Holy shit. Just saw Shang-Chi and it is IT. Before getting into the Chinese cultural parts of it, I’d like to note that it had a solid plot and wonderfully developed characters. The worldbuilding and CGI and the relationship building was absolutely phenomenal and I was absolutely hooked. The fight choreography was THE best choreography I’ve ever seen in the entirety of the MCU and the cinematography is amazing.
Now, onto the Chinese cultural references.
My god. I’ve never felt so seen. As a Chinese woman living in a western diaspora I’ve genuinely never seen something that so genuinely felt right and that truly felt like it connected to me personally. There were so many little details that I could connect to that made me feel emotional because I’ve never had any media that connected to me this way. It was so well done and it was so obviously done by people who lived through it.
(minor) Spoilers ahead! Just small details about the Chinese Diaspora experience in the movie.
Some little details that stood out to me included:
The food! All the food shown on screen was Chinese food - be it homemade food or dim sum platters - and those were exactly the types of plates that I grew up eating.
When Shang-Chi took off his shoes to go into Katy’s house and she was wearing slippers inside the house
When he was talking through the little Chinatown area and there were the fruit cardboard boxes outside the Chinese CL groceries and the white sketchy dim sum sign with English on top of the Chinese
Katy struggling with her Chinese as a diaspora kid because she’s only a heritage speaker and her first language is english
When Katy was struggling to pronounce Shang-Chi’s Chinese name asldhhdjskala I felt that
Katy sticking to her English name despite also having a Chinese name bc she’s a diaspora kid and is used to using the English name
Every single one of the magical creatures inside Ta Lo were inspired by Chinese mythology.
THE DRAGON IS A PROPER CHINESE DRAGON
Katy’s parents comparing her to others and asking her to “get a better job” with her H. B. from Berkeley (I felt that)
The whole thing about familial expectations and relationships in Chinese families?? Bro. I felt that. Holy shit.
So. Much. Mandarin. I can’t explain how happy I am to hear that language. Many western movies have a tendency to mainly use English with an accent but this movie used a LOT of (accurate!) mando and it makes me so happy
The architecture?? The art?? Phenomenal. Amazing. So accurate.
The shrine to the mother and the other deceased looks EXACTLY like every single Chinese cemetery I’ve been to, down to the photos and the incense and the fruits and all the people paying tribute to it.
The martial arts?? Oh my god. So good. I recognize it. Having trained in it and having watched multiple family members practice varying Chinese martial arts over the years I can’t express how fucking happy I was to see arts such as Tai Chi and Wing Chun and Wushu on screen. I could recognize it. The forms, the movements - I can’t explain how, but it felt right. It felt familiar. It felt so wonderfully connected to me.
There’s probably more but it’s late at night so more to come later, maybe. I’m going to just bask in the fact that this was a fantastic movie for chinese representation and I felt so seen. I went to see it with several other Chinese friends and. We came away so happy. We felt seen. We felt heard. I can’t express how much this meant to us.
“Are you sure that this will work?” Shang-chi asked her as his eyes set on the red dust in his hand.
“I promise,” Yelena answered. “Because it released me from the mind control, and what I know of, she’s still trapped,” Yelena replied as she watched his eyes look on the antidote in his hands.
“Listen, I don’t know how you know her, but I can tell that the two of you have known each other long enough. She’s not the same girl as she was before,” Yelena warned him.
He furrowed his brows and looked at her. “What do you mean?” He questioned. “The Red Room does that to a person, she’s changed,” Yelena responded. Shang-chi didn’t say anything and watched her leave before he thought for a moment when he stopped her.
“How do you know her?” He asked her as Yelena stopped.
“We trained together,” She answered. Shang-chi didn’t ask any further questions since he knew that meaning had a deeper purpose.
-
Yelena’s eyes drifted towards Shang-chi as he stood in the crowd of people. She knew that you weren’t there to kill her, and your goal was to kill him. It was a distraction.
He continued to walk before she heard the familiar whistle. It was the same whistle where Natasha taught you how to do it when you were younger.
Her eyes widened and Shang-chi looked confused. She turned around and saw you hit her on the face. You turned around and flipped down as you landed in front of him.
Shang-chi looked at you as he tried to dodge your attacks while Yelena ran from behind. You grab the knife from your waist and try to hurt one of them. Yelena knocked you down so you dropped the knife. She kicked the knife away so you couldn’t reach it.
You looked at her before you ran towards her and both of you landed on the ground hard. You placed your hands onto her neck and choked her.
Yelena grunted and tried to free from your grasp but she remembered the antidote. She tried to reach her pocket and before you knew it, red dust was sprayed into your face.
-
You watched as Dr. Bruce Banner was checking on your vital checkpoints in the lab. Yelena stood next to you. “Why are you here, Y/n?” Yelena asked you as Shang-chi and Xialing approached you. “No ‘hi, Y/n How’ve you been?” You asked her with an amused expression on your face.
Yelena rolled her eyes. “Why are you here?” She repeated as you looked at Bruce. “She’s fine,” He responded and looked at them with a nod, and disappeared out of the lab. “I’m here to kill him,” You answered and looked at Shang-chi.
He widened his eyes and frowned towards your answer. “And I thought you were here to kill me,” Yelena asked you. “Well, I was hired to kill both of you,” You answered with a bored tone in your voice.
“Why?” You let out a chuckle.
“You know why, after the red room saw that Dreykov was destroyed and Natasha destroyed the whole building and when they saw you working for the rest of the Avengers, they weren’t happy,” You told her.
