With Disