Disney's Great Leap into China

Main Street U.S.A at the new Hong Kong Disneyland looks exactly like the one most Americans remember from their childhood, but it won't taste the same. The classic Disney thoroughfare of quaint buildings and gas streetlights has been lovingly re-created from the original theme park Walt Disney built in Anaheim, Calif., which opened 50 years ago this week. But Walt's vision of idyllic small-town America now has a surprisingly un-Midwestern twist. Inside one Victorian building is Main Street's first Chinese restaurant, the Plaza Inn, crafted as a stylish tea shop from early 20th century Shanghai. The interior has traditional landscapes of the Chinese countryside painted on the walls. The murals have been based on the Disney animated movie Mulan, which was inspired by a Chinese legend. Soon the workers in white hard hats, who are still screwing the final bolts in place, will hang fish-shaped Chinese lanterns. Dim sum is on the menu, as is seafood fried rice. "It's turn-of-the-century America, with a Disney overlay, with a Chinese overlay," says Tom Morris, one of the park's chief "imagineers"--Disney lingo for creative designers. "You can go to different places and different times."

Hong Kong Disneyland is taking the Walt Disney Co. to a new place: the wonderful world of China. The $3.6 billion park, scheduled to open Sept. 12, is Disney's boldest attempt to make Mickey Mouse as well known as Chairman Mao in the burgeoning Chinese market. With 1.3 billion increasingly wealthy people--290 million of them under 14, Disney's prime audience--China is the Magic Kingdom for a consumer company, and Disney wants to sell them everything from Mickey Mouse toys to animated movies to kids' magazines. "We know we have an addressable market just crying out for Disney products," Walt Disney International president Andy Bird recently told investors.

Disney is no stranger to China. The company debuted there in the late 1930s, when the cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was screened in Shanghai. Today Disney sells Mickey Mouse gear through 1,100 Disney Corner outlets, and it wants to double that number over the next year. Disney movies and TV programs, like the popular Dragon Club series, appear on local television. With 24 hours of programming a week, Disney claims to be the largest foreign provider of films for Chinese TV. Disney's wholesome fare has given the company a leg up on getting its movies shown in Chinese cinemas. In 1995 The Lion King became one of the first Western films to premiere in theaters since the communists took over China in 1949. More than 15 other movies have followed, including The Incredibles and National Treasure--an impressive record, given that Beijing allows only 20 foreign films to be shown in the country each year. Disney on Ice has been performed in Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities since 1996. The company is even developing a new live-action film reminiscent of Snow White in which a young woman in 1880s China is protected by seven Shaolin fighting monks instead of the familiar Happy, Dopey and Doc.