Mysterious as the dark side of the moon

There comes a time in every mandarin language student’s life when they try to apply their new found knowledge to the world of KTV. No song is sacred from the mangling of s’s, c’s and z’s. The best part for many young scholar is of course: no tones.

In case my name (Mouse Eared Kiwi) didn’t clue you in, I happen to be a big Disney fan. This leads to a natural progression of finding Disney songs and then finding the same songs in Mandarin. Difficult? Oh no, my friend, not with (behold) the power of YouTube.

Take one Disney movie set in China, extract one song with an easy melody, add an iconic actor and what do you get? Jackie Chan singing I'll Make A Man Out Of You. Awesome. (Video uploaded by AirialBoy):



Next, with (behold) the power of Google, find lyrics in mandarin characters or in pinyin or both. Here are the lyrics in pinyin (as found at the very helpful findalyric.com):

Da jia tong xin zuo zhan rang xiong nu jue wang
Wei he zhe qun shi bing dou xiang ge gu niang
Ni men ben zuo san man you niu nie
Wo hui gai bian ni de qian tu
Yao cheng wei nan zi han bu ren shu

Za wen ni de bu lv nei xin yao jian ding
Kai kuo ni de xiong jin qiu sheng yao jue xin
Dan xiao you hai pa xin luan ru ma
Ni jing huang mang ran wu zhu
Yao cheng wei nan zi han bu ren shu

(Wo qi chuan ru niu kuai duan qi)
(Xi fang ji le deng wo guang lin)
(Wo kan da jia quan dou bei ta xia sha liao)
(Ta men dan zhan you xin jing)
(Wo de shen fen hai shi mi mi)
(Diao dao shui li ke hui yao le wo xiao ming)

(Nan zi han) Xing dong kuai su xiang na jiang he tuan ji
(Nan zi han) Po huai li xiang na feng bao wu qing
(Nan zi han) Man qiang re xue xiang na ye huo ya jing
Shen chu gui mo xiang na an ye de e meng

Shi guang hao bu liu qing xiong nu kuai bi jin
Ting cong wo de zhi ling cai neng gou huo ming
Sha chang tai can ku xue guang sha lu
Ruo hai pa ta shang gui lu
Yao cheng wei nan zi han bu ren shu

(Nan zi han) Xing dong kuai su xiang na jiang he tuan ji
(Nan zi han) Po huai li xiang na feng bao wu qing
(Nan zi han) Man qiang re xue xiang na ye huo ya jing
Shen chu gui mo xiang na an ye de e meng

(Nan zi han) Xing dong kuai su xiang na jiang he tuan ji
(Nan zi han) Po huai li xiang na feng bao wu qing
(Nan zi han) Man qiang re xue xiang na ye huo ya jing
Shen chu gui mo xiang na an ye de e meng


For those unfamiliar with the song, here is the English version (uploaded by xFliiy). The movie is about a girl (Mulan) who secretly goes off to war in her ageing father’s place. In this song, the lead warrior (also Mulan’s love interest) is training the new recruits. As the movie Team America taught us, all you need is a montage:



Although in English, I particularly like this young man’s lip sync – especially the part of the song where a number of characters sing a line each. Feel the passion! (uploaded by jayakarim):



Once you get going, it’s amazing how many interesting variations of a song you can find. Here somebody melded the song in a number of languages together to create a multilingual version (uploaded by WeiFanggg):



For the discerning viewer, a DragonBallZ parody version (uploaded by TeamFourStar):



For an added dose of extra awesome, this class of school mates did a pretty good job trying to re-create a lot of the movie scenes for the song in real life (uploaded by kellersmiles). My favourite authentic moment is at 3.03:



Although not a re-creation of the music video, this group who style themselves as the tomato bandits did a great job providing a lot of funny moments. Extra points for the moment where someone makes karate moves look like the robot dance, see if you can spot it (uploaded by tomatobandits):



If someone could only make a video for this song consisting solely of Chuck Norris and The Hoff, I think we would have a winner.