Anime Chinese Girl

"And when I get excited
My little China girl says
Oh baby, you just shut your mouth, she says..."

— Iggy Pop, "China Girl" (written with David Bowie)

A cute Chinese girl, usually with a variable accent. Nearly guaranteed to dress at some point in a qipao (or, almost as often, a tangzhuang) and has Odango Hair. A very high proportion (even for anime) will know martial arts, always in a Chinese style. Most of them will be called Lanhua (more often spelled Ranpha in merchandise), Meiling (sometimes Mei Lin), or some other popular name, even though there are many options for Chinese names.

This trope dates back to the Sino-Japanese war when Chinese women were highly exoticised and sexualised by Japanese men. It re-emerged in the 1970s although now as more "innocuous" portrayals when Japan had a boom of interest in Chinese culture due to improving relations between China and Japan, as well as the dominance of Hong Kong cinema in Eastern Asia.

In Anime and Manga the Chinese are a special case to the usual But Not Too Foreign treatment of foreigners, due to the long-running rivalry (historically exploding into outright war more than once) between China and Japan. Hong Kong is in a weird place in the middle (culturally, if not geographically), usually used when the writers want to set a story in a Vice City that wouldn't work properly otherwise.

Evil Chinese girls grow up to be Dragon Ladies. Or they might have a change of heart after years of helping their evil mad scientist fathers.

