Last evening, with my wife, my daughter, her husband, and granddaughters, I went to the animation of a huge box-office success, Ne Zha II, at a theater in Santa Clara.

I do not watch animation often, so I cannot evaluate how its audio-visual effects would impress me to emulate the other films. All I cared about then was if my two granddaughters would be happy watching the movie. The elder one is a ten-year-old fourth-grader. I thought she could understand the storyline partly from the English caption and her limited Chinese listening comprehension. The younger one is two months shy of six. I guess she would enjoy the swashbuckling clips while sucking her thumbs as well. As for my poor son-in-law, he could only rely on the English caption, which I think is well-translated, but I could not catch it up because I was not able to juggle the dialogues with the Chinese and English captions at the same time.

The story itself is just a fabrication from the novel "Investiture of the Gods" written in the Ming Dynasty, cooking up the myth of the Shang Dynasty that had been long ago. Even the real hero and great general Li Jing of the Tang Dynasty had evolved into the father of that enfant terrible Ne Zha. Therefore, do not take the story seriously.

Nonetheless, its success at the box office can be deemed as another significant progress that the rising and dominating power of China showcases in many aspects.