
SlateOlympics has got your story on their Twitter feed. Thanks for the efforts...very interesting.
Here is the link. Still cached but not translated:
http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:lKKNqX5NgnwJ:www.sport.chengdu.gov.cn/escpecial/detail.asp%3FEventClassID%3D030308%26ID%3D28022+http://www.sport.chengdu.gov.cn/escpecial/detail.asp%3FEventClassID%3D030308%26ID%3D28022&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
I think your right in making the main point of this article about censorship. Even with documents showing incontrovertible evidence for the ages, there's nothing that can be done to have them banned from the olympics for being underaged. Passports are considered legal and very strong proof of age for the Olympics, and as long as those documents state the age of 16, for the intents and purposes of the Olympics, she will be 16.
The Epoch Times now has an article on the site that I wrote, referencing your findings. Well done, and keep up the good work! Feel free to keep us updated on your progress.
What disturbs me the most is that despite the rather overwhelming evidence, no one seems to have filed an official complaint against the Chinese. Are they just so invincible that we, the international community are voiceless against them? Have they become so powerful that we take cover even when we know they are clearly doing something so drastically wrong? This has nothing to do with China's internal policies, this has nothing to do with it's human rights issues and this definatley has nothing to do with tibet and communism. This is China duping the world to gain an unfair advantage at an event where they ruthlessly want to change their image and establish themselves as a superpower. Do note that I in no way am denying that He Xexin is an amazing athelete and that she deserves those medals, but rules are rules and they are there for a reason. I have read many comments saying that we are just jealous of the younger athlete who trounced the other older ones but arnt we forgetting our very own 14 year olds who did not manage to compete at these games due to the age restrictions?
Please help resolve this issue at once. At this rate who knows, they might have even meddled with the drug tests of their athletes!
Whomever suggested the Wayback Internet Archive had a great idea... but while their archives have some NEAR matches for the documents in question, the exact docs aren't found:
http://web.archive.org/web/2007*/http://www.sport.gov.cn/files/jts/reg2006/*
http://web.archive.org/web/2006*/http://www.sport.gov.cn/files/jts/reg2005/*
Feel free to play around with my research, everyone (i.e., you can play with the dates if you'd like - but so did I), but I simply don't think the original spreadsheets were indexed by the Wayback Machine.
The Chinese government does great laundry.
They can clean all 'dirt' from the internet along with freedom too.
Some pages are still at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sport.gov.cn/
Your efforts are a bright candle in this vast ominous black hole.
How can you claim that following the rules isnt important? The world comes together in the spirit of sportsmanship, and beijing invited all those international athletes to play on their home turf. Consider the fact that each athlete would spend at least 4 years in training, and winning a gold could mean for them being financially secure for the rest of their lives. Its a big deal if China doesnt play with honor. I think there should be an official investigation. Maybe they should disqualify all Chinese athletes until their age is verified if this girl turns out to be underage.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v732/SwedishChef314/ChinaAgeCheat.jpg
I would not suspect foul play on the removal of the cached copy at Google. This would seem to be a perfectly natural, completely automatic mechanism w.r.t. Google caching -- that is, if the original document disappears, so will the Google cache thereof once the Google crawler tries to crawl the document again and it appears ot have been removed.
It would seem sensible for Google to reindex popular pages more often than unpopular ones. By virtue of all these nice people searching for proof of this fraud, that cache will have been hit a lot in the past two days -- possibly enough to trigger a refetch by Google in order to potentially update the document. When it wasn't found, the cache was removed -- AS IT SHOULD BE. Google is not caching stuff that is not on the net anymore. That's what archive.org is for (though archive.org does lag behind at least 6 months, always).
As for the allegations themselves, I do believe it's possible that the ages were faked for the Olympics. This is not, however, enough proof (or real proof, really). The dates could have been faked for this competition as well (to make her appear younger); the coverup could be meant to cover up THAT fraud. Anybody claiming that these documents prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that there has been fraud at the Olympics (or worse, that it's "obvious" that these girls were not 16 -- no, it's not; they do seem young, but seeing as how I'm estimated to be 8-10 years older than I really am (since grade 8 or so), I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.