A subtrope of Stereotypes of Chinese People.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 3×3 Eyes: Mei Shin is from Hong Kong, knows Kung-Fu, and is drawn to actually appear Asian. She typically wears a red uniform, but slips into a Qipao during a later scene, in an attempt to get Yakumo's attention.
• In Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says, Tanaka cosplays as the Magical Girl character Chaoli Fan from the anime Luckysis. She has Odango Hair, wears a qipao, and is described as a "palm reader from Chinatown".
• Ling Yunque (Suzu) from Amuri in Star Ocean. Except for the martial arts part, but she's got some crazy super powers with Chinese motifs instead, so it all evens out.
• Chan Lee from Bakugan, who is Chinese and very good at martial arts. While her first clothes resemble the Vietnamese ao dai, her second outfit reflects a more modern Chinese dress.
• Black Butler has Ran-Mao, a Chinese girl who wears a cheongsam, has odango hair and is a powerful martial artist wielding a pair of chuí.
• Shenhua from Black Lagoon, who is often at odds with Chinese-American gunslinger Revy.
  "You got that, chinglish?"
• The anime adaptation of Cardcaptor Sakura added the character of Meiling Li, the qipao-donning, Badass Normal martial artist from Hong Kong.
• In Chinpui, Eri Kasuga is this due to her ancestor, Kukuru, (her ancestor is the same as the kid from Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan) who hailed from Nanjing.
• Darker than Black has an interesting subversion in Alice, Misaki's childhood friend, who invites her to her birthday party slash mob gathering, which she herself attends in a western-style ballgown, while stuffing a rather embarrassed Misaki into a qipao, complete with odango. Lampshaded by Alice's crimeboss father, who grumbles about her displaying her xenophilic tendencies so blatantly at such an important event.
• Doctor Slump: Tsururin Tsun is the eldest daughter of a Chinese family who moves to Penguin Village, she has her hair in an odango hair and has several mental powers which make her a Little Miss Badass, she is also Taro's biggest love interest and is considered attractive to most of the boys in her school. Also her mother could tell.
• Chi-Chi from Dragon Ball. Although over the course of the series, several minor characters are introduced in the same style. Chi-Chi herself regularly wears qipao, is a known practitioner of the Turtle Hermit style and the strongest woman on Earth (until Android 18 came into the picture), and in the manga and original Japanese version of the anime she speaks with a heavy Tohoku accent. Her favorite food is even Chinese chimaki, according to the Super Exciting Guide. While the Dragon World has no in-universe equivalent to China as a country, the original arc was a Fractured Fairy Tale take on Journey to the West, and the setting as a whole is probably best described as a fantasy hybrid of Japan and China.
• Ming Chao from Et Cetera. She's a really bright brunette and has the biggest eyes of the whole cast, but hey, she carries a wok on her back!
• Minerva Orlando from Fairy Tail is a rare Villainous version until her Heel–Face Turn. One of the series' most powerful women, Minerva (as her cat-like appearance may suggest) is sly, cunning and very powerful. Her overall characteristics like braided twin Chignon and a slight tan are key features associating with traditional high-class Chinese ladies, though she got her name from a Roman goddess.
• Rana Linchen from Freezing is from Tibet and has special undergarments from her home country. She of course excels in hand to hand combat.
• Lan Fan and May Chang, the two Xingese female martial artists from Fullmetal Alchemist. May is even more blatant because of her eastern-style clothing and odango hairstyle.
• Ranpha Framboise from Galaxy Angel has many aspects of the trope, including a taste for steamed meat buns, and a Leitmotif that sounds very Chinese.
• Fei from Gate Keepers is a particularly noxious example of this trope. She seems hard pressed to have thirty seconds of screen time without squealing "Ay yah!"
• Kagura from Gintama, despite being an alien, dresses in Chinese outfits and is occasionally referred to by strangers as Chinese.
• Good Day to You, How About a Game?: The main characters play a Mahjong mobile game with a strong Chinese aesthetic (since mahjong is a Chinese game). Aside from their Digital Avatars being fancy animal girls wearing elaborate Chinese-style clothing, the CPU players are dressed in stereotypical Mandarin garb with Odango Hair.
• Taiwan and Vietnam from Hetalia: Axis Powers, at least in looks. Also, the originally male China in the Gender Flipped art (whether fanart or the doodles done by Himaruya himself).
  • China's gender does not have to be flipped.
    • Fem China was soon introduced as the official female opposite, of the already feminine China. Fem China's behaviour is described to be a lot more Genki Girl than her logic-demanding counterpart.
• Hikari no Densetsu: Thankfully averted with Meiling Chen, a rhythmatic gymnast representing Hong Kong. She is from the Chinese mainland, but she averts many of the negative stereotypes associated with the trope and is a bubbly girl who befriends Hikari.
• Ruri and Hari, the cute Chinese minions of moth demon Menōmaru from the first Inuyasha movie, Inuyasha The Movie Affections Touching Across Time.
• Jungle King Tar-Chan has Renhou, leader of the White Crane clan. While never explicitly shown, it is implied she has a vast amount of ki and has the ability to look into the minds of other people, as well as telepathic communication.
• Renka Ma from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple lacks the accent, as she speaks Japanese as fluently as the other characters, but otherwise she fits all of the requirements for the trope.
• Love Live! presents two refreshing aversions, voiced by actual Chinese ladies:
  • Tang Keke checks no boxes of this trope, but matches all description of a Mainland Chinese girl of The New '10s - academically excellent but terrible at sports, and voiced by a genuine Shanghainese Liyuu.
  • Zhong Lanzhu does have the hairstyle, but nothing else. She is voiced by the half-Chinese Akina Homoto.
• Princess Aska from Magic Knight Rayearth had elements of this: One of the Magic Knights even comments on how she and her entourage seem to be a weird mix of Chinese and Japanese stereotypes.
• Maken-ki!: Yan-Min is a foreign exchange student from China, who's attending Venus Academy. She's depicted as having slanted eyes and wearing a cloth hairbun like ornament. But once she takes off her jacket to fight, you can see she's wearing a short form-fitting qipao underneath.
• Wang Liu Mei from Mobile Suit Gundam 00, although she only wears a qipao in the first episode and it is her Battle Butler and older brother Hong Long that knows kung fu.
• Shiishii from Monster Musume is a cute Chinese Vampire from Taiwan who speaks broken English and adds "Ai ya!" to her sentences. Despite being undead, she's quite fast and dangerous. Parts of her design/abilities are inspired by Capcom's Chinese girls, Chun-li and Hsien-ko (see the "Video Games" folder below).
• Tenten from Naruto, who definitely invokes the design, despite the fact that her world doesn't seem to have a China. In the databooks, her favorite food is Chinese food. Team Guy as a whole seems to have a Chinese theme going on, from Rock Lee and Guy-sensei being Bruce Lee Clones to Neji Hyuuga's fighting style coming from baguazhang, a Chinese form of martial arts.
• Ku Fei and Chao Lingshen from Negima! Magister Negi Magi seemed unusual in sharing the same trait, until Chao's more specific gimmick was revealed to be time-traveling descendant of Negi's come to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. They both know Kung Fu, but Chao cheats.
• Sha Chi from Penguin Musume, complete with the qipao and martial arts thing. Also adds "-dachi" to the end of every sentence.
• Ranma ½: Shampoo and her grandmother hail from a hidden amazon village, deep in the mountains of China. Needless to say, she's almost always seen in Chinese garb and her speech pattern (at least in English) is the stereotypical broken English without pronouns or verb tenses. In Japanese, Shampoo speaks ridiculously polite keigo, even to people who piss her off, because it's the only kind of Japanese she knows.
• I-Pin from Reborn! (2004) is a good example of this, particularly once she's hit with the Ten Year Bazooka.
• Miss China from Spirit of Wonder is a hot, ass-kicking, qipao-wearing legitimate Tsundere Chinese girl.
• Kou Shuurei and all the other female characters in The Story of Saiunkoku, which is a fictional version of China after all. However, they all wear Han period costumes and not the traditional qipao of the Manchu period.
• Ixpellia of StrikerS Sound Stage X was likely meant to evoke this image, what with her qipao and all (in the illustrations to them, do not get any weird ideas).
• The prototypical anime Chinese girl is possibly Lynn Minmay (Lin Minmei in Robotech) from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, although this is only emphasized in certain episodes. Technically, Minmay's half-Japanese.
• In the Super Mario Land arc of Super Mario, Mario eats at a Chinese restaurant, including a stereotypically Chinese woman with odango hair.
• Vivian Wong from Yu-Gi-Oh!. Aside from having odango hair, she goes around waving fans and a Duel Disk, wears a yellow qipao and apparently knows enough kung-fu to fix Grandpa's back.. or break it, as the case may be. At some point she and Mai Kujaku duel the Meikyu Brothers on the Great Wall of China.

