Five Animated Days in Shanghai: A Festival Diary

Rita Street serves as Jury President for the Animation Category of the 30th Annual Shanghai TV Festival

Day One: I just learned how to properly eat a xiao long bao, or Chinese soup dumpling. It’s my first day in China, for the Shanghai TV Festival, and my guide for the week — filmmaker and recent grad of San Francisco’s Academy of Arts University, Julia Yang — has taken me to lunch at Nu Xiang Mu Dou. Like every venue, experience or artform in Shanghai (a.k.a. the Magnolia City), this exotic dim sum house is a confluence of East meets West, ancient meets futuristic, and real life meets animation.

Walking into Nu Xiang Mu Dou I fall in love with its 1900s Shikumen era (or Eclectic Shanghai Style) façade — a hybrid of Western row house and traditional Chinese courtyard homes. The interior takes this blend a step further, combining sleek modern styling with a huge, whimsical centerpiece that hangs over the bar and flashes animated characters.

But, back to those dumplings. They’ve just arrived at our table in a compact bamboo tower, the lid of which our waitress has removed to unveil a quickly fading mini-curtain of steam, out of which six small white, perfectly formed dumplings emerge — like adorable alien beings out of a Chinese anime.

“Pick up your dumpling,” Julia instructs with her chopsticks, “and carefully bite off a small corner.” Once this feat is accomplished, I blow on my dumpling to cool off the broth inside, then dip it in a small bowl of vinegar and eat. The soup, the pork, and the soft dough pocket combine to create a burst of umami-rich, savory flavor that is almost indescribably good. In fact, I can’t remember enjoying anything as much, as well … talking about animation!

Day Two: I’m up early to meet with my fellow jury members and to decide on the winners for the Best Animation and Best Storytelling categories. We’re staying at the Portman Ritz-Carlton, so our meeting room has all the luxe appointments, most importantly a big screen featuring all 10 of this year’s nominees, pre-selected from over 160 global entries. As Alexis Ducord, (director/storyboard artist – Sally Bollywood, Zombillenium, Into the Wonderwood), Li Jianping (dean of the animation school at the Beijing Film Academy; director of Dragonkeeper, Most Loveable) and I had already screened these selections from home, we dive immediately into some very animated deliberations.

A chief feature of the Shanghai TV Festival’s Magnolia Awards, celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year, is the diversity of the selections. Not only are the top 10 selections visually different from each other, they were produced for age groups ranging from preschool to adult, and include large season orders, binge series and one-off specials. Add to that, our own likes and dislikes as jurors, and we are in a bit of a pickle as to defining our winning criteria.

I was particularly taken with two Chinese properties: Under the Night, a CG binge series based on the novel I Was Learning to Kill Gods in a Mental Hospital from production house Tianshi Wenhua; and Nirvana, a stop-motion special supported by Tencent from Mote Stop Motion Animation. Under the Night is a gorgeous breakthrough in terms of heightened storytelling and epic scope, while Nirvana features stunning stop-motion kung fu action scenes.

In fact, our discussions concerning Nirvana lead to a very informative sidebar in which Li tells Alexis and I about the experimental animation department at the Beijing Film Academy’s School of Animation.

This extremely well-appointed stop-motion lab offers students an opportunity to collaborate with professors on large-scale projects. Their current undertaking, The Tale of Xi Xiang Ji — a 10-minute short that brings to life the classical three-dimensional brick carvings of the Anhui Province. When Li shows us a video of this work-in-progress, I am at first enchanted by the intricate carvings themselves and want to slip into the shadows with the frozen figures, innocently captured in a moment from their daily lives. Then, the figures begin to move, and I literally gasp. The animation is so smooth and dynamic, it’s as if I was seeing stop motion for the very first time.

Back to work! After several hours and a frank review of all 10 of these apples-to-oranges nominees, we decide to do what all good audiences members do: choose the properties that pull at our heart strings and change our ideas about where animation should and could go in the future. Top among these is the groundbreaking second season of Riot Games’ and Fortiche’s Arcane. In the same way that Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took our breath away and opened new paths for the look and feel of animation in 2018, the second season of Arcane lives on a planet all its own and earns our pick for “Best Animated Series.”

With the category of “Best Storytelling” still to award, our deliberations continue. Although the sweet and quirky Lena’s Farm, a preschool shorts series from Studio Film Bilder, rises high after a second viewing, the three of us agree that the heartwarming and heartbreaking story of four kids dealing with the political upheavals of 1955 Algiers in Our Summer of Freedom (Darjeeling, Panique! and Lunanime) will be our choice.

