That, coupled with critical comments of the Chinese government in various interviews, has led to her being blacklisted by the Chinese government, and news regarding Zhao's success with Nomadland at the Oscars has been blocked on Weibo, China's most popular social media site, and various government-sponsored new sites. While Zhao was born in Beijing, she was educated in the United Kingdom and the United States, and she considers herself an American, not possessing a Chinese passport. While Zhao's success with Nomadland was a source of pride for China early on and her achievements as the first Asian woman filmmaker to win a Golden Globe for Best Director were lauded, many Chinese nationalists called Zhao's citizenship and loyalty into question. All these factors together give the Chinese government and Chinese movie-goers little reason not to believe that a Shang-Chi movie will present a negative view of Chinese culture, given the story centers around Shang-Chi's desire to live his own life free of his tradition-minded father, after spending some time living in America. It does not help matters that the real Mandarin and Shang-Chi's father is portrayed by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung or that the actor playing Shang-Chi, Simu Liu, is Canadian. The fact that Shang-Chi's greatest enemy is his father is another cliché trope often applied to Chinese characters in Western literature that is considered distasteful in modern China.Īdditionally, the fact that the Mandarin replaces Zheng Zhu in Shang-Chi is considered as problematic as using Fu Manchu, given the character's equally racist origins and status as a reductive stereotype. Nevertheless, the character has still drawn criticism for being a stereotype, being entirely defined by his mastery of martial arts, which are often presented as the default superpower of Asian characters in general and Chinese characters in particular. In recent years, Marvel Comics has done much to redeem Shang-Chi and his problematic past, with a retcon making him the son of the sorcerer Zheng Zhu, and the upcoming movie replacing Shang-Chi's father due to racism and controversy.
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