The Exotic and The Abominable: A Tibetan Yeti Heals the Chinese Spirit
I encourage all soft-hearted people to watch “Abominable”, released in U.S. theaters last month. Hollywood’s first animation feature with a female lead (Chloe Bennet playing Yi), “Abominable” is written and directed by Jill Culton (whose credits include Monsters, Inc., Shrek, and Toy Story). I was moved by a few moments of the film and chuckled during my favorite sequence, when the well-coiffed Jin (voiced by Tenzing Norgay Trainor) runs desperately through the wilds of western China to reunite with his friends in a village on the eastern frontier of the Tibetan Plateau.
At least I assume it’s the Tibetan Plateau. I’m making an educated guess, since a herd of yak feature prominently in the village scene. And since the film is about, well, an imprisoned baby yeti who breaks free of his captors and needs help getting out of Shanghai and back to his home on Mt. Everest. To do this he needs to not only get out of China but also cross what is referred to by travelers as the “Roof of the World”, also known as Tibet or the Tibetan Plateau (a body of sharply elevated land slightly bigger than Kalaallit Nunaat, an autonomous territory otherwise known as Greenland).
Back to the movie. Obviously since this yeti is a baby (ok maybe he’s 7), he’s going to need some help. Cue Yi and her neighbor friends, Jin and Peng. They nickname him Everest after noticing his intense look of yearning toward a billboard promoting an image of the mountain. “Abominable” director Culton describes Everest the yeti as an evolving being who starts out being taken care of by Yi but turns into a kind of “guardian angel who led her to a place where she can heal. He becomes even more than just a creature.”
This might be a good time to make sure everyone knows what a yeti is. Being Tibetan, I’m happy to inform you that yeti is a Tibetan loanword for a mythical creature that inhabits the Himalayan mountains (otherwise known as our southern border). Known to certain cultures as “the Abominable Snowman”, in this film the scary yeti turns out to be cute, magical, and misunderstood (some might even say kidnapped and exploited). Now yeti certainly don’t belong exclusively to Tibetan folklore — Nepal, Kashmir, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are on the other side of the Himalayas. But as this film is about a “trip across China”, and none of those other countries have been recently colonized by China, we can say with confidence that this is, in fact, a Tibetan yeti.
And here I thought Hollywood was afraid to make a movie with a supernatural Tibetan character. I guess the Tibetan just needed to be rescued by someone Chinese, and guarding (also healing?) them in return. Sounds a little reminiscent of problematic tropes in American cinema with regard to representations of Black and Indigenous people, but let’s just move on.
Now wait a second, this is just a glorified cartoon. Why am I taking it so seriously? There are a number of reasons. The first is because I was born a refugee and the past, present, and future of my homeland are being erased. Another is because I know there are other thinkers and artists taking this movie and its makers seriously. And finally because I know cultural exports and imports like film, sports, and other consumer entertainments are all conduits of soft power — tools employed by nations to build influence and circulate particular narratives about themselves. All films produced in China have to pass an administrative review overseen by the government; disturbance of social order is listed as one element a film cannot promote, or be interpreted as promoting. As a co-production of Pearl Studio and Dreamworks I don’t know if “Abominable” was subject to this review process. But I can say this film wouldn’t have been made if its team thought it would disturb Chinese political leadership.
Because the film I saw, a story of a rare, displaced Tibetan creature who just wants to get back to his homeland, is not the takeaway the producers intended. Pearl Studio and Dreamworks hope what they have crafted is a universally relatable and simultaneously Chinese story. Pearl’s Chief Creative Officer Peilin Chou describes the film as especially pioneering for being the first time a global animated film has featured a modern day Chinese girl and her family. I respect and applaud this breakthrough, both as a Tibetan who doesn’t wish ill upon anyone Chinese and as someone read as “Asian” in the United States, where racism, misogyny, and an overall lack of meaningful representation deeply plague Hollywood. “Abominable” is Pearl Studio’s first original film, and there is plenty here to take pride in.
Speaking to the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Chou mentions how her studio and Dreamworks went “to great lengths…to ensure that this film is as culturally authentic as possible.” Although the interview only discusses Chinese culture, I can’t help but think one of the wise decisions made with regard to authenticity was the casting of Disney actor Tenzing Norgay Trainor, a young American of Sherpa heritage. Pronounced ‘shar pa’ (“people from the east”), the Sherpa clans of Nepal trace their ancestry to eastern Tibet, from where they began migrating in the 15th century. Sherpa are famous for their relationship to the Himalayan climbing community, especially with regard to Everest. In fact, Trainor’s grandfather was Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Everest. I have nothing but respect for the actor’s talent and position, and for Sherpa communities in Nepal and abroad. And though we have much in common with our Sherpa cousins, Tibetans in Nepal face a unique political situation where they are exposed to increasing threat and surveillance because their host chooses to put refugee lives at risk in exchange for economic benefits from China.
