The Chinese Cultural Details in Netflix's Over the Moon

have you ever been dm'd so often about a movie since its release that you basically have to drop all your other video plans to prioritize it that's me that happened with me and over the moon on netflix so alright here it is the most important thing to note about this movie is that it was produced by netflix in association with an actual chinese studio pearl studio which is based in shanghai so there's no such thing as it being culturally wrong hence why this video is titled differently from my mulan ones because being chinese obviously isn't a monolithic thing so experiences vary but i will say i've lived in china for half my life and the depictions in this movie check out so i'm here to explain exactly what felt familiar to me and why and tell you guys a little bit about what it's like to live in modern china the movie starts off with the protagonist fei-fei's mom telling her a story about the space dog which takes a bite out of the moon each night leading to the moon phases until the moon goddess changlu makes it spit out the moon pieces this is based on the real myth of the sky dog or tiango which is believed to eat the moon during lunar eclipses i think the moon phases association was made up for this movie though i wouldn't be surprised if i was wrong and it was like a local legend or something also fun fact the kanji for the japanese tengu is probably derived from tiango though they're like two very different creatures the japanese chengu isn't even a dog then fave's mom briefly tells the story of changlo the moon goddess and her husband hoi i don't think this movie actually got into hoei's own legend so let me talk about it here also his name is technically just e houi is a tribal leader during the same era that he often gets confused with though the confusion has been happening for like 3000 years now so it doesn't really matter anymore and this movie calls him hoey so i'm gonna call him hoey well long ago during very ancient times there used to be 10 suns that would take turns rising each day one day all 10 of them decided to rise at once this caused a huge drought like the earth was cracking and the people were suffering so the mythical king yao decided to send houi an expert archer to deal with the issue now stories differ on what houi actually was like some say he was an actual divine archer descended from the heavens to help humanity and others say he was just an ordinary boy who was abandoned in the woods when he was five and then like through the necessity of survival became an expert archer by age 20. so he was either a literal god or a feral child but anyway he was very good at getting arrows into targets so he took his trusty bow and arrow and tried to reason with the ten sons at first but they were like what are you gonna do about it so he shot him down that's what he did he got nine of them before the son's mother was like oh my god no stop and even king yao was like dude we actually need at least like one son and so haui spared the last sun and it rose on schedule ever since something really interesting to note here is that in ancient chinese myth there were 10 suns at 12 moons you know what's in the ancient chinese calendar 10 days per week and 12 months coincidence i think not there's also other cool stuff like there being a legend where the son's mother bathes them every day and i was like why at this legend for the longest time but then i realized the people living on the very east coast of china would have seen the sun rising out of the pacific ocean each morning anyway getting off topic maybe i'll do a separate video on this someday this moon and sun and chinese myth so after haui saved humanity from the terror of the ten sons he was given two pills of immortality from the queen mother of the west who is another really cool person from chinese myth that i might do a video on someday also the english version of this movie calls the immortality pills potions but this is because chinese immortality pills are often translated as elixirs this makes people think drinkable it doesn't help that mercury is a key component but no chinese immortality is cultivated in furnaces by taoists so they come in pill form and the chinese subtitles do reflect this and sohoi got one immortality pill for himself and one for his wife changu and here's where the story really starts diverging some say she took both pills while holy was out hunting because he had turned into a tyrant and she was afraid that the people would suffer forever if he became immortal others say that his apprentice broke into his house and tried to steal the pills so she took them both in a panic and still others say she took both just out of pure greed so for whatever reason while houi was out chungha took double the pills for double the immortality and the effect was so great that she shot right past the heavenly court where the gods actually live and got stuck on the moon instead with nothing but a jade rabbit as company a rabbit who either makes medicine or rice cakes depending on which asian country you're in this is because people in that region thought the imprint on the moon looks like a rabbit oh