This should, however, be thoroughly investigated (not just lip-service investigation as has happened), and these documents should provide more than enough incentive to do so.
the http://cache.baidu.com/c?m=9f65cb4a8c8507ed4fece763105392230e54f7227e8a905368d4e41dce204c413037bfa673794e5392d8242140b2090bbff03470301e22b0dd93d91980ac925f65d666203541c6171d965ceadc46528062cd1aafb81990efad7684aea582834907910d523b9da8cd1b1d549d3af01633e4bb9b4f530441e9b0276588132968&p=9e64c54ad6b105fc57ecc00c4e&user=baidu
link for the 05ticao.xls spreadsheet also has the later birthdate for 楊伊琳, or 杨伊琳 in simplified, Yang Yilin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yilin:
551,"杨伊琳","女","1993—8—26","广东","广州","广东","确认"
translation:
551, "Yang Irina," and "F", "1993-8-26", "Guangdong", "Guangzhou", "Guangdong" and "confirmation"
One problem with the Chinese on the second .xls finding, which is posted on "Olympic Hacking Part II..."
On the previous excel sheets the gymnast's location was listed at "Hebei" but the more recent on reads "Beijing." Since we can't see the full excel sheet it is unclear what this is supposed to classify - hometown, or gym location, training location, etc. But wanted to point out that in Chinese the locations listed are different...
King Kaufman of Salon has also linked to your story: http://www.salon.com/sports/olympics/?last_story=/sports/olympics/feature/2008/08/21/hacker/
Great finds - interesting stuff.
Who knows, maybe even 14 years old would be a stretch when this all comes to the surface.
So they whipped us with a 14 year old instead of a 16 year old? Big deal, to me that sounds worse.
How is this "hacking"?
Excellent stuff!
Your story is published on two of the most visited websites in Germany:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,573461,00.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Suchmaschinen-Recherchen-belegen-Manipulationen-chinesischer-Sportbehoerden--/meldung/114629
Great job Stryde, this has even been covered by Fox News now. =)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,407803,00.html
I wonder what's going to happen now. This simple age violation could possibly unveil other similar frauds with the 2008 Olympics in China...
"I am shocked, shocked I say to learn there's gambling in this establishment! "
thanks for researching this!! excellent work indeed.
there is a picture of a gymnast here, with some text overlay... Can anyone read it?
http://cache.baidu.com/c?m=9f65cb4a8c8507ed4fece76310478437430397634b918b46239fc05f93130a1d5a24a4eb797941508e853b381cfe1400aca76a342a5377ecc393d41fddb99022328b3a307517805612a458f58d197bd565cd1abfa00e97c9e743e4b9d3a3c82427dd220e6df6f29c2b0203ca1ef31f3ae5b19939400254&p=937ce73788904eac0cbd9b7551&user=baidu
I just saw you on Fox News. I am surprised at how much this deception by China bothers me.
I think one of your noters really nailed it when they said it's about honoring these athletes who devote their lives to preparing for the Olympics, a theater that is supposed to have fair footing.
It is absolutely offensive that a nation not only ignores cheating by it's athletes, but supports it and maybe even demands it.
Any entity that would go to such length to "win" is a frightening one.
are you sure it is the same girl, not someone with the same name?
Are you sure it is the same person, not another girl with the same name?
**********
So what if they are "underage"?
man, its time for all of you to wake up. The chinese spend billions of dollars on the Olympics, u think they'll just walk away with nothing?
for ur information, lots of host nations of big sporting event do cheat in the past, but they feel they deserver something coz they simply put in too much money.
get over with it already. Look at Sydney2000, there were lots of tickets scandal where government official benefited. Look at worldcup 2002, South korea reached quaterfinal by bribing the referees all the way to quater final.
Theres nothing we can do. They host the games, they "SET THE RULES."
Time to be realistic & move on, guys.
*************
I found a pdf version of the xls you found earlier. I am surprised it is still there. Check out #979. I saved a copy. Find a link to the pdf here:
http://cache.baidu.com/c?m=9d78d513d9d431dc4f9ce3690c66c0166d43f1682ba1d2020ed68448e267504a4171e3ca65744410948522685be90f1efdf1456f2a4665f28cc8ff1a9ae5cc757a9f274321409b114c8e4ceed60e7f927cc55bf4fc59b6e0ab76c4efcfd0db5e55cc59127af7a3ca184a03cb1ba14f67f4a7ef4c135a1abded&p=8b2a9753ba934ead0ab2d2664b&user=baidu
Notion: This 'cover-up' was to cover up an aging-down situation for some competition in China that happened prior to the Olympics.
Yeah, that's what it was... the Chinese are worried that someone in China will find out that He is/was actually too OLD for some local competition!?
IF that was indeed the case... they just outed themselves by -very- publicly stating/claiming that she is 16 for the Olympics.