Fan Works

• Boy Scouts ½ features Perfume, an (inept) Amazon warrior from the same village as Shampoo.
• Aki Chung-Feng and Shenhua "The Dragon Lady" Jiang from One Piece: Parallel Works. While Aki is The Ingenue who is usually dressed in a Qipao, the Dragon Lady...is a Dragon Lady.
• Shampoo from Ranma ½ is a prominent character in Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, and has lost none of her Anime Chinese Girl heritage. She's ironically become even more of a Badass Adorable by eating the Rabbit-Rabbit Zoan, which means she generally runs around with bunny ears and a bunny's tail.

Films — Animation

• In Turning Red, the first shot of the movie is of a picture of Mei and her parents with Mei looking like this, complete with wearing a qipao and having Odango Hair.

Literature

• Ling Yu of the web-novel Domina, to the hilt. Probably intentional, given her interest in anime.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Melissa Mao is of Chinese descent but she doesn't follow any of the stereotypes. This is because she's lived most of her life in New York, although she also spent some time in Hong Kong.
  • The two that do follow this trope's stereotypes, however, are the Creepy Twins Yu Fang and Yu Lan. One of them wear odango hair at one point, as well as a qipao. And they both know martial arts (a whole lot better than Mao).
• Huang Lingyin from Infinite Stratos, who wears a qipao in fanart and in the second season's third episode, alongside having a family who own a Chinese restaurant, and also has a Chinese-esque theme song.

Live-Action TV

• Super Sentai:
  • Mele from Juken Sentai Gekiranger is an example, though seeing as how Gekiranger is essentially Super Sentai meets Wuxia, she's hardly the only Japanese person in the show to practice Chinese-style martial arts.
  • Then, there's the android assistant Colon from Choujuu Sentai Liveman. A Chinese robot girl...who moonwalks. And won't hesitate to hop into one of the vehicles and make some People in Rubber Suits eat missiles when the Rangers are in trouble. And her (removable) odango hair does stuff, too.

Music

• Cheng Xiao, a Chinese member of the Korean girl group WJSN (Cosmic Girls) often wears her hair in ox-horn fashion in fan or TV appearances, and sometimes qipao/qipao-inspired fashion like here. She doesn't know martial arts, though she is very acrobatic◊ and often shows it off on-stage.