and there's also this guy wugong who's like a chinese sisyphus he was a chinese immortal who was banished to the moon and only allowed out if he cuts down a tree but plot twist the tree heals itself after every cut he makes and he also doesn't matter because he's not in this movie at all i just had to mention that technically changu does have a human roommate oh my god they were roommates anyway oh my god i almost forgot i'm reviewing a movie so fave is really attached to the changu legend and we find out why when it comes to her family's moon cake stall in a traditional looking chinese town it's a distinct jung nan vibe meaning south of the yangtze river it's the region where i'm from actually lots of waterways and stone bridges and mild flavored food it's like the chillest part of china but i have to clarify something here most towns in modern china do not look like this when they do look like this more likely or not they're deliberately kept this way to be a tourist town or just a small protected heritage region most traditional buildings nowadays are getting torn down in favor of high-rises and skyscrapers and there can be a lot of drama about it like the real estate developer generally offers the inhabitants of those traditional buildings a lot of money to move away but some refuse to move and these people are called ding tsuhu or nail residents but that doesn't apply because it's very likely that feife lives in a tourist town because even her family's mooncake stall has a heavy emphasis on how they're an artisanal time-honored brand that makes everything by hand oh and if you don't know what mooncakes are they're these round pastries with an egg yolk in the middle legend says that houi made them after chango ascended to the moon because he missed her so much i'm surprised they didn't include that tidbit in the movie in the kitchen shots there are a lot of familiar elements from traditional chinese kitchens like the brightly colored plastic bins the hearth and the giant wooden pot lid on the wall and the string of chilies and the random utensils and how the floor tiles are like slightly suspiciously dirty if you go to a small restaurant in china don't go ask to see the kitchen you will be discouraged though i'm pretty sure this applies to western kitchens too like i don't think restaurant workers across the world give as much as a crap as we hope they do anyway because this is a kid's movie it starts aiming to decimate your emotions right at the six minute mark her mom gets like k drama style signs of terminal illness oh god and while the mom is getting ready to bite the dust poor unsuspecting fey fey is peddling her mooncakes peddlers are a common sight in modern china though not so much in the biggest city anymore so since fei-fei's family trade is mooncakes their lives basically revolve around the mid-autumn festival since that's the only time where people actually eat moon cakes unless you're like really thirsty for some off-season mooncakes i guess this holiday is basically like chinese thanksgiving and it reportedly happens each year when the moon is at its roundest families get together on this day because round can also be read as reunion and feife's family is so committed to this moon themed brand that they'd give her a bunny and then fifi's mom bites the dust for real you might have heard that white is the color of morning instead of black though that's more ancient times than modern at modern funerals you are expected to wear black or at least like black or white though you can still see some white morning stuff like the pins that cliffy and your dad are wearing on their chests then it skips to four years later and fifi's hair is a mess this is technically unrealistic because chinese teachers get so into your life that they will tell you to fix your hair if it is a mess though she probably gets a pass because her mom died we see her make a moon cake offering at a small shrine in her house which is common for families that have lost a family member you put their picture up and they leave offerings like fruit and incense for them back in the kitchen there's again a bunch of random but very chinese things like the strings of garlic the bottles of soy sauce and vinegar on the shelf that are probably like really greasy the scale and stove that look like they're from the 1980s and of course the bright plastic thermoses in the background they are such a thing in china people generally don't like to drink cold water because of a belief that it's bad for your health and also the tap water usually isn't safe to drink anyway so most families have a bunch of these thermoses standing around with boiled water in them and the mid-autumn festival is coming around yet again so favi and her dad get busy in this scene where a family is taking a photo feife tells them to say chidz which means eggplant but it's just the equivalent of saying cheese when taking a photo as fife sets off to deliver more moon cakes we get to see more of modern china including the iconic guangchang or plaza dancing where a bunch of people get together in a public plaza and follow a chill choreographed dance there's a stereotype that only middle-aged aunties do it but