Who would they be 'hiding' this info from?.. themselves? To what end? I have no idea...it serves no purpose in a society where the gov't. controls everything anyway. Is someone concerned that a local stink might be brought up over this? Who would the local officials complain to .. the Chinese government? What do you think would happen to them if they did? Do I have to answer these questions? :)
No... there is pretty much only one reason they would fake her age... and they wouldn't bother faking it lower -just- to win some local competition. I seriously doubt there's a whole lot of checking of ages in local/regional Chinese gymnastics competitions. The girls are trained by the nationally organized sports-authority(-ies?).. who would these people need to show credentials to anyway?.. themselves?
NOTE: I'm not saying they faked anything, I'm just weighing in on the notion that China would even bother to fake her age _down_ to win a local competition (or even a national-level one.. i.e, some sort of Chinese-Championships).
I think China just got greedy. 15 year olds were allowed to participate in the last World Championships (Sept 2007 in Germany). In the biggest event prior to the Olympics, no He Kexin to be found. Many other 15 year olds listed, such as Shawn Johnson, and another 15 year old for China. Why wouldn't an up and coming 15 year old Kexin be a part of that World championship experience, in preparation for the Olympics? This girl is so talented it's hard to believe other gymnasts would be chosen over her. So why not? My guess is since the World Championships were in Germany, it was not the right high profile event/location to introduce He and her "questionable" age. But Bejing, in the native homeland, with media control, is the right place. So China, with a top notch team regardless of He's presence, finished 2nd at the World Championships,chose to go for the gold and possibly ignore the rules in place. Just a theory...I'm sure others will shoot this down.
For what it's worth, it sounds like once again the age criteria needs to be re-examined for gymnastics, to allow the best to truely complete, whether they are 14 or 44.
http://www.gymnasticsresults.com/2007/worldwpart.html
huffington post had something on this last week, some screenshots that you are probably aware of:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-flumenbaum/scandal-of-the-ages-docum_b_118842.html
yahoo news also
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080814/ap_on_sp_ol/oly_gym_underage_chinese
i agree, while it is interesting whether or not the girl is underage, and obviously unfair to the other competitors, the really interesting aspect of this is government information censorship and the complicity of actors such as google in this endeavor
I am sorry to say that you show your lack of understanding of Chinese culture and record keeping with this research. The fact that her birthdate is listed as January 1 of ANY year shows that she is probably one of the many millions of Chinese without an official birthdate. Chinese routinely pick "lucky" days to represent their birthday - January 1, or the date of the Chinese New Year's, or simply picking their favorite relative's birthdays. In fact, with a birthday of January 1, I doubt that anyone will ever know for certain when she was born, and it could have easily been sometime in 1993, which could put her in the age range necessary to compete (I don't know the rule, but I heard that they would have to turn 16 within a calendar year?).
Wow, great job in your research... My honest take on this controversy is that the IOC will fold under pressure and investigate/strip medals... right after they get the hell out of China. They currently depend on the cooperation of the Chinese government to keep the Games going... this will be much much easier done when not in China anymore...
Well done great find.. certainly China authorities have clearly tryed to cover their tracks..
Busted and the medal should be stripped!.. have they checked her Birth Certificate?..
the IOC better look into this and take away their damn medals...
Could you do the same search for the girl who looks even younger, Linlin?
Today,according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Kexin), the IOC asked the FIG to reopen the investigation in light of the new evidence regarding the Chinese female gymnasts.
Everyone should email the International Gymnastics Federation that enforces the rules for the IOC and demand they strip the Chinese of their gold medals. Email link at the bottom of this page:
http://www.olympic.org/uk/organisation/if/fi_uk.asp?id_federation=12
Considering the population of china is 1.3 billion, the possibility of the number of people with the same birthdate, name (characters) and birthplace do exist.
Instead of confirming, you search the 3 characters that make up her name (which by the way is very common) judge by the birthdate, find the word sports or gymnastics mentioned, and assume that this is the girl you want.
Obviously, when a reader commented about the different cities of the spreadsheets, many of you weren't using your eyes. Or have no geographical knowledge of China.
Chinese people, wait, let me rephrase, Asian people, often look younger than the majority of Westerners, so, many westerners are unable to tell Asian ages correctly. This is a known fact.
So why is there not a possibility that this time it is due to western misjudgment?
I am a 24yr/o Chinese female, and yet I am often mistaken for a 15 or 16y/o before I tell people my age. My mother is in her mid 50's yet people still think she is in her mid 30's or early 40's. Regardless of residence, in New Zealand or America we have had this treatment.
Now how do you explain that?
Are you thinking that "she must be exaggerating" or "the people that said those things must not be good at judging age"
Is there a possibility that just because I am not an Olympian it must be the misjudgment of people that have met me? Not "she fixed her age"?
Why the difference in thinking?
