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Chris and Alex are delighted to be joined for Episode 162 of the podcast by Muyang Zhuang (Assistant Professor at Tongji University), who is a specialist in Chinese cinema, media, and visual culture in East Asia, with a special focus on animation and cartoons. In this instalment, the trio discuss Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s Lotus Lantern (Chang Guangxi, 1999), a film based on Chinese folklore whose animated adaptation in the late-1990s comes in a long line of reworkings of this most famous of tales. Topics include the context of state-owned animated production in socialist and post-socialist China; the (trans)national style and aesthetic choices of Chang Guangxi’s film and the politics of its Westernisation; European vs. Chinese folklore, the figure of the trickster, and links between the film’s musical sequences and character; the complex market forces that have helped position Disney animation as China’s monstrous other; and why Lotus Lantern is considered a landmark in contemporary Chinese animation.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
246 episodes