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SALT LAKE CITY — Beijing, China was just awarded the 2022 Olympic Winter Games last week, and one of the 10 official songs of the games is surprisingly similar to another wintry song.
The New York Times wrote Tuesday about the similarity between the Olympic anthem, "The Snow and Ice Dance," and "Let It Go," the No. 1 song from Disney's "Frozen". "The Snow and Ice Dance" is third on the list presented by the Chinese Organizing Committee's website, as performed by Sun Nan and Tan Jing.
Here's the Chinese song:
And the original song from Frozen, if you'd like to compare:
A YouTube video by user "Disneyland Experience" compares the two songs with cuts back and forth, that video is attached above this article.
A Chinese business magazine also recognized the similarities. According to the Times, both songs run at almost exactly the same tempo and have similar chord structures and introductions.
The controversy over the song is evocative of another China-produces-strikingly-similar-product-to-Disney incident. The Chinese movie "The Autobots" looks nearly identical to the Disney Pixar film "Cars," though its director claimed to have never seen it.
"I know of the movie 'Cars', but I have never seen it.," Zhuo Jianrong, director of the movie Autobots. pic.twitter.com/p3jIEuyFnB — Mike Mika (@MikeJMika) July 7, 2015
"The Autobots" struggled at the box office, pulling in only a fraction of its budget in its Chinese release, so far.
On July 31, Beijing was given the Olympic winter games in a close 44-40 vote between China and Kazakhstan. While Almaty, Kazakhstan, is in a potentially troubling geopolitical location, it at least features snow. On the other hand, Beijing's games will have to "rely completely on artificial snow," according to the International Olympic Committee.
Perhaps producing carbon copies of the real thing is what the 2022 Olympic Winter Games will be known for.
