A Reversal of Cultural Dynamics in Disney’s Shanghai Dream

Cheerios, Nescafé, and Disney—if you happened to be living in China in the early nineties, those brands likely constituted the coördinates of an impossibly opulent universe that existed mostly on glossy poster boards or the opposite side of the TV screen, reflecting the life you wish you lived. There were other iconic Western emblems, like “Dynasty,” the television series about the proudly capitalistic Carrington clan, whose melodramatic plotline (and magnificent shoulder pads) mesmerized a generation of socialists. But if you were about seven years old, as I was, its narrative of love triangles and corporate succession paled in comparison to the vision of a life in which everyone feasted on Cheerios—ubiquitously advertised but decidedly unaffordable to the masses—sipped “ka-fee,” and, most fabulously for the children, was granted access to a fortified Magic Kingdom. Still, although everyone knew its name, and its vague association with the duck and the mouse, no one I knew had ever visited the fantastical spires of a Disney park. The happiest place on earth evidently was not accessible to China’s people.

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