Pinballs

• Chun-li in Gottlieb's Street Fighter II is supposed to be this. Due to some Off-Model art, however, she ends up looking like a Bruce Lee Clone Disguised in Drag.

Theatre

• Leeann, the hippie half-Chinese nurse from Shirley Lauro's play A Piece of My Heart.

Video Games

• 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams universe doesn't have China, but it has Banri who wears obviously Chinese-inspired clothing, secretly fawns over panda-shaped rice balls and does kung fu. Not a fantasy counterpart of kung fu, actually kung fu.
• Pekoe from Animal Crossing checks all the boxes. She wears a qipao, has odango hair, slightly differently designed eyes in the more detailed games such as New Horizons, and a classical Chinese-style house decorated to resemble a Qing-dynasty wealthy Chinese home - oh, and she's named after a type of tea. Being Animal Crossing, however, it's purely cosmetic and is not reflected in her personality otherwise.
• Mei-Fang of Arcana Heart. A Chinese Robot Girl, designed for combat with using Kung-Fu and her move names taken from The Four Gods. Also sports a big hair bun in addition of big breasts, and in one of her win poses, she can execute an instant-cloth-change into a Qipao
• Min Min from ARMS has ramen ARMS and hair. She also wears a Qipao, has a Chinese inspired Leitmotif, and has a Chinese dragon motif. She however has blond-colored ramen-based hair in a bob hairstyle rather than the more common brunette hair with buns.
• Litchi Faye-Ling from BlazBlue. Wears a variation of Qipao that displays her big boobies, fights with both martial arts, chi control and staff, sports a living mini-panda as her hairpin. She is a doctor that stayed on a town that is filled with a lot of Chinese people. Unlike Jam, Litchi didn't use any oriental-based accents.
• Darkstalkers: Hsien-Ko and her sister, Mei Ling, combine to form an anime cute ghost variant and is recognized by her blue skin, long-sleeved qipao, and her ginormous pair of claws!
• Dead or Alive: Lei Fang is the series' poster girl for the trope, as she's well known for her twin braided hairdo and her signature red Qipao, which is her default costume in each game. She's also a master of Tai Chi Quan which she takes great pride in it and with good reason: once fully mastered, she's one of the most dominant characters in the game; especially at tournament level play.
• Leinyan from the DoDonPachi series wears a stereotypical chinese dress, and one piece of artwork for DoDonPachi DaiOuJou Black Label EXTRA shows her serving dim sum at the mess hall. Hikari from SaiDaiOuJou is also this, wearing a green dress for herself.
• Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters:
  • Li Xiangfei is a Chinese-American girl from South Town, which is apparent from her hairstyle and attire. She even practices several forms of Kung-Fu and works as a waitress at a local Chinese restaurant.
  • Hotaru Futuba is an odd example. She absolutely looks the part due to her clothing and hairstyle, and even uses a mixture of Chinese martial arts, but actually hails from Japan rather than China.
  • Mui Mui from the Dragon Gal pachislot series and later The King of Fighters XIV fits this trope, being a very eager martial artist who sports the outfit and bun hairstyle usually associated with the trope. Her hobby is even eating Chinese meat buns.
  • XIV also features a very atypical example: Mian is a female fighter from China, but lacks the typical bun hairstyle and usually covers her face with a mask. Also, instead of Kung-Fu, she uses a fighting style based on traditional Sichuan opera dances.
• Fate/Grand Order: Amongst several female Chinese Servants, Qin Liangyu is the only one who is obviously designed as a "Chun-Li clone". She was also originally designed to appear in Part I, but her debut was delayed until Part II, when the story takes places in Lostbelt China. Liangyu's love for pandas also showcase her cute side.
• Lynn from Final Fantasy Legend II is one of the earlier examples of the trope, made even more noticeable in the 2009 remake.
• Xiangling from Genshin Impact is a slightly odd example in that Genshin is a Chinese work, but a whole boatload of the subtropes apply. She's very cute, has a lot of obvious Chinese cultural elements, wears a qipao, uses her spear in a form fairly specific to Chinese polearm arts, and loves to cook specifically what we would call Chinese food in the real world. Many of the other female characters from Liyue (basically Teyvat's China) don't fit the stereotype as much as Xiangling does.
• Feizhi in Golden Sun has some strange syntax (but not to Asian Speekee Engrish levels), comes from an obvious Fantasy Counterpart China, and practices kung-fu. Fantasy Counterpart China that got an expansion in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, but Feizhi was nowhere to be seen. Much to the fans' dismay.
• Jam Kuradoberi from Guilty Gear. She wears a tight red suit resembling a Qipao...except that the bottom part is just skirt to show off her legs (oh how they hurt so). Even in Japanese language, she has a very thick Chinese accent (which got localized into Asian Speekee Engrish combined with You No Take Candle later), and she fights with both Kung-Fu and chi-manipulation. Maybe you wouldn't notice this on sight due to how...outlandish her name is from a standpoint of Chinese names.
• Ring, the player 2 character from Hong Kong Ninja, befitting a Chun-Li expy in a game with graphics closely resembling anime.
