American Born Chinese on Disney+: Blend of modern coming-of-age and grand tales of mythology

There is no way, a decade ago, any major Western entertainment platform would have had the guts to commission this series.

The acronym ABC, meaning American-born Chinese, handily translates in Australia. You don’t even have to switch out the letters.

It’s a term that speaks to the plurality of cultural identity, and the push and pull of being caught between two worlds.

Are you Chinese? Growing up in a household where rice, not potato, is the staple starch on the dinner table, and you never forget the significance of birthday noodles.

Or are you Australian? Able to withstand hot asphalt after summers walking barefoot by the beach, and greeting a sausage roll with the same enthusiasm as you would xiao long bao.

You can be both. Being a hyphenate means you straddle two or maybe even more cultures, and you have shared reference points across the diaspora that those from a monoculture don’t have.

But the world is getting bigger, and stories are crossing former barriers to create greater understanding and appreciation of each other’s different perspectives and lived experiences.

That’s why you can even have a series such as American Born Chinese on a major platform such as Disney+. It’s a show that wouldn’t have existed 10 years ago, but can now find fans in every corner of the globe – though it will always hold stronger meaning for someone who can clock the Teresa Teng song heard in the first episode.

Growing up is already dramatic, and then add the complication of warring Chinese gods. Picture: Disney+

Across eight episodes, American Born Chinese blends the specificities of the experience of growing up as a second-generation immigrant kid, desperate to fit in at school, with the grand tales of Chinese mythology. And it has the guts to feature a decent proportion of its dialogue in Chinese.

The protagonist is Jin Wang (Ben Wang), a high school student who wants to play football, hide his love of comics, be one of the gang, and go on a date with his crush, Amelia (Sydney Taylor).

At home, his mum (Yeo Yann Yann) and his dad (Chin Han) are fighting as their expectations of each other and of marriage shift as life’s disappointments pile up.

Jin is already coping with the challenges of coming of age when his principal assigns him a new student to buddy up with: Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu). Wei-Chen is a contrast to Jin – he’s unfailingly polite to Jin’s parents, speaks perfect Chinese and is just more “the good Asian kid” without the hang-ups of Western defiance and individualism.

Michelle Yeoh as Guanyin, the goddess of compassion. Picture: Disney+

Or at least that’s what’s on the surface. As we soon learn, Wei-Chen also rebelled against his dad, but in a much grander way than Jin. Wei-Chen is the son of Sun Wukong, better known around the world as the Monkey King. As in, the mythological figure from Journey to the West.

Wei-Chen is on a quest to find the Fourth Scroll, a legendary chakra he believes will stop the impending uprising in the heavens. The Chinese gods are about to come to blows, and he thinks Jin is his human guide to locate this Fourth Scroll hidden on Earth.

He has help from Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh), the goddess of compassion, and occasionally has to fend off attacks from demons and other baddies.

American Born Chinese adeptly melds a high school comedy with all the attendant angst and teen flutters, with a wuxia action story that pits the likes of Oscar winner Yeoh against fierce opponents.

The Monkey King. Picture: Disney+

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Destin Daniel Cretton was the set-up director, establishing a tone and style which the likes of Lucy Liu, Peng Zhang and Johnson Cheng pick up throughout the season.

It also has a stacked roster of on-screen talent that also includes Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Leonard Wu and Lisa Lu, while Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong also appear in an almost Everything Everywhere All At Once reunion.

American Born Chinese is a charming and appealing series which declares that being from two different worlds is not only a hell of a lot of fun, but also special.

American Born Chinese is streaming now on Disney+