Bizchina

Goodbye Barbie, hello Fisimi

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-26 09:38
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Range of 56 high-end ethnic Chinese dolls launched to celebrate national culture

Goodbye Barbie, hello Fisimi

A European designer working on costumes for Fisimi dolls, the so-called Chinese Barbie dolls. The designs are based on thorough research into China's 56 ethnic groups. [Provided to China Daily] 

BEIJING - It's not uncommon for Chinese girls to ask their parents why their favorite doll has a face different from theirs.

Barbie, Cindy, Cinderella and Snow White have long dominated the yangwawa, or foreign doll, market.

To counter this overseas' influence, Ju Xia, a senior executive of a Hong Kong-listed company, is undertaking the ambitious task of promoting home-grown fairy tales worldwide featuring Fisimi dolls.

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Ju and her colleagues created the so-called Chinese Barbie dolls, naming them after the first letters of the words "fifty-six", which represents China's 56 ethnic groups, and "minzu" which means ethnic in Mandarin. The name Fisimi in Chinese signifies blessing and the sharing of good luck.

"The idea of creating the Fisimi dolls and Shenzhen Aphrodite Co Ltd in Guangdong province came about as the result of the booming Chinese economy and the increasingly international attention being paid toward the country and its culture in recent years," said Ju.

"Most of our team members either used to work overseas or frequently traveled abroad. When we saw the popularity of American Barbie dolls with their trademark blonde hair in China and witnessed the buzz surrounding Japan's expensive SD dolls with their with exaggeratedly large eyes and long eyelashes, we started thinking about what kind of doll should represent China. I believe that the study of the doll is like the study of mankind.

"I visited some doll museums in European countries. My favorite was one in Coburg in Germany. It has a marvelous collections of dolls of different ages from the 1840s, displayed like a documentary of the country's history."

Cultural experts were also consulted when creating the Fisimi dolls to ensure they were a paean to China's 5,000-year culture.

The Shenzhen Aphrodite Co Ltd was officially launched in the second half of 2007 and the first batch of Fisimi dolls was put on the market one year later.

The company was composed of people like Ju with plenty of experience in corporate management or investment banking.

However, despite their skills, they found the gestation period for Fisimi dolls was as difficult as any big deal Ju and her partners had tackled in their previous careers.

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