Liu Yifei channels her inner ballerina in this stunning image by Liu Zongyan for the cover of Harper's Bazaar China. Inside the pages Yifei transforms into a rockstar. It was announced at the end of last year that the fresh faced 30 year old actress who also goes by Crystal Liu was cast in the titular role in Disney's live-action movie version of Mulan. Following a yearlong casting process that spanned across five continents, Yifei beat out nearly 1,000 candidates for the role of Hua Mulan, who posed as a man in order to take her father's place in the army in fifth century China.. While she may be a relative newcomer to Hollywood, Liu had previously starred in The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and in Outcast alongside Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen.
The former child model trained at the Performance Institute of Beijing Film Academy and made her acting debut at 15 years old in The Story of a Noble Family, the highly successful period drama based on Zhang Henshui's novel of the same name. I watched that series and thought she was a little too young for the role but one could see her potential. Since then Crystal has been working steadily in film and television, building up her resume. She speaks fluent English and already has a big following in Asia. It felt like a small victory when it was announced that an ethnically Chinese actor would be playing Mulan and all of the film's significant roles will be filled by Chinese actors like Gong Li, Jet Li and Donnie Yen. This is important given Hollywood's long history of “whitewashing. Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Stone have all played characters who were Asian in the source material. And they originally tried to change the central character in Crazy Rich Asians into a white woman which would've undermine the film’s central narrative not to mention it's supposed to be about Asians. It's ridiculous that Asians are still fighting for diversity and inclusivity. Hollywood also needs to realize that different groups of Asians aren't interchangeable and that we don't all look the same.
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