Day Three: Before arriving in Shanghai, I tried to research Chinese animation (or donghua) history. Sadly, detailed information is hard to come by in the States. So, I asked my main contact at the festival, Sophie Luo, for help. Sophie, in turn, arranged a special afternoon outing for myself and Alexis, to visit the Shanghai Film Museum.

Occupying the first four floors of the Shanghai Film Group, this cultural landmark’s remarkable collections unveil the dynamism of the country’s 100 year-plus cinematic history. Not only does it showcase the influence of Western cinema, but gracefully and charmingly depicts how Chinese filmmakers evolved their own brand of Eastern storytelling. Chief among the many captivating exhibits is an entire section dedicated to animation.

Our guide is executive producer of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Hanmeng Qi (Seth), a talented young woman who is a walking encyclopedia of Chinese animation history. According to Seth, Shanghai is the birthplace of donghua and dates back to the 1920s when the Wan Brothers, director Laiming Wan, Guchan Wan, Chaochen Wan and Dihuan Wan, created their own studio, producing the nation’s first animated shorts.

Much like the early years of Pixar, the Shanghai Animated Film Studio was all about experimentation. Chief among these were ink painting, paper cut, puppet and paper folding. In 1941 the Wan Brother’s produced their first feature film, Princess Iron Fan. Another landmark of Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s “Chinese School of Animation” style was the two-part 1964 release of Uproar in Heaven, directed by Laiming Wan. This animated feature, based on the story of the Monkey King, is highlighted in the museum with displays of the original script, storyboard pages, character designs and animation cels.

My favorite part of the exhibit, however, is a digital floor projection game, based on the charming 1960s ink-painting animation Where Is Mama, that features a mother frog and her babies. When I take a step forward into the “pond,” delicate tadpoles swim around my footfalls. I am happy to learn that Wenxiao Lin, a female animator, worked on this short. In fact, female animators have worked for Shanghai Animation Film Studio since the beginning.

Wenxiao is also well known for directing the beloved 1980s tear-jerker of a TV special titled Snow Kid, in which a mother rabbit is forced to leave her child alone but builds an enchanted snowman to keep it company. A new version of this classic will be released by the Shanghai Film Group in 2026.

After our visit to the museum, we a treated to a high-level meeting with the all-female power-houses that continue the Wan legacy; Jun Wang (Catherine), Chairman of the Shanghai Film Group and the Shanghai Animation Studio; Da Su, Studio Art Director and creator of Dear Tutu, one of the most popular animated IPs in China; and Anyi Wang, Producer. We discuss other upcoming releases including a hand-drawn, quirky and endearing comedy I can’t wait to see that Wang has produced called, A Story About Fire, and a sequel to the company’s extremely popular shorts anthology YAO-Chinese Folktales, which offers new indie artists’ takes on Chinese myths. A spin-off from YAO-Chinese Folktales, called Nobody, will also be released later this summer.

Days Four & Five: I’m home now, filled with vibrant memories of my week in Shanghai. On day five, I was honored to help award the Golden Magnolias to the animation winners during the awards ceremony’s live broadcast, but the memory that sticks with me most was from the Gala Dinner the night before.

As the Animation Jury President, I was invited to sit at the head table. Surrounded by artists from around the world, enjoying a dinner of delicious food and many toasts, I was busy thinking of all the contrasts I’d uncovered — East vs. West, old vs. new, real life vs. animation — when I was surprised to be invited to cut the festival’s 30th Anniversary Cake with President of the Documentary Jury, Vikram Channa (SVP Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific) and multi award-winning actor and national treasure, Chen Baoguo.

I’m not sure what I did to deserve this special treatment, but at least eating Western style cake in an Eastern setting, was a dish for which I needed no instruction.

The 30th Shanghai TV Festival was held from June 20 t0 28, culminating in the Magnolia Awards. Visit stvf.com for more information.

Rita Street is an award-winning animation executive producer, creator and writer, and president of Radar Cartoons, LLC. Her recent credits include exec producing/developing the feature film project Kai (Red Animation Studios), story editing/writing for the preschool series Stomp! Stomp! Rhinos! (Oak 9 Ent.), co-creating Space Chickens in Space (Disney EMEA) and executive producing for the feature film and TV franchise 100% Wolf (Flying Bark Prod.). She is also the founder of the international non-profit Women in Animation and author of the free e-book guide to development, A Cartoon Girl’s Secret Guide to Developing Kids’ Comedies That Sell!