• Lei Kugo from Live A Live, although she's also surrounded with various Chinese People, until the final chapter, IF she's the picked pupil of the scenario.
• Rin Rin from MadWorld she has dual fan blades and the stereotypical Chinese dress. She returns in Anarchy Reigns, this time with her sisters Ai Rin (who uses nunchucks) and Fei Rin (who uses an ice spear).
• Mei Ling from Metal Gear Solid is the perky and heavily-accented teenage girl in charge of saving your game. When she returned in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, however, she loses her accent and is pretty much indistinguishable from anybody else, except physically. The remake of the first game, MGS: The Twin Snakes, also removed the accent. It should be noted that the same voice actress was used, she just dropped the fake accent after the Playstation original.
• Li Mei from Mortal Kombat could also count. Although she is stated to be from Outworld, her name, dress, and appearance all fit the traditional Chinese stereotype.
• The kyonshī sister from Onmyōji (2016), though the only thing definitely Chinese about her is her accent and her specie.
• Mienfoo, Mienshao, Pancham and Pangoro from Pokémon gets a special mention, perhaps the only Pokémon with a heavy Chinese influence (so far) unlike most Fighting types, Mienshao shows much dignity and elegance even if its male you can classify it as "Feminine". Pancham and Pangoro are obvious references to Chinese Panda bears and can also be female.
• Project × Zone hits a quadrafecta with Chun-li, Pai, Hsien-Ko and Xiaoyu all together. Namco × Capcom did it before it, however, with Chun-li, Ton Pooh, Hsien-ko and Fong-Ling in its roster, plus Original Character Xiaomu.
• Resident Evil:
  • Ada Wong, appears as a mysterious spy/agent for a third party opposing Leon Kennedy, and almost always wears a sexy red qipao dress.
  • Fong Ling from Resident Evil: Dead Aim is pretty much a Captain Ersatz of Ada, only wearing white instead of red.
• Xiaomei from Richman series is quite literally this: she's a Chinese girl who is cute, and good at circus performing and cooking.
• Xiao Pai in Rune Factory 4 serves as this archetype, being a clumsy and unlucky bachelorette with an accent she inherited from her father. Her mother, Lin Fa, does not have her accent, and despite also running into a number of accidents and mistakes, things always seem to go in Lin Fa's favor in the end, much to her daughter's remorse.
• Li Kohran from Sakura Wars, while being more a Gadgeteer Genius, has the look, having a long red qipao as her standard outfit.
• Wu Ruixiang, the new addition of the 2019 Samurai Shodown game, is a Qing-dynasty era fengshui mistress fighting with a giant gong and mostly using summon magic based on fengshui. She wears a Qipao that shows some leg, glasses and somehow is rather clumsy.
• From Skullgirls we have Feng, Cerebella's roommate. She wears a shorter, slightly looser-than-normal Qipao and is from the Wutai-analogue. Her Color Motif is black and white, symbolizing a yin-yang.
• Chai Xianghua from the Soul Series, a young member of the Ming Emperor's personal guard and the one tasked with finding "The Sword of Heroes". She comes with the typical attitude and attirue, and as an added bonus, she was the chosen wielder of the titular weapon (the first one in the series, even) and she's top of top tier.
  • Her daughter Leixia takes over her spot in Soulcalibur V, being pretty much a copy-paste of her mother.
• Star Sweep has Po, who looks like a chibi kung-fu master a la Chun-Li, and her theme is similarly Chinese-themed.
• Street Fighter's Chun-li is one of the best known examples. Her look has even become iconic: from her odango hairdo, her spiked Bowser-like bracelets, and her legendary thunder thighs.
• An earlier example from Capcom (which, according to some of its employees actually inspired Chun-li's design) is the Pooh/Kuniang sisters (Ton, Bei, and Sai) from Strider and its sequels. The color-coded triplets are styled in traditional chinese clothes, are experts in Chinese Kempo with incredible powerful plasma-creating kicks. and even speak Mandarin in-game! They also use chinese hairstyles, most notably Tong Pooh's braided ponytails and Sai Pooh's really-complex pigtails in Strider 2. While the chinese influence in attire got toned quite down in the 2014 reboot, they were given Chinese weapons to compensate.
• Phoenix, a character from Super Fighter (a notorious bootleg of Street Fighter II), is one rather naturally being that she is a blatant pastiche of Chun-li.
• Ling Xiaoyu from Tekken... which is funny, because she is otherwise the most stereotypical Japanese character ever. Her dreams, her conversations with her Chinese distant relative ^note Wang actually isn't her grandfather, despite what others would have you believe and her inner monologues are in Japanese.
• Tianhuo from Them's Fightin' Herds is a kung fu fighting longma (a half-horse/half-dragon hybrid from Chinese mythology), with her accent and leitmotifs also being heavily Chinese-inspired.
• Kohaku briefly cosplays as one in Tsukihime Kagetsu Tohya, complete with dress and accent (and Triad bodyguard persona). This is sent up in Melty Blood, where her Arc Drive attack also has her acquire the martial arts.
• Pai Chan◊ (pictured above) is Lei Fang's Virtua Fighter counterpart, that when they're paired together, they gain both a special team-up intro and victory pose where they proudly proclaim the power of kung-fu. Likewise, she has special interactions when partnered with the aforementioned Chun-Li and Xiaoyu in Project × Zone.

