Where Can I Get Disney Movies in Chinese?

June 6, 2008 8:51 PM

Where can I get Disney movies dubbed in Mandarin?

My Chinese teacher had showed us MuLan in Mandarin Chinese with the subtitles when I was in school a few years ago. Surfing youtube has brought up tons of Disney songs dubbed in Mandarin, but I can't seem to find the movies to buy or otherwise anywhere. I've also read that any Disney movie that is dubbed in Chinese is a fake because they don't make them. This doesn't really bother me, but I want to find some to play in the United States dvd players. I also don't know/understand very much about dvd zones but I understand that movies made for China will not play in the U.S.
Also where I can find other shows/ movies for kids in Mandarin that aren't specifically Disney films? (the children are 2 and 5 + myself)
Thanks

posted by rubberkey to media & arts (6 comments total)

Are you familiar with tudou.com, the youtube equivalent in Chinese? You might find Disney movies there, if you know the Chinese titles. For instance:
花木兰 - Mulan
狮子王 - Lion King
阿拉丁 - Aladdin
美女与野兽 - Beauty and the Beast

If you do get hold of some DVDs, there are zone-free DVD players that you can buy. My friend has a Phillips model from Amazon for around $80 3,4 years ago.
posted by of strange foe at 9:13 PM on June 6, 2008

Disney does indeed create Chinese specific versions of their titles on DVD - I know because I make them. They're region 6 (the US is region 1), so you'll need a region free or hackable player (easy to find) to play them. No idea where you can buy them over here, but I'm guessing your local Chinatown might be a good place to start.
posted by forallmankind at 11:17 PM on June 6, 2008

If you end up buying fake DVD's, these will play in U.S. DVD players because they're region-free.
posted by bertrandom at 11:37 PM on June 6, 2008

If you do find them in your local Chinatown, I'm guessing that you might not have any problems with the region. I never have any problems with DVDs that I buy from China (although I don't buy the expensive kind, if you get my drift).

You could try searching dangdang.com and joyo.com; they're Chinese websites similar to Amazon (in fact, I think joyo is actually owned by Amazon). Here's a Lion King DVD boxed set, and here's a DVD of Beauty and the Beast. In general you can just Wikipedia whichever movie you're interested in and go to the Chinese page to get the name, then search for it at dangdang. You could also try doing a search for 迪士尼 (Disney). Be careful though, there seems to be a lot of knockoff cartoons floating around on those websites.

I've never used dangdang or joyo, but if I recall correctly, some people at chinese-forums.com used them to ship books and movies from China without problems (ask gato at Chinese Forums). Shipping from China is actually a lot cheaper than you might think. Joyo and dangdang are pretty legit websites, but I'd still be slightly worried about sending my CC number over - be careful. You could also try looking around at YesAsia.com, but they didn't seem to have any Disney movies when I did a quick search.
posted by pravit at 11:40 PM on June 6, 2008

Actually, those DVDs I linked you to appear to be Region 6, so you may need to hack your player or something. If your computer has a DVD player, it will let you change the region a limited number of times, although from Googling around it seems you can get around this with some tricks.
posted by pravit at 11:44 PM on June 6, 2008

One more post, sorry (a mod can collect these into one post if needed)

Here's Aladdin at joyo.com. Having gone through the purchasing process at both websites short of buying it, I think joyo/amazon.cn is a safer bet, and they seemed to have more shipping options to the US. It's kind of hard to find the actual movie on joyo since they seem to be selling so many various knockoffs, but adding 特别版 ("Special Edition") to my search was helpful.

You can also buy VCDs (here's one of Lion King), which should work in any computer and many DVD players, but you won't have the option of switching audio or subtitles, and the quality will be worse.
posted by pravit at 12:02 AM on June 7, 2008