I am not defending China, I am merely pointing out the fact that all of you are entering this with a biased mind and are LOOKING TO FIND chicken bones in eggs. (chinese saying)
True, there is the possibility the documents are being deleted and faked, but where is all the certainty that you all hold coming from? have you found concrete proof yet?
Just because most of you are from countries that have been developing steadily without too much disruption in the past 60 years, doesn't mean that you have the right to look down on China, who has not been so privileged. They are just starting to learn to take their first steps in the world and can do with a helping hand instead of non stop criticism on what they are doing wrong.
If their attitudes they have are wrong, then why don't people TEACH them the correct ways? Why not stop being passive and become active at this critical stage in education of a developing country?
What are YOU doing instead of moving only your fingers and wagging your tongues?
oh, btw,
For the readers information, The Epoch Times is a anti-china newspaper. Hence the extensive reports seeking the destruction of China's image.
*ps* Just because I told you I am Chinese, doesn't mean that it is fair for you to re-read my words and look for grammatical errors.
It is not an excuse for you to be biased and assume I must have bad English and made some sort of grammatical or spelling error.
KEEP AN OPEN MIND BEFORE YOU JUDGE
IOC announces investigation!
look what you did!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4583174.ece
I think the difference between 14 and 16 is great enough that an independent doctor and dentist could conduct a physical and a dental exam to see how old she really is.
But to be honest, what is this really gonna do? Do you really think China can't just find another girl and make the girl say that it was me. I changed my name to He Kexin cuz I liked her so much. The spreadsheet was actually for me
If you see a bunch of men in black suits following you, I would run. You just stirred up the pot considerably for China. God Bless the Internet.
Why do Florence Griffth have World Records if she was on drugs?
To the poster above who asked about the other girl, Linlin, I looked her up, because she looks so young to me too, as well as some of the others.
Deng Linlin's entry:
620,"邓琳琳","女","1992.4.21","湖北"
Jiang Yuyuan:
329,"江钰源","女","1991.10.01","浙江"
Li Shanshan:
785,"李珊珊","女","1992.2.22","广东"
They check out, as long as we're calling the spreadsheet to be accurate.
I simply wanted to say thank you to you for your relentless search for the truth. It's just a damn shame that Google seems to have no regard for the integrity of its information. What possible leverage could the Chinese government have over the company?
For those of you who think there is no cover-up... well I won't even comment on your ignorance.
Ah, the voice of freedom. Is it really any wonder why the State would be involved in such deception? Their antics are timeless. The communist party only survives through control an deception. They most surely believe they are capable of manipulating the world as they do their own people.
If this information is correct, and it likely is, what else is a lie? In fact, much of the Olympics has already been discovered to involve deception and suppression of rights. One day the peoples of China will gain their sovereignty. Then they will finally have the quality of life and dignity they deserve.
George Orwell would be proud. Long live the state.
rHi there, firstly I'm a chinese I would like to tell you some of your wirting is not ture. From personally my god feeling told me you hate the chinese very much. I don't know what is your experance with chinese, but must be bad.
I strongly suggest you coming to china to have a look by yourself not listen from other people, if you are really poor I can help you on money. However you guys said china is not good every day, have a look you American, what did you do? how many people you guys killed every day?? Have a count man! you guys going toa Iraq kill the people there, kill the president, and take the oil.
what you guys doing there? I know you guys hate china not beacause the small reason, becasue china growthup day by day, you guys nervous now. I know you hate china.
Can you live without china? no, you can not. You can not living without chinese producs.
Do not forget if you want to visit china and if you are very poor please contact me at
kevin821113@hotmail.com
I can give you a free travelling in china.
Kevin
Great find, keep going at it as the more it attention it gets the more it has to become covered by mainstream media. No one is lodging a formal complaignt while the Olympics is going on because it will make the host nation, and their judges mad and retaliate against the country that is presenting the complaignt. This is Government sanctioned fraud that is intended to give them an unfair advantage for the purpose of national pride and therefore is much worse then a parent lying about a pitcher's age in little league. China is used to controlling everything and if they can get away with this their arrogance is only enboldeded and gives them more right to falsify anything they want in the future. There is no check and balance here, the government does what it wants, like changing a little girl our because she is too ugly, but keeping her voice because it is better then the pretty girls, and the media is prevented from reporting it.