Webcomics

• Elf Blood has Mara, who is half Elf and half Chinese, having been raised by a Chinese stepmother.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe examples:
  • Laurel Hua (Silver Serpent), daughter of the Iron Dragon. She is one of the Bad Seeds (the children of supervillains) at Whateley Academy.
  • Chou Lee (Bladedancer), has had Chinese-ness forced upon her by her Upgrade Artifact, the magic sword Destiny's Wave. Not only was she physically transformed into a Chinese hottie, but also received a language imprint so deep that she now speaks English with a Chinese accent.

Western Animation

• Gwen Ling from American Dad!, Francine's older adoptive sister and far more cunning than her in every way.
• The cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender is entirely Asian, albeit, of the alternate Earth variety. So there's several, such as:
  • Mai and Princess Azula are the two most obvious examples, in terms of their appearance and characterization. Mai's look is equal parts Lady of War meets Goth with odango hair. Whereas Azula is more of a Dragon Lady, complete with Femme Fatalons but without the qipao. Taken further, as the Fire Nation as a whole is based more on Tang Dynasty Chinese and Thai culture.
  • Toph Beifong, is from the Earth Kingdom which is definitely more Qing Dynasty Chinese in nature. But the only visual indications of her heritage are her hairstyle (fashioned in a giant hairbun) and the decorations she wears with it.
• Jackie Chan Adventures has Jackie's niece Jade, a Cute Bruiser capable of holding her own in a fight alongside her uncle. However, she is only a partial example as she dresses like a typical American kid and her Street Smart attitude is atypical for this trope.
• Aja Leith from Jem shares a few characteristics with the trope, although she leans toward the Token Minority aspect (it was The '80s, after all).
• The titular character Pucca, qualifies here. Originally a Korean created cartoon which later was adopted by Disney, Pucca the adorable Chinese styled girl is often on adventures that either shows a moral lesson, or obsessing over her deluded love for Garu.

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