Pulling off Turning Red’s epic Chinese panda ritual was a global effort
Viewers tuning in to Pixar’s animated movie Turning Red may wind up wondering exactly what the characters are saying during two key sequences where they begin tochant in Cantonese. In one scene in the animated film, 13-year-old protagonist Mei, who’s started turning into a giant red panda whenever she gets emotional, sits down for a family ritual meant to control her inner panda. Her parents, grandmother, and other family members chant rhythmically to begin that ritual. Later in the film, the chant recurs in a different context. The words aren’t subtitled, even in the various Chinese-language translations of the movie.
“What are they saying?” Mei asks Mr. Gao (voiced by James Hong), who’s leading the ritual. He tells her it doesn’t really matter — the ritual just requires participants to sing from the heart. “It doesn’t matter what,” Mr. Gao says. “I like Tony Bennett. But your grandma, she’s from old school.”
But director Domee Shi and producer Lindsey Collins couldn’t just have the cast sing any random thing — they had to develop their own chant for the movie. The pair tell Polygon that a lot of work went into making the ritual sound right.
“We were really inspired by Taoist chants that monks would do in Taoist temples,” Shi says. “At first, we wanted to see if there was an existing Taoist chant we could use. But then we thought, because this family is so specific, the situation is so unique — this family has this magical panda curse running through them! — we should come up with our own chant for it.”
Shi wanted to make sure a native speaker was involved in developing the chant, so she and her team reached out to Herman Wong, the Hong Kong-based Asian-Pacific operations director for Disney Character Voices
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