http://www.gz.gov.cn/vfs/content/newcontent.jsp?contentId=470560
http://www.hdst.gov.cn/hdpc/shownews.asp?ID=12209
http://64.233.179.160/search?q=cache:fRzsRAEcM5gJ:www.huadu.gov.cn/jjhd/Xwzx/Hdxw/t20070625_86690.html+%E8%8A%B1%E9%83%BD%E5%8C%BA:%E5%8C%BA%E9%A2%86%E5%AF%BC%E6%85%B0%E9%97%AE%E4%BD%93%E6%93%8D%E5%86%A0%E5%86%9B%E5%AE%B6%E5%B1%9E&hl=zh-CN&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=cn&lr=lang_zh-CN|lang_zh-TW&st_usg=ALhdy29E3-TfAtte-l7OVkJnb6gA5qGlOw
http://64.233.179.160/search?q=cache:POGyf1y08k8J:www.hdst.gov.cn/hdpc/shownews.asp%3FID%3D12209+http://www.hdst.gov.cn/hdpc/shownews.asp%3FID%3D12209&hl=zh-CN&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=cn&lr=lang_zh-CN|lang_zh-TW&st_usg=ALhdy292_9M-HydC-6K3IjnxPtqThTHG9w
These are the same press release from offical website of GuangZhou Municipality published at 2007/06/25. It states that in year 1999, when Yang Yilin was only 5 years old has already started her training. There is no way she can be 5 years old in 1999 while she was BORN in 1992, August 26 ...
Hey,
did you find anything on the other girl, Jiang also a Chinese Gymnast in the Olympics. She is supposedly 15 years old.
You are doing an awesome job ! Keep it going !!
Exactly - look what you did indeed. It's even in the Aussie paper ...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/off-the-field/ioc-calls-for-investigation-into-gymnasts-age/2008/08/22/1219262483864.html
I don't know much about computers but there is a website you can use called the way back machine. Apparently pictures are constantly being taken of every website. If you go to www.archive.org/web/web.php
and just enter the website you are teying to find, it will show you the original page. That might help!
Stryde, your efforts are commended. Thank you for bringing this to light.
The reason no other country (including the US) will file an official protest over the gymnast's age is because their and our athletes are STILL IN CHINA. Can you imagine what would happen to our athletes if we lodged a protest? It would be Israel in Munich all over again. It's safer to do it once the Olympics are over, and our athletes are safely on US soil.
Great point Cullen. Excellent job Stryde. Long live freedom!
The sad thing is that China is so used to controlling it's people with it's communistic government that they actually thought they could break the rules and get away with it.
If America had done this, the IOC would have eviscerated us. Time for the Chinese to answer for this behavior! Hold them accountable America!
I live in East Asia for nearly 20 years. Believe me - they are going to even fake hospital records and birth certification.
It's a national issue now. A "loss of face" of a whole nation is a national tragedy.
China is as corrupt as you could never even imagine!
This almost sounds like something out of the pages of 1984.
O wow, NBC just broadcasted about the new investigation, and sayign how it's because new documents uncovered. Thanks to you.
Btw, if you have been following, you'd see that several Chiense newspapers reported her age to be 13 last yaer
You have really uncovered something here. We all knew these girls weren't of age, but you got the proof. You'll soon have your 15 minutes of fame.
Again though, it's really not about "us" losing, or "them" winning, because they did win. Their best beat our best. The point is that they lied, cheated, and forged their way to it. Rules are in place for a reason, and when an international superpower breaks them for such an event as the Olympics, it's honestly heart breaking.
Than you!
Thanks for doing this !! I really hope the right people get the medals ! And He Kexin nor her other young compatriates are certainly not the right people. They are clearly younger than the age limit. The age limit was set for a reason and it has to be respected.
They have already cheated 4 Billion by duping the singer and then also putting in pre recorded Fire works during the live show... 4 billion people tune in to watch it live and are fooled like this.
They are capable of much more fraud. For all you know, they would have changed the urine and doped actual athletes. One can never tell !
Did you ever stop to think that maybe those dates were a lie so those girls could participate in younger age categories (junior or girls) in domestic and/or international competitions? The discrepancies in dates may be problems in birth registration, which is quite common in China (for various reasons, like the remoteness of the area and the Family Planning Policy where you have to pay to have an extra kid, something not everyone can afford immediately). The pages could be pulled because...wouldn't something that is a mistake be removed from the public to prevent further misunderstandings? Isn't it reasonable to suppose that the Chinese government and people are embarrassed enough about that mistake to remove it? After all, look at all the posts about the Chinese's obsession over "honour" and "face." Would you like YOUR mistake to be splattered all over for all to see when you're hosting your own honorary dinner?
The Western world, especially the US, is so ready to doubt the Chinese government and/or people that, even if the investigation determines that the gymnast is 16, would anyone believe it/her? For countries that tout concepts like "Innocent until proven guilty" and "Beyond reasonable doubt," there seems to be enough people carrying their pitchforks and shovel.
