The production of Mulan turned into something of a convention for ethnic Asians in entertainment.
Mulan's entourage includes a pet cricket, a Tang-style horse named Khan and a dragon called Mushu.
And toy maker Mattel has not turned the official Mulan doll into an Asian Barbie.
"It took her a while to start broadcasting that I was Mulan, " says Wen, laughing.
This month Disney unveils Mulan - their cartoon version of the traditional story about an East Asia heroine.
Disney's movie market share is off 44% from last summer, despite the release of the animated film Mulan.
Disney's Chinese epic Mulan has proved to be a flop with audiences in the animated heroine's birthplace, according to reports.
Classical Chinese notions of beauty call for cherry-blossom lips and an egg-shaped face, and the artists have shaped young Mulan accordingly.
It was a poem from the Northern Wei period about 1, 500 years ago, however, that inspired the team at Disney: The Ballad of Mulan.
Disney in betting that their Shanghai resort will at least be comparable to Tokyo, with its expected Mulan-esque touch to bring in the locals.
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Mulan is set to be released on 14 April in Beijing, but according to the Xinhua agency it is "unlikely to do well there either".
Tony-award winning Filipino singer Lea Salonga performs Mulan's major ballad.
The agency described the legendary heroine as "foreign-looking" in her Disney incarnation and said the heroine's mannerisms were too different from the Mulan of Chinese folklore for viewers to recognise.
In typically Asian fashion, some of the early news about who won the coveted role of Mulan whizzed round the world, not through any public-relations machine, but via the family grapevine.
Thankfully, Mulan has been spared the predictable love story.
"My mother used to tell me stories about Mulan when I was a little girl and its just one of those stories thats been passed on down from generation to generation for thousands of years, " says Ming-Na Wen, who brings to life the character Mulan.
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