“The Red Room exists? I thought we destroyed-”
You let out a laugh. “Wait, you thought Dreykov was the only one?” You asked her. “You’ve really gone soft, Yelena,” You snickered as she looked at you. “Then why are you here to kill him if the red room wanted me dead?” Yelena asked and gestured towards Shang-chi.
He had been quiet ever since they’ve taken you at the compound, and you’ve avoided looking at his eyes when Yelena sprayed at you with the red dust. You couldn’t bear the thought of breaking down.
Because all of him reminded me of why you survived in the first place. “Your father had to do something with the red room, for a while, he supported it and now they want revenge on you because of something he did,”
“I don’t know what he did, they wouldn’t tell us,” You told them before silence took over a while. “Where did you think I was all the time?” You asked her and met her eyes. “Living a life that you always wanted,”
“I didn’t know where they took you and I assumed that they released you,” You pursed your lips into a thin line and nodded.
-
Staring through the window, you let out a sigh towards the light-up well city in front of you. You haven’t got any chance to sleep because you were still paranoid that some of the leaders will find you.
Besides, you couldn’t sleep since your mind wandered about him. The boy you still loved, or maybe you still had feelings for him even after all that had happened to you.
Both of you were so young that you know that he probably won’t even remember. A knock disturbed your thoughts and you turned away. Walking cautiously towards the door, you looked through the peephole and saw Shang-chi.
You sucked in a breath and embraced yourself as you opened the door. You met his brown eyes when he saw you open the door. “Hey,” He commented. “How are you feeling?” He asked you with a tight-lipped smile. “I’m fine, feeling better,” He nodded.
“Can I come in?” He asked after a short silence. You debated for a second but let him in. “What is it?” You asked him as you closed the door and crossed your arms over your chest. “I don’t know, I just…” Shang-chi began to say but paused in mid-sentence.
You looked at him and you knew that he didn’t know that you were gone. “Where did you think I was after all this time?” You asked him and tilted your head. Shang-chi stared at you.
“Living a life, a normal for one that,” He answered as you nodded and pursed your lips into a thin line. “Well, you’re wrong, your father handed me over to the Red room,” You answered.
Shang-chi looked at you, as he saw the girl in front of him when he was younger. If he should’ve known all of this he knew that he would’ve stopped his father for sending you away. But now it is too late to fix the broken relationship and he knew that he had to let you go.
this man is a trained killer who has one brain cell, daddy issues, and parks cars for a living. please respect him as he is the only person that matters to me
Okay so there are lots of nuances missing from the subtitles in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings movie and I know some decisions are for ease of reading but for those interested, here are some more literal translations of some of the Mandarin in Shang-Chi, based on my interpretation:
Above, the Chinese is 火山口, which is specifically a volcanic crater, not any sort of crater.
Above, the meaning of the second line is actually completely different; the emphasis is on the fact that already conquered so much yet wanted more; not what he was chasing.
The proper pinyin of Ta Lo is “Taluo”, which I’ve used here.
Same here, Shang-Chi is actually “Shangqi” in Chinese pinyin.
This one is extremely simplified in the subtitles, not sure why because it can’t be a speed thing, she says three separate sentences that they could have translated.
Not sure why this wasn’t subbed lol
I think this difference is interesting because the subs imply the guy was almost misleading, i.e. you have to sign this to get in the building, but the actual Mandarin is very vague, all he says is to sign there.
The last phrase here is “你别把我扔在这”, with the “扔” meaning “throw”, so even more literally it translates as “don’t throw me away here”. It gives an extra sense of abandonment that the subs don’t capture.
Don’t move your head, Wenwu
Guang Bo’s line here is harsher in Mandarin, and I think hits especially hard in light of how “Go back to where you came from” is classically thrown at Asian immigrants. There’s intense irony in the line coming from the other side, that the subtitles don’t convey.
English subs censored his swearing lol
Here Guang Bo says “混账”, which is an insult, usually used when someone has just said something extremely disrespectful.
Here Wenwu calls him “小子”, “小” meaning “small”. “Young man” is a much too polite translation of the phrase there. Then his last line is a Chinese idiom, “我吃的盐比你吃的饭还多” which is used to show how much more experience one has than the person you’re talking to.
I prefer “Come back alive” tbh
Anyway I hope this was interesting, translating is obviously not an easy art so this isn’t meant to suggest better subs, I just wanted to share what non-Chinese speakers might have missed out on because the experience was truly better being able to understand both languages. It’s so refreshing seeing such a bilingual movie come out of Hollywood, and this coming from someone who isn’t even really a Marvel fan.
Guys! Hello! How are you doing? I finally got vaccinated yesterday but now I’ve got a really bad fever so I called out sick for work for the next couple days. Anyways… guess what I did?!
I SAW SHANG-CHI THIS PAST WEEK!!!
It’s soooooo good! I’m kinda sad about the lack of excitement for this movie (and talk about that end credit scene, huh?) So feel free to ramble to me about it!
Things in my life are finally starting to settle down a little bit so we’ll see what happens with my writing and my activeness moving forwards.
Hope you’re all doing well and taking care of yourselves! Stay safe out there, loves! Be kind to yourself and others and stay tuned!
ok shang-chi spoilers!!!!! but fr the BEST. and i mean the BEST part of the whole entire movie was when he was in the lake and he had a flashback to his mother telling him that she and his father would always be a part of him, and to take that and make it his own. and then later when he got half the rings while he was fighting wenwu, his fighting style reflected his mother’s instead of his father’s and the rings turned gold and i