Trainor’s casting is not the only commendable decision made by Pearl and Dreamworks. Though I haven’t watched any of her prior roles, I appreciate the visibility of Chloe Bennet. A Chinese-American actress, Bennet found herself getting callbacks in Hollywood only after ‘American-izing’ her professional surname from Wang. And I’m sure there are many other valuable things I don’t know about the film and its hard working crew. Yet “Abominable” is also here to tell a particular story, one that involves certain deliberate cultural and historical erasures. In an interview with Variety, director Jill Culton says when Westerners think of China, they think of big cities, “of the Great Wall and the Potala Palace, but China’s very diverse.”
Maybe I’m just too Tibetan, but I truly didn’t realize Tibet was nonexistent to the point that people hear “China” and think “Potala Palace”. If Mt. Everest is literally the furthest thing from what can genuinely count as China yet still somehow be claimed by it as a national landmark (as “Abominable” does), I can hardly think of a monument less Chinese in history and meaning than the Potala. Built during the height of the Tibetan empire in the 8th century by the 33rd King, Songtsan Gampo, the Potala was expanded in the 17th century to function as both a residence for the Dalai Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government.
Born at the start of Tibet’s recorded history, the Potala is a testament to the unity of a self-determining people — the Tibetan people. Its stones are hallowed ground, witness both to Tibetan collective defiance against Chinese colonialism as well as the Tibetan people’s inextinguishable relationship to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. On March 10 1959, their capital city teeming with refugees from eastern Tibet and word of a possible Chinese threat to the Dalai Lama’s life, tens of thousands of Tibetan women and men surrounded the Potala. They affirmed among other things Tibetans’ rightful position as the sole stewards of Tibet. Tibetans and the Potala were consequently bombed by Chinese occupying forces while the 24-year-old Dalai Lama fled to India in an effort to end bloodshed and preserve his people’s values and way of life, beginning an exile that has lasted sixty years.
But the disturbing part of the quote is not the absence of a history lesson (it’s just an interview, after all). It’s that this educated American director is turning one of the most Tibetan things in the world into something Chinese. If this symbol of Tibetan sacred and sovereign power can be transformed (by tourism and carefully crafted cultural exports) into a treasure that belongs to the story of China, a highlight of its diversity — well what can’t be wiped away, then? Never mind the question of how precisely does one celebrate a nation’s diversity while it is carrying out multiple cultural genocides? I know it’s possible, I currently live on colonized land. But it leaves a bad taste in the spirit, if people are not actively working against these destructive forces.
དགའ་ས་བོ་དེ་ཅིག་བཤད་གི་འདུག་ག། (One tends to touch where it hurts, and talk about that which one loves.)
So we have in this yeti film not just a universal tale of “disconnect and reconnection”, but a story that’s being told right now about China, part of a wave that is rapidly advancing. And for good reason. Chinese investment dollars are deeply embedded in the American entertainment landscape, and its interests are intersecting with Asian-American artists who have long been working to prioritize Asian stories and talent. Continuing her remarks to CAAM, Chou shares:
“I look back and realize now that so many people were having the same experience of feeling isolated when I was growing up. You suppress who you are because you think that person is unacceptable and needs to be hidden, because they’ll never be accepted in mainstream society. It’s like you’re invisible.”
“If I would’ve seen a movie with a heroine like Yi, I’d have thought, ‘Hell yeah! That’s me! That’s awesome!’ I love the fact that she exists in the world.”
And that about sums up how I feel, not so much about Yi (who’s great), but about Everest (who’s extraordinary). Or as Tibetans would say, Jomo Langma. Whether mountain, river, grassland, creature, or natural element, each has a key role to the health of the vast and influential Tibetan Plateau. Each is a precious living thing beloved by generations of their Indigenous guardians, the Tibetan people of Kham, Amdo, Gyalrong, and U-Tsang, covering the present day Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai, half of Sichuan, as well as segments of Gansu and Yunnan provinces (together composing more than 25% of the People’s Republic of China).
Culton says she pitched the project as a girl who is driven to bring the yeti back to his home because she subconsciously wants to reconnect to her own family. “I think that disconnect and reconnection is more of a universal thing that everybody can relate to.”
Speaking as one of more than 150,000 Tibetans living in global diaspora who are almost universally barred from returning to our homeland, I can say yes, it is a thing I relate to. I lost three of my grandparents before I was born. One of them, my paternal grandmother Tashi Bhuti, died in a refugee camp shortly after crossing the Himalayas with my father cradled to her chest. She was fleeing Chinese forces invading her village. Now my relatives are scattered across the world according to the whims of asylum and chance. Some are in Tibet. Like Yi, it is a place I dream of being able to visit, alone or with a parent. I hope someday soon Chinese and Chinese-Americans become as invested in reuniting Tibetan and Uyghur families as they are in healing their own.
“We just really wanted to represent China in an authentic way that was really beautiful. China has such an embarrassment of riches, of beautiful places. Our only challenge in this film was picking which ones.”
-Interview with Peilin Chou of Pearl Studio
This article benefited from feedback by Tenzin Kelyang, T.D., Jane Breheney, and Stephanie Zorn. Tenzin M Paldron is a transgender Tibetan and doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley, born in New Delhi and living on Ohlone lands at the time of writing. His other works are available at paldron.com.