it's for all ages it's just for exercising purposes like it's just a fun group activity then faith goes to a construction site there's always construction in modern china you can hear the ping ping pings of construction through the windows of your gated residential condo because there is always some canoe project nearby and fei-fei in particular gushes over the technology of magnetic levitation trains china is indeed very proud of its train system and then she goes home to find a new woman in her dad's life and she also meets chin her soon-to-be step-brother he's brought a frog with him frogs or technically toads are another animal that's associated with the moon and chinese myth and also here there's a discrepancy between chin's name and the english version and his name in mandarin in the english version he's just chin in the chinese subs he's xiao ching or little ching instead this is because it's generally very strange to refer to someone by just one syllable in chinese like most chinese names have three syllables the family name and then two meaningful characters if someone's name is say wang ibul you can just call him no problem but there are also a lot of chinese names with just two syllables like the family name and then a single meaningful character like xiaojian in that case other chinese people wouldn't call him just chan we'd either call him by his full name or add some kind of modifier to it like ajan or changgugu or just repeat the syllable janjan is this the thing like calling someone by just one character sounds very very strange to the chinese year but anyway feife is in the middle of realizing that her dad might be remarrying when her hot aunts show up for the family dinner another discrepancy here in english they're just her aunts we don't know how exactly they're related but in chinese they're specifically herdagu and argu meaning that they're her dad's eldest and second eldest sisters yeah chinese family titles are like really specific you know exactly who you're related to on like which side of your family and faves dagu has brought live squirming crabs to the party which is totally accurate as well it is not a chinese festival dinner without some crabs getting steamed alive in a pot if you get invited to one of these dinners it's considered rude to show up empty-handed so you better bring some kind of food or gifts and also like only one person of like your family delegation needs to be bringing the gifts so also it is totally accurate that the aunties are much better looking than the uncles for dinner feife's family makes a lot of dishes that are familiar to me like the mushrooms stir-fry with bok choy the shrimp stir-fried with peas and lion heads which are those giant meatballs there and also just like slices of raw tomatoes with a bit of sugar sprinkled over them that's a very chinese way of eating tomatoes and of course there's also braised pork belly which is darkened with soy sauce and braised with like ginger and sugar and other stuff though i don't eat most of these things anymore because i turned vegan do you guys have any idea how hard it is to be an east asian vegan anyway the family has their meal in the courtyard of the residence which is common if you live in like a traditional residence with one of these courtyards and you have a lot of guests over at dinner the family discusses and acknowledges the various versions of changu's legends miss strong feife's upcoming stepmother says that she might be related to hawi actually chinese people claim this sort of stuff all the time and it's at least like partially plausible i mean if you live thousands of years ago and you had a lot of children then you are gonna have so many descendants i personally have been told that my family on my mom's side is descended from the imperial league clan of the tongue dynasty it's not as impressive as it sounds there are so many of us there were so many leaves back then but fave ends up getting really riled up by the changu discussion especially when her dog booth says oh it's just a silly myth and so faith storms off miss jones comes to give her a mooncake and a tin that looks very much like the tins that i used to store my stationary in when i went to school in china oh man stationary cases in china could get so wild when i was flying into canada once i made airport security gasp when i opened my case and like three whole tears sprang out oh yeah she was your girl until she saw my three-tiered stationary case while fever is stressing out about her dad not believing in change anymore a ray of moonlight leads her to a crane it's implied that this crane is her mother's spirit trying to get her to move on cranes are seen as very spiritual animals and chinese myth but fever's not ready to move on no she gets the idea to build a rocket to fly to the moon instead and starts intensely studying rocket science fun fact about china's space program though a lot of their stuff is named after mythological concepts so there's like the chang la landers the eutool rover is named after the jade rabbit and also the tiangong space stations named after the heavenly court and so on fave buys over a hundred things for this rocket project under