Big Bird in China

Big Bird in China (1983)

A 75 Minute Musical Adventure

Big Bird and his Sesame Street companion, Barkley, the big, fluffy dog, travel across China in search of the legendary Feng Huang, the Phoenix Bird. Along the way they visit with Chinese schoolchildren, watch a Tai Ji demonstration, learn some Chinese words and songs, and meet the mischievous Monkey King.

Date of release
1983-05-29
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 15m
Genres
Adventure, TV Movie, Comedy, Family
Director
Jon Stone

Casting

Interesting facts

Big Bird in China is a 1983 television special based on the children's television series Sesame Street produced by Children's Television Workshop and China Central Television. It was originally broadcast on May 29, 1983, on NBC. Big Bird, Barkley and Little Xiao Fu travel through China to find Feng Huang, the Phoenix bird.

Production

Lisa Ou, who played Xiao Foo, did not understand a single word of English when she acted her scenes. She memorized the sounds.

Film production took place in 3 cities: Beijing (the Great Wall, animal sculpture), Guilin (the Glass Chessboard, headless buffalo) and Suzhou (the storyteller).

Scenes at the Great Wall took place early morning around 4AM due to heavy tourism crowds.

Carroll mentioned in the 2013 documentary "Being Big Bird" that Lisa Ou learned all her lines one by one while filming. He would repeat the lines and she would repeating stating "she probably didn't know what she was saying but she was very smart." Carroll and Lisa Ou were also re-united for the documentary for the first time in about 30 years.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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