The stories a culture tells are not just entertainment — they are blueprints for how people see the world, how they understand authority, and what they expect from life itself. And the stories China tells are very different from the ones we tell in the West. This gets into some deep territory — theories of storytelling, myth, and culture — but bear with me. You’ll follow it, and by the end, you’ll see why a film like Ne Zha 2 could become the most successful animated movie in history in China, while flopping in America.
Americans don’t understand China. The goals of the Chinese seem different, their focus alien. With their evident intellectual abilities, one might expect them to excel by creating new things — yet so often they appear more interested in copying what the West has already made. We expect them to rebel against their authoritarian governments, but they do not. In fact, President Barack Obama once expressed admiration for the remarkable obedience of the Chinese, wishing Americans were more tractable (Ha! As if.).
But in Ne Zha 2, the most financially successful animated film in history in nominal box office terms, we may find the seeds of understanding. The Chinese — and other authoritarian Asian cultures — work on a completely different storytelling backbone from the West’s. Where Americans instinctively expect the Hero’s Journey or the Heroine’s Journey, the Chinese respond to something older: the Trial Cycle, an ancient narrative pattern that exalts obedience, endurance, and sacrifice for the collective.
At the end of the first Ne Zha, Ne Zha and Ao Bing, sworn enemies, are destroyed by heavenly lightning. Their spirits linger, and Master Taiyi fashions fragile new bodies with the Seven-Colored Lotus. Ao Bing’s form quickly collapses, and his father, Ao Guang the Dragon King, bargains: Ne Zha and Ao Bing must share a single body for seven days and complete three perilous trials. If they succeed, Ao Bing will be restored. If they fail, both are lost.
The trials are imposed from the outside, overseen by the celestial figure Immortal Wuliang. He is both judge and manipulator — the one who inflicts suffering and the one who determines the reward. Ne Zha and Ao Bing have no choice, no autonomy. Their only hope lies in sacrifice and endurance.
This is the Trial Cycle in pure form: a binding bargain, external ordeals, authority as both tormentor and savior, and a fragile, provisional outcome.
In China and other collectivist societies, Ne Zha 2 was more than a hit — it was a phenomenon. By nominal figures, it became the highest-grossing animated film ever made, surpassing even Pixar and Disney’s global blockbusters. In America, however, it flopped. Western viewers admired the spectacle but could not make sense of the story. They expected a Campbellian arc of self-discovery and triumph, and instead they were handed a cycle of imposed suffering and conditional survival.
American stories tend to be very different. We focus on the individual, not the collective. Our heroes are expected to choose their path, not have it forced upon them. We look for transformation — for characters who grow, change, and return with something new to share. Where Eastern audiences may find meaning in endurance and balance, Western audiences look for self-discovery and transcendence.
The Hero’s Journey, as Joseph Campbell framed it, is the backbone of Western storytelling. It celebrates the transformation of the individual — a journey inward as much as outward. Its core beats are:
The American Monomyth is this arc recast in American terms: the lone cowboy, the masked vigilante, the superhero. Each rises when the community falters, defeats the enemy, restores order, and then departs. This pattern has defined Western storytelling for decades because it echoes the culture’s core values — independence, individual responsibility, and transcendence.
Alongside Campbell’s arc stands another: the Heroine’s Journey. In its many versions, it is not about conquest but about healing divisions. Its general shape is:
The Heroine’s Journey is the backbone of modern romance storytelling. It does not slay dragons but restores wholeness — within the self, between men and women, between family and community.
Together, the Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s Journey make up the bulk of American storytelling. They are what American audiences expect to see at the movies or in books. They are also what we encounter in our history books, our cultural myths, and even much of our music.
The Trial Cycle is older than either the Hero's or Heroine's Journey. It is not an inward journey for an individual but an external ordeal imposed from above.
Examples abound across ancient myth:
None of these heroes returns transformed with new gifts for humanity, like Prometheus. They endure, they sacrifice, and their endurance keeps the world in balance.
