As a country with a long-standing and diverse food culture, China is well-known around the world for its tasty cuisine. Looking to capitalize on this facet of the country's culture, a recent Chinese animated film Foodiverse seeks to use anthropomorphic food characters to tell the story of a young disabled girl's struggle to accept herself.

Different from the traditional Chinese stories, which tend to be set in ancient China, Foodiverse, which debuted in the Chinese mainland on June 16, takes place in a parallel universe similar to ours but in which all the people are food.

"Many movies before have focused on the topic of food, but the main characters are still human beings," Chen Liaoyu, the director of Foodiverse, told the Global Times.

"I was inspired by the different types of food when I started my creation," Chen said, explaining how he came up with the designs for the different characters, which include dumplings and even a slice of pizza.

According to Chen, assigning different personalities to the foodie characters wasn't just random. For example, the "youtiao" characters - youtiao is a type of doughnut stick fried in oil - were designed as middle-aged men because a fried youtiao "looks old and wrinkly. We also use slang such as 'youni zhongnianren' (greasy middle-aged man) and 'lao (old) youtiao' to insult people my age," Chen joked. 

The youtiao characters are represented as two brothers wrapped around each other at the waist, sort of like conjoined twins. Always arguing, their contradicting personalities are also symbolic.

"The twisted youtiao are like the two sides of a certain kind of person's personality. The serious character representing the face they show everyone, and the weird and a bit despicable one that is the side they keep inside. It seems a bit psycho to me, but close to reality," Chen explained.

The steamed bun character, the main character's best friend, is another example. He was made to be a bit chubby and cute because "we tend to think of chubby people as being more friendly, honest and kind," Chen said. 

Another reason why Chen decided to make a film about food is that he feels it is an essential thing that links people together.

"We can live without working or other entertainment, but food is a basic requirement we need to live," Chen noted. Food is also something that people associate with making themselves happy, especially when you are in a bad mood.

"Some of my female friends always go for a feast when they are feeling down," Chen said.

"Food somehow satisfies your taste buds by creating a sense of fulfillment inside you. It is in this way that we connect to the world physically. But we have also already moved from needing to eat to live to where we can live to eat. We now focus on the spiritual sustenance food gives, such as how it can remind us of our love for our hometowns and relatives," Chen emphasized.

"The film is about being yourself," Chen noted, going on to explain that having a variety of different and unique foods as characters helped convey the message of the film.

"Dishes are like human beings, they are all different and unique. The villain in the story is someone who wants to erase all this uniqueness. This is also the source of conflict in the film."

The main character is Penny, a Chinese dumpling that was struck by coin that fell from the sky as a child - another nod to a Chinese food tradition in which a coin is often placed within a random dumpling on Chinese New Year's Eve and whoever ends up finding it at the dining table will have good fortune for the rest of the year. As a result of the accident, Penny is occasionally afflicted with seizures that leave her unable to move. As the film progresses, Penny must struggle with the desire to be like everyone else or accepting herself as she is.

"When it comes to Chinese food, dumplings were the first thing that jumped into my mind since it is, without a doubt, a typical cultural symbol of China," Chen said.

While going up against big Hollywood films like "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" and other animated films such as Incredibles 2 has caused the film to suffer a bit at the box office, reviews of the film have been relatively positive. Currently, the film has a 7.8 on Chinese online ticket-selling platform Maoyan.

"I have to say this movie is really fantastic. It's been ages since I've watched such a sweet and cool movie!" netizen Mulichangyu posted on Sina Weibo.

(Cover: Promotional material for Foodiverse /Photo via Global Times)