the guise of doing a science project and it's actually very representative of how robust the online shopping industry in modern china is like unless you live in a really remote area you could buy anything online and it will be delivered to you in like two or three days it really feels like they're in 2030 well i'm here in canada waiting at least a week for everything like it's 1990 and fife is so consumed by the rocket project that she is even distracted at school which gets a quick roasting from her teacher there is no mercy in chinese schools they will literally put up a ranking board of every student in the class by grade and the lowest scoring students are generally ridiculed and grades are not considered privacy that needs to be respected oh no and this pecking order also follows you around the entire school year because you're stuck with the same group of classmates through everything the teachers are the ones who move around not the students and i actually think that's like a more logical system to have and also here you can witness the absolutely atrocious chinese winter school uniforms that i had to wear as a kid they basically only come with red or blue accents and they make you suffer aesthetically anyway while feife sings about an epiphany about using magnetic levitation to propel her rocket somehow the poem on the board is a famous one written by song dynasty poet sudonpo or sushu not pronounced sushi it's basically about how much he misses his brother on the mid-autumn festival oh with this epiphany fei-fei actually builds a functioning rocket which is just another example of how anything you can do there's a 12 year old asian child out there who can do it better and she even would have actually made it if little chin hands stuck on board and messed up her weight calculations instead they have to be rescued by gay moon lions well the movie calls them lions but if they're winged then they're probably more inspired by pisho a creature that looks like a winged lion with short antlers the gay moon lions take fife and chin to lunaria which is a totally original place that the production team designed in myth chunga's residence on the moon is called the guanghan palace this movie clearly went with the idea that changu evolved with the times after becoming the moon goddess now she's a goddess pop star this is pretty far from the vibe she has a myth so i've seen some complaints from chinese people in china saying that she's too western and different from eastern beauty standards but honestly i'm glad for the rep because i've had so many people tell me that she looks like a 3d cartoon me and i've never been able to say that for any cartoon character so like we don't all want to look as young and sweet as possible upon meeting fei-fei changla demands the gift from her but for some reason refuses to specify what it is this makes more sense in the chinese version because she says the memento instead feivey though wants a picture with changa to prove to her dad that changu is real but changla refuses to let her have the picture without handing over the memento this is because this is her last chance to see houi for some reason and only the memento can bring them together at one point a frog splats on the chongo's face fun fact in one version of her story she asked the sorcerer to define her future before deciding what to do with the immortality pills the sorcerer said that she must go to the furthest west alone and there will be lots of darkness but if she is not afraid then she will reach her destination and have a bright future with plenty of descendants therefore she took both pills but ended up turning into a toad once she landed on the moon and the prophecy is technically true because toads have lots of descendants anyway chunglo announces a moon wide competition to find the memento fever hitches a ride with the angry birds for some reason i don't know i don't know why they're here while chin enters a duel i mean ping pong match with chung to give faithy her photo why ping pong this is just because chinese people are obsessed with ping pong like have you seen the ping pong finale's every olympics it's like almost always chinese versus chinese there's no suspense and this whole sequence doesn't really make any sense but it's all worth it for ping pong chung rapping meanwhile feife rides mad max fury road style with the angry birds through her rocket crash site where she thinks the memento is there she runs into ken jon whose character is named gobi after the gobi desert i don't know the character's name in chinese is jello instead since chongo didn't specify what the memento is fifi thinks it must be the chango doll that her mother gave her and the angry birds betray her and take it from themselves damn meanwhile back at the palace jade rabbit is scrambling to make another thing that's necessary for changla to see hoi the english version says it's a potion but the chinese version says it's a medicine which is accurate to what he actually makes in chinese myth fever's rabbit bungie who was earlier shown to have developed a crush on jade rabbit on site stumbles upon him and manages to provide the missing final ingredient which is