Consider the Chinese

I don't know anything about the guy who wrote this opinion piece in the Washington Post, but here is his take on why Chinese mythical stories are rather unusual to American tastes (or perhaps, to Western tastes generically.)   It's prompted by the lacklustre box office of the dubbed version of the animated Chinese movie Ne Zha 2.  Here are the key paragraphs, which seem to make valid points:

Enormous casts, with key characters introduced suddenly in the middle of stories and others dying or disappearing just as suddenly? Check. Plotlines that are so intricate they require spreadsheets to track, with villains and heroes constantly betraying one another, embracing like brothers and then betraying one another again? Check. Gods and demons switching allegiances between good and evil so rapidly that the terms “god” and “demon” lose any kind of relevance? Check, check, check.

And yes, these epics often feature the tonal whiplash of slapstick comedy and juvenile toilet humor paired with high-minded musings about the nature of morality and the purpose of humanity.....

But the biggest difference is a fundamental expectation of what a full story with a beginning, middle and end looks like. Western stories are rooted in a hero’s journey formula in which an individual protagonist is plucked out of nowhere, achieves greatness through luck or talent, defeats monstrous evil, and subsequently receives their reward of a kingdom, true love or happiness ever after. They tend to be linear, goal-oriented and focused on progress.

They focus on collectives that have fallen out of harmony — sometimes because of bad choices, sometimes because of outside threats, sometimes for no reason other than the passage of time and the turning of cosmic cycles — and that must go through a seemingly endless series of shifts and adaptations to reach a new balance. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t heroes. It does mean that there often isn’t a singular hero or one correct — and “good” — point of view.

In that way, they reflect China itself, which has more than a billion people and a history that stretches back millennia. Americans are used to thinking of their history as a continuous ascent toward greatness (occasionally interrupted, which makes necessary a “return” to that path of greatness). China is more culturally resigned to the notion that everything is temporary, good and bad are relative (and frequently switch places), and instead of “happily ever after,” humans should settle for “peaceful … for now.”