Stages: Chun Li

Note: the title should be read as a parody of David Bowie's "Changes" (i.e Staaa aages)

I suppose it was inevitable that a video game that purported to represent the worldwide political situation in the late 80's would include a few communist states. In the first installment of Stages we talked about one of these states, the Soviet Union, and today its the other (the one that still "exists") China.

The Chun-Li stage was not as blatantly commie as the USSR, this could have been for a number of reasons: 1. China was no the evil empire and had by then opened up to the U.S and begun to open up, economically at least, to the rest of the world. 2. The U.S simply did not know that much about China at the time, it wasnt as glamourous: dirty streets, people in bicycles, chickens. Its third world and that unpaved street? yeah that's how you can tell.

The background is really fascinating, there's an electric pole, because China is just getting electricity; some hanging meat, because refrigeration is so capitalist and, most fascinating at all: some boxes of Coca Cola. Amazing! talk about capturing the zeitgeist! sure today China is the most powerful country in the world but this stage shows the country becoming powerful, accepting capitalism, renouncing Mao...ok maybe it doesn't show that much, but it certainly paved the way for this and, of course, this.

China did advance socioeconomically (for some classes at least) from the time of that first stage until now but it, along with Chun Li's trademarked outfit, remain up until the newest Street Fighter which doesn't have individual stages per se but some are pretty obvious. Somewhere in between she moved her fights down to the Great Wall [nerd fact: that screen is from SF Alpha which takes place before SFII so technically she initially had her fights at the wall] as well as to some other corner of China.

Chun Li has become of one of the most important characters of the Street Fighter lineup, artbooks focus on her, there are tons of galleries full of cosplay, she got her own comic book, shes in Guitar Hero, hell she even got her own movie this year, one in which, perhaps ironically, she was not played by a Chinese girl. As a result its probable that she became, like Zangief, a standard of the country she represented even as that country and that stage became less representative of each other.