I read about your work in a german newspaper website. Really good job! Keep on!
I found another page, from the Internet Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070630205138/http://www.sport.gov.cn/show_info.php?n_id=14342
Update:
Do this search :
http://www.google.cn/search?complete=1&hl=zh-CN&inlang=zh-CN&client=aff-sina&channel=hpsearch&hs=D5Q&affdom=sina.com.cn&q=%E4%BD%95%E5%8F%AF%E6%AC%A3+1994+site%3Awww.sport.gov.cn&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=&aq=f
You'll see this reference:
http://www.sport.gov.cn/show_info.php?n_id=14342
Of course it's not there, but in comes the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070630205138/http://www.sport.gov.cn/show_info.php?n_id=14342
I found another document using this search:
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=%E4%BD%95%E5%8F%AF%E6%AC%A3+site%3Asport.chengdu.gov.cn&btnG=Zoeken&meta=
The original page has an vbScript error, but here's Google's cache:
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:lKKNqX5NgnwJ:www.sport.chengdu.gov.cn/escpecial/detail.asp%3FEventClassID%3D030308%26ID%3D28022+%E4%BD%95%E5%8F%AF%E6%AC%A3+site:sport.chengdu.gov.cn&hl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=nl
The words "First Note" appear in the column "Comments". "First Note" is not mistranslated. It really does mean the first noted. You need to contrast it with other gymnasts where the Comment column says "confirmed", or "certified". If anything, it just tells me that this list admits the data is not confirmed nor certified.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcache.baidu.com%2Fc%3Fm%3D9f65cb4a8c8507ed4fece763105392230e54f7227e8a905368d4e41dce204c413037bfa673794e5392d8242140b2090bbff03470301e22b0dd93d91980ac925f65d666203541c6171d965ceadc46528062cd1aafb81990efad7684aea582834907910d523b9da8cd1b1d549d3af01633e4bb9b4f530441e9b0276588132968%26p%3D9e64c54ad6b105fc57ecc00c4e%26user%3Dbaidu&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
Above is the link to the baidu page translated in to english.
Thanks google!
how is this hacking?? Leare PHP, PERL, and C++ then you cana come work for me
following your lead i have just translated the header in these documents (see below). This shows that the document that you translated is not just the results of a competition it is the NATIONAL REGISTER of gymnasts. This evidence is getting pretty damning!
"2005年全国体操运动员上报注册表第 页"
"2005年全国体操运动员上报注册表"
"序号","姓名(中)","性别","出生日期","籍贯","出生地","注册单位","备注"
translates to
"Gymnasts reported in 2005 the National Registry Page"
"2005 National Gymnasts reported registry"
"No.", "name (in)", "Sex" and "Date of Birth", "native", "birth" and "registered", "Remarks"
Michael, I disagree.
The fact is that a 14-year old -- at a fraudulent age -- beat our best athlete who has reached the permitted age. Truth is, there are certainly reasons for why the IOC has issued rules like this, so what the athlete's government has done to ensure its victory is illegal in the Olympic Games. Aside from falsification of documents, it is now attempting to wipe up its tracks. But thanks to the immense power of the internet, the truth will be heard. Stryde, keep up the work, you're onto something enormous. You got the ball rolling, and you have the support of some big guns who have your back on this. I tip my e-Hat to thee!
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this website yet, but it is definitely worth checking out. Remember the information is coming from china.org ... doesn't get any better than this.
http://www.china.org.cn/olympics/news/2008-05/23/content_15422122.htm
I concur with Michael. Rules are meant to be followed. If not, where and what rules can we decide to break and for whom would breaking the rules be acceptable? Everyone must play by the same rules, and for the Chinese government to do otherwise speaks for itself.......
The parents are indignant, and the trainers calls the accusations "groundless." But the fact is that the birthdates are printed on Government websites, data that they themselves claim was recorded with the greatest attention to accuracy. There are numerous older news stories from Chinese publications documenting gymnasts to be younger than what the passports show. This data isn't just cherry-picked, either. I spent many hours looking for data that might show the gymnasts were older than or the correct age, and the only data available was published about the time of the Olympics, strangely almost going out of their way to mention Kexin He was 16. The older reports seem to indicate 2 of the gymnasts were underage.
But many people are missing the bigger picture, and that is that much of this information was wiped from existence within hours after it was discovered and published, and had it not been for the efforts of some quick-thinking people the evidence would have been gone from history. Now why would someone go to such great lengths to remove cached history from search engines if the content wasn't important? Luckily, many people grabbed screenshots of the evidence direct from the chinese government records in Excel spreadsheets and other forms and posted their findings on all sorts of sites, so the evidence can't be destroyed.