implied to be love aw but feife is still caught up in action sequences with a bunch of giant moon frogs now so changu is still stressing out she sings two lines of mandarin that aren't translated in the english subs but it's i wish you everlasting love in every lifetime and back in fey-face action sequences the doll gets ripped apart and fifi thinks it's all over but when ken jon makes her eat the mooncake that miss jong gave her to cheer herself up fifi discovers that there's a half of a jade pendant inside now jade pendants could work as contracts in ancient china like the general terms were carved onto it and then the pendant was broken in taft and each party carried a piece so this pendant is probably symbolic of change and haui's promises to each other fei-fei rushes the pendant back to chiang mai and with the help of jade rabbit's medicine hawi appears changu and hoi sing to each other partially in mandarin and the mandarin is thoughts of you are so difficult to bear i wish i could be with you and trunglo has also reverted to the way she's traditionally depicted which is like very tongue dynasty this is because the tongue dynasty aesthetic is considered the most ethereal and fairy-like so it fits her moon goddess image the most once again if you want to learn more about tongue dynasty makeup i've got an infographic on my instagram link in the description below and while changa is beyond happy to see houi again he says that he unfortunately can't actually stay and that she has to move on and then he disappears this sends changu into a deep despair that extinguishes all the light in lunaria fifi tries to go talk her out of it but ends up getting confronted with her own grief over her mother's death fever and chongo then like help each other out of their grief by comforting each other with fever learning to accept her new brother and the new family that she's gonna have and trunga learning to just be happy with her family of lunar minions then the light comes back to lunaria and fifi gets ready to leave though her bunny bunji wants to stay with jade rabbit bunji you met him 20 minutes ago but all right so chunga lets fife take the picture of them together back home though it burns up on the way back to earth and but fifi isn't really bothered by that because now she's like emotionally mature enough to not need the legend of changu anymore and back on earth we receive a full shot confirmation that the lions of fae face town are gay double smooth balls watch out for those then there's a time skip to after feyva's dad and chin's mom get married they have a picture in western style wedding wear but they probably have like a whole album in a whole range of outfits this is the thing chinese people do when they get married and after a lively mid-autumn festival meal with her new family feife receives a visit from the crane that may or may not be her mother's spirit one last time seeing that fife has moved on the crane flies off to join a flock of other cranes and so ends this movie so this was a nice heartwarming but also bittersweet movie and it's definitely worth watching for like chang alone she's voiced by felipe sue also known as eliza from hamilton anyway thanks for watching all of that and i hope you learned lots about modern china and chinese myth from all of my rambling if you want to see more videos from me consider supporting me on patreon there you can vote on my next video topics and also receive exclusive updates about both my books and the videos that i'm working on and i can't leave without plugging my book so like my book iron widow it's a pacific rim meets the handmaid's tale reimagining of the only female emperor in chinese history and it comes out fall next year from penguin random house i will probably have the cover soon hopefully and also i have like other top secret book news that are on my patreon exclusive feed so if you're curious the link is in the description and see you next video which is gonna be like i don't even know how i'm gonna take my god i'm so slow sorry the election like messed me up bye

Channel: Xiran Jay Zhao

Views: 932,094

Rating: 4.9858346 out of 5

Keywords: thanksgiving, over the moon, phillipa soo, chang'e, hou yi

Id: hpbWR-XxFl4

Length: 21min 55sec (1315 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Chaelsonnen_42069]

Fuck the CCP and anyone who accepts their blood money.

[u/WabiSabi97]

On Friday, December 4, 2020 - 10:00am-11:00am PDT / 6:00pm-7:00pm UK / 19:00-20:00 CET

VIEW Conference will hold "Fly 'Over The Moon' - An Animated Behind-the-Scenes Conversation"

Production designer, Celine Desrumaux, and Imageworks CG supervisor Clara Chan, Animation Supervisor Sasha Kapijimpangaand VFX Supervisor David Smith will take you behind-the-scenes of this exhilarating animated musical adventure, exploring the creative and innovative techniques applied in order to bring legendary director, Glen Keane's, vision to life.

You can join this session for FREE by registering at: https://www.viewconference.it/pages/over-the-moon

It is possible to ask questions in advance by writing to: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])
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