High school students must help Michelle Yeoh save the world in American Born Chinese trailer
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High school is hard enough on its own, everyone can surely agree. But for American Born Chinese protagonist Jin Wang (Ben Wang), navigating the high school experience as the only Asian-American student is complicated... that is, until new transfer student Wei-Chen (Jim Liu) shows up and there's much more to Wei-Chen than meets the eye.
Wei-Chen has supernatural powers and his arrival at Jin's school is accompanied by the arrival of several gods from Chinese mythology — including Sun Wukong the Monkey King (Daniel Wu) and Guanyin, the goddess of mercy (Michelle Yeoh). They need Jin's help to stop a portal opening between the different realms of Heaven and Earth.
"The fate of your world hangs in the balance," Guanyin says.
American Born Chinese is adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Gene Luen Yang. Originally published in 2006, it continues to be taught in schools and celebrated by the Asian-American community. Showrunner Kelvin Yu and his team expanded Yang's story, adding characters like Guanyin to the mythological melange.
But, Yu tells EW, the gods and goddesses are really there as a representation of what it's like to be a young person with roots in different worlds.
"The fact of the matter is, any kid who's 15-16 years old, is in the process of identity formation," Yu says. "I don't care what decade or century they're living in, or culture, it sucks. That suckiness can be beautiful, it can be hilarious, it can be tragic, it can be delicious, it can be all of these things. This particular character, Jin, happens to have the added awkwardness of parents who don't speak his language fluently, a mixing of cultures, and some not-so-politically-correct representations of himself that he also has to juggle. We just wanted to tell the story of what's going on inside of a kid like that."
disney + Jim Liu and Michelle Yeoh in 'American Born Chinese.'
Yu continues, "luckily, with the help of Disney+ and with the help of [Shang-Chi director] Destin Daniel Crettin and our stunt team and our VFX team, we're able to externalize an internal experience. We're able to take what's going on inside of him and show you through the medium of television the adventure that's going on within a lot of 15-year-old kids, and hopefully make it funny and go down easy."
All episodes of American Born Chinese hit Disney+ on May 24. Watch the new trailer above.
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