I don't even care about the medals, the attempted censorship that is currently going on is shameful and should be a real wake-up call.
Kevin, I don't think this has anything to do with "hating" the Chinese people. It's about finding the truth, regardless of the nation.
Olympic athletes from Spain, North Korea and Vietnam have been caught doping. That does not mean the IOC "hates" all Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese people.
It also has nothing to do with American politics or war. Stryde Hax is an independent blogger, not a representative of the U.S. government.
Here is what Stryde Hax wrote earlier: "I'd like to point out that this is not an anti-China post; far from it. While I may disagree with the effort the Chinese government is making to conceal this young woman's age, I have the utmost respect for the Chinese people."
I think it would be great for Stryde Hax to come to China, too. (If you ever want a contact in Hong Kong, find me through my blog). But that would not change his research here.
http://joycelau1.spaces.live.com/
I still don't understand why people are convinced Google was hacked... Far more likely, what happened was Google had refreshed the spreadshet at some stage when it had been updated to include the new information with her DOB as 1992-01-01 (whether that is her corrected DOB or a falsified DOB we may never know). This is perfectly normal, remember Google's cache is primary there for the benefit of their search engine the fact that people can use it to view a page that has been taken down is secondary and not part of it's primary purpose. From Google's POV, they prefer their cached version reflect the current version as far as possible. If you want a web archive, go to www.archive.org.
Remember the fact that the spreadsheat is now missing doesn't actually disprove that there was never a different version. Very likely there was and this version had the 1992-01-01 DOB. At some stage, it was taken down, either because the Chinese realised it was inaccurate and was going to make problems for them or because they realised it was accurate and was going to make problems for them if they wanted to falsify ages in the future. Either way, the spreadsheat is down now and probably not coming back, but the last version, the version which probably Google cached had her DOB as 1992-01-01. The older version had her DOB as 1994-01-01 which Baidu cached. There is no big conspiracy involving Google changing their cached version...
SHHHHHH-Thank you for this.
What a flashpoint for me today. As a librarian for a large school district I look at the renewal notices for subscribed information sources today with new eyes. The insight you offer me into the potential deceits of a current only information system for us all has me rushing to sign off on database after database for our students.
We always fight to get the best variety of information for kids here. The response over and over is 'they will just use the web'. But cases like these show us how miniscule the authenticity of information can be inside the wealth of DATA out there.
But off to my own blog with that. Something for teachers and librarians to mull as we listen to your news story's 15 minutes.
It might be helpful to bear in mind there are actually a lot of possibilities why the document showed a DOB of 1994-01-01. While the most likely possiblity may be it's her real DOB and the Chinese officials decided to changed her DOB so she could compete, it's also possible for example someone entered the date wrong. I mean let's face it, were it not for the existance of the controversy/age requirement, most people would just be saying the incompetent Chinese had a crappy official website with inaccurate information. Another possibilities are that her parents lied about her age when enrolling her in gymnastics school (I suspect there's a good chance they only accept gymnasts from a rather young age since they want ample time to train them up).
In other words, the website in itself is not enough to prove anything. Given that, as I've already said, there's a good chance we'll never know the truth. If the Chinese want to, they could easily produce ample documentation to 'prove' the she was born in 1992. But then again, this kind of thing is nor unheard of. Will we ever know if Lance Armstrong is a drug cheat? Probably not...
A wonderful find! I hope the IOC moves forward with an official investigation with this evidence. Your blog is being sited by ABC News. Congratulations.
However, being a gymanst myself (though not anywhere near Olympic level) I can say that if trained correctly and with proper safety and care to the gymnasts, as long as the gymnasts are 14 I feel they should be allowed to compete. I did gymnastics myself for 16 years (age 2 through 18), competing for 8 years (age 10 through 18) and have not come out any worse than if I had competed in another sport.
This being said, however, I also feel that the rules set (whether appropriate or not) should be followed by all. I personally feel that they should change the rule and regulate limitations of training methods instead of setting the age limit to 16.
I feel horrible for the gymnasts who are under suspision, as it has obviously not been in their power to come out about the falsification, along with the gymnasts' parents. The Chinese Government has made many blatent errors in judgement, rather than following the rules. It is quite frightening that any country would go so far as to falsify legal documents on their quest for home-country Olympic Gold.
This is not just 1 document, don't lose sight of that. It's a document published in multiple places on the government servers, and backed up up by various news reports from the distant past. The only disputing news reports mentioning of-age gymnasts started showing up as we geared up for these Olympics.