This ancient pattern is closer to what we see in early agricultural communities: the sacrifice of an individual to ensure fertility, good harvests, or favorable floods. The individual is offered up so the community may survive. Because those sacrificed were often outliers or scapegoats, the ritual reinforced the importance of adhering to common norms and maintaining communal balance.
Examples include:
The Trial Cycle is thus not just a storytelling device but a ritual memory: a pattern where the endurance or destruction of one secures the survival of the many.
This is why Ne Zha 2 works so powerfully in China — and why it falls flat in the United States. The Trial Cycle is the natural mythic framework of communism as practiced in Russia, China, and their satellites.
Communism functions with this same ritual logic. The Party exalts the collective, but it survives by sacrificing individuals — through purges, denunciations, and campaigns — in order to maintain its balance. The community lives on because individuals suffer or vanish. And as in the agricultural world, the spectacle of sacrifice also incentivizes the rest of society to conform.
In this structure, the Party plays the role of both Immortal Wuliang and Ao Guang — the punisher and the savior, the source of both hunger and bread. For Chinese audiences, Ne Zha 2 rings mythically true, and it gives them a rationale to keep working for the Party. For Americans, steeped in the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys, it feels alien and unsatisfying.
Ne Zha 2 is not just a film. It is a shot across the bow in the global struggle over culture. The Chinese Communist Party understands that stories are more powerful than slogans and that myths outlast policies. By pouring unprecedented money into an animated sequel, Beijing was betting on more than ticket sales. They were betting on their own storytelling backbone.
Xi Jinping has said repeatedly that Chinese artists must “tell China’s stories well” and use their work to “spread positive energy.” In practice, that means films are expected to reinforce obedience, sacrifice, and collective identity. The Hero’s Journey, so dominant in Western cinema, is considered dangerous because it celebrates rebellion, transformation, and the power of one individual against corrupt authority.
That is why Beijing throttled Hollywood imports, imposed strict quotas, and doubled down on domestic production. It wanted to limit the reach of the Hero’s Journey while saturating its population with the Trial Cycle, a pattern of suffering imposed from above and survival secured only through loyalty and sacrifice.
By exporting Ne Zha 2 worldwide, the CCP was testing whether its myth could travel — whether endurance and obedience could compete with freedom and transcendence on the world stage. Domestically, the bet paid off spectacularly. Globally, the reception was mixed at best. But the attempt itself is telling: this was not just entertainment. It was cultural strategy.
If Ne Zha 2 had flopped, the losers would have been clear: Enlight Media and its investors financially, the CCP’s cultural regulators institutionally, and the Party itself politically. This movie’s $80 million budget was very unusual — Beijing rarely gambles, but when it does, it makes sure the risk serves the regime’s larger goals. Clearly, this project was important enough for them to take a major risk, one that could have toppled its aspirations of being culturally dominant had it failed, and that itself raises other questions.
The box office divide of Ne Zha 2 is not just about cultural taste; it is about the deep structures of story. America lives by the Hero’s Journey and its variations: the lone savior, the transformed self, the healed romance. China and other collectivist cultures resonate with something older: the Trial Cycle, where authority imposes ordeals, individuals sacrifice, and the world continues in balance.
This is why Ne Zha 2 triumphed in China and failed in America. It is not only a clash of cultures but a clash of myths — the myth of the free individual versus the myth of the collective under eternal trial. One celebrates transcendence. The other celebrates endurance.
And at its core, the Trial Cycle is a story of sacrifice. In agricultural societies, one life was given so that many might eat. In communist societies, one life is broken so the collective may survive. To Western eyes, this looks like oppression; to Eastern eyes, it looks like order. Until we grasp these older mythic roots, we will continue to misjudge one another — because even in our stories, where we find our deepest and most hidden meanings, we are not speaking the same language. And if China’s story structure becomes dominant over our freedom-centered story structure, it could change the world — and not in America’s favor.
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