Ni Hao, Kai-Lan



""You make my heart feel super happy! Ni rang wo hao kai xin!""

Short description: Chinese-American Dora the Explorer. And yes, that's just as bad as you think.

Long description: Ni Hao Kai-lan is a preschool Edutainment Show currently airing on Nickelodeon. The show's primary function is to teach children Mandarin Chinese. According to the show's website, it also "teaches children how to identify and cope with their feelings."

The show chronicles the adventures of Kai-lan, a young Chinese-American girl, and her various friends and family:


 * Ye-Ye is Kai-lan's grandfather, the only parental figure on the show.
 * Rintoo is a small tiger with a slight lisp who tries everything with reckless abandon. He proclaims everything as "awethome!", and often gets into trouble with his headstrong nature.
 * Hoho, a three-year-old monkey who likes to jump randomly.
 * Tolee, a koala with an unhealthy obsession with pandas.
 * Lulu, a pink rhinoceros who flies via a balloon tied to her horn.
 * Mr. Sun is the sun, who wordlessly smiles and shines all the time. He sometimes releases "sun fuzzies" that can tickle or form props.

It basically comes off as a cute, yet somewhat trippy kid's show.

This show contains examples of the following tropes:

 * An Aesop
 * Blush Sticker: Tolee, Lulu, and Hoho
 * Through a Face Full of Fur
 * Broken Aesop: In Kai-Lan's Playhouse, Hoho learns never to hit anyone and vocalize his frustrations. The problem is that Hoho was standing between two friends a moment ago yelling - not saying, yelling - "I CAN'T GET ANY OF THE THINGS I WANT! I JUST WANTED THE YELLOW PAINT!" and Kai-Lan and Rintoo just stood there ignoring him. The episode's Use Your Words moral seems stupid in light of this, as does Rintoo saying he had no idea Hoho was even mad even though the monkey stood two feet from him and jumped up and down yelling about his anger.
 * It's symptomatic of the show's use of That Makes Me Feel Angry. The characters often show in words or actions exactly why they're frustrated or upset. Yet viewers are still told that "We gotta, gotta try to find the reason why," even though anyone with even the most basic empathy should have already figured it out.
 * Catch Phrase: "You make my heart feel super happy!"
 * Rintoo's "I love !" also counts.
 * Also, Rintoo's favorite expression appears to be "AWESOME!".
 * Chinese Girl
 * Cool Old Guy: Kai-lan's grandpa, Ye-Ye. His feats include building racing canoes, setting up camping trips, and going rollerskating.
 * In Kai-Lan's Playhouse, he builds a house-sized building perfectly proportioned to Kai-Lan and her friends using only his bare hands and the help of some sentient ants.
 * Crazy Prepared: Tolee prepares for a group hiking trip with a backpack that's twice his own size.
 * Cute Little Fang: Rintoo and Lulu (Funny, I thought rhinos were vegetarians)
 * Development Hell: More like development purgatory, since it managed to escape, but for a while there it wasn't looking promising. The show was originally announced for Spring 2007, but didn't materialize, though the characters from the show were featured for months in the now-defunct Nick Jr. Magazine. The program didn't finally materialize until February 2008.
 * Edutainment Show
 * Everythings Better With Monkeys: Hoho
 * Flanderization: In Kai-Lan's Playhouse, Hoho is obsessed with bananas and hits Rintoo over him hogging the banana shaped stickers. He never acts this way about bananas again, actually preferring apples over them in a later episode.
 * Floating in A Bubble: Kai-lan and Lulu in "Lulu Day".
 * Forgiveness: "Playtime at Tolee's".
 * What the Hell Hero: Tolee doesn't forgive Rintoo after he accidentally rips Tolee's painting and then Rintoo fixes it right after.
 * Fridge Logic: Lulu the balloon flying rhino.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Five-year-old Kai-lan wearing a bikini at the beach. What on Earth...?
 * Gratuitous Chinese
 * Not so gratuitous since it's a major point of the show. But there is relatively little Chinese used in the show anyway, considering that the idea is to teach it to children (as well as about Chinese culture and general kid topics). Dora the Explorer suffers from the same problem.
 * Heroic BSOD: "Kai-lan's Big Surprise"; when a gust of wind knocks down the decorations for a surprise party Kai-lan was holding for Ye-Ye, she falls into one of these. So far it's been the only time where she's the one who needs help.
 * Hey Its That Voice: San-San the Ant; you could almost picture him going, "First off, this is a JOURNAL, not a diary."
 * Tolee is voiced by Khamani Griffin of Daddy Day Care and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader fame. He is also in Norbit as the 5-year-old version of the title character.
 * Fu Fu the ant and Mr. Hoppy are Anais and Darwin Watterson.
 * Instant Awesome Just Add Dragons
 * No Fourth Wall
 * Non Interactivity
 * Odango: Kai-lan
 * The Other Darrin: Minor character Mr. Fluffy has been voiced by four actors so far in the show's run: Jeremy Herzig, Austin Chan, Tommy Nightingale, and his current voice, Elan Garfias.
 * Pandaing to The Audience: Tolee (a koala) has is obsessed with panda-themed accessories.
 * Parental Abandonment: Never addressed in the show itself, but a regular viewer of the show might well wonder where Kai-lan's parents are. It gets extra awkward when other family members are featured, but the parents remain absent and unmentioned.
 * Parental Substitute: Ye-Ye.
 * Spiritual Successor: To Dora the Explorer. Little ethnic girl and her monkey tiger sidekick teach kids a foreign language while hanging out with other animals.
 * Swiper No Swiping: In "Tolee's Turn," Rintoo won't give Tolee a turn at steering a boat. Kai-lan and Hoho tell him that everyone feels happy when they take turns, but he's still not convinced, so the viewers are asked to tell him "Give Tolee a turn."
 * Talking Animal
 * That Makes Me Feel Angry: Used heavily, as the show is about exploring and identifying feelings.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: You could make this case for Kai-lan and Lulu.
 * Vacation Episode: "Kai-Lan's Trip to China" is a double-length episode that's Exactly What It Says On the Tin.
 * Viewers Are Goldfish: Notable in the Chinese segments. Repetition is actually a good way to learn a language.
 * Weird Moon: A cloud that covers only the moon in "Kai-lan's Moon Festival."
 * Who Names Their Kid Dude: Who names their kid after a vegetable?
 * Katniss Everdeen's parents?
 * Given the nature of the Chinese language, many people are named after plants, gemstones, or landmarks. Word of God is that "Kai-Lan" was the birthname of the show's creator, Karen Chau (it was later Anglicized).