VERY COOL! I teach an Information Technology course in Texas and am going to use this as a special assignment in this semester's course. What is damning about this is that this single line of information is IN CONTEXT of other information so just deleting the documents (like the PDF version) or the web pages does not destroy the evidence. I remember a fellow instructor told me on proving cheating in a programming class that the COMMON ERRORS in plagiarized work was VERY TELLING, much more so that what was right. Two or more people might get the same correct answer, but almost impossible to make the same coding mistake in the same way. GREAT STUFF MY MAN!
It should be noted that the 'discovered' spreadsheets appear to be internal documents that were accidentally published, which means they may be work in progress when being crawled by Baidu/Google and may not have been double-checked at that time so may not be considered as officially acknowledged records.
Shane Eccles (re being beat by a younger gymnast being worse): I have heard several experts on the sport mention that for many events, being lighter and more flexible (ie, younger) being a fairly significant advantage.
Thanks for all the work, it really shows there's "something wrong" and at how big scale can facts be altered
btw: Here you can see IP address, from which came lot of editing on wikipedia in order to make gymnasts look like they were all born in Beijing, are highly decorated sportswoman and earlier deleted suspicions about He's age http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=20&target=68.36.205.91
Can someone explain why during the speech from IOC President, the people in the picture are moving backwards? It only is in one section, I am sure tons of you have it on your DVR. I believe it was at 9:16pm eastern time.
Can someone explain why during the speech from IOC President, the people in the picture are moving backwards? It only is in one section, I am sure tons of you have it on your DVR. I believe it was at 9:16pm eastern time.
Whoa ... nice
Chinese are very clever ... :)
"Jack" said:
"First Note" is not a mistraslationg for "First Place". It may be an abbreviation for "first-time registration".
Then wouldn't THAT "abbreviation" be a mistranslation of "First Note" too? You can't say what you just said without sounding illogical, bud.
You're basically saying, "It's not that, at all, but it MIGHT be this, just 'cuz I said so."
At any rate, if all this is true... that's pretty low. The Olympic Games are all about supporting your country's athletes and hoping to win, but they're also about honesty, integrity, sportsmanship and giving it your all. Not JUST striving to win.
"Jack" said:
"First Note" is not a mistraslationg for "First Place". It may be an abbreviation for "first-time registration".
Then wouldn't THAT "abbreviation" be a mistranslation of "First Note" too? You can't say what you just said without sounding illogical, bud.
You're basically saying, "It's not that, at all, but it MIGHT be this, just 'cuz I said so."
At any rate, if all this is true... that's pretty low. The Olympic Games are all about supporting your country's athletes and hoping to win, but they're also about honesty, integrity, sportsmanship and giving it your all. Not JUST striving to win.
"Jack" said:
"First Note" is not a mistraslationg for "First Place". It may be an abbreviation for "first-time registration".
Then wouldn't THAT "abbreviation" be a mistranslation of "First Note" too? You can't say what you just said without sounding illogical, bud.
You're basically saying, "It's not that, at all, but it MIGHT be this, just 'cuz I said so."
At any rate, if all this is true... that's pretty low. The Olympic Games are all about supporting your country's athletes and hoping to win, but they're also about honesty, integrity, sportsmanship and giving it your all. Not JUST striving to win.
Hey, you.
Your blog is highly amusing, and I just wanted to give you a heads up. It's very neat.
Hello i just want to analyze your posting maybe this is wrong but please click or copy paste this url
http://www.google.com/search?q=gimp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-1.png
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-2.png
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-4.png
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-3.png
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-5.png
[URL=http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-1.png][IMG]http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/th_are-you-hacker-1.png[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-2.png][IMG]http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/th_are-you-hacker-2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-4.png][IMG]http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/th_are-you-hacker-4.png[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-3.png][IMG]http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/th_are-you-hacker-3.png[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/are-you-hacker-5.png][IMG]http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/rr197/steelxp/are%20you%20hacker/th_are-you-hacker-5.png[/IMG][/URL]
I don't have an opinion or knowledge about the gymnasts - I do know that when I was younger my records showed me as being a year older than my actual age and birthdate. This was in my passport (a US government record). Does that document prove I'm a year older - no... it was a mistake that the government had "documented". By the way, I'm a US citizen - not Chinese which shows that we make mistakes.
I would pause and say be careful ... I know of other Chinese friends where their passports and records are wrong ... real birthday vs documented birthday ... we celebrate both. ;-)
Actually, Jack is right. The translation DEFINITELY does not mean first place. Anyone with slight understanding of Chinese can tell you that.
I'm not trying to defend the Chinese here, but the problem with Chinese names is... There are probably thousands of He Kexin in China, and its no surprise that a few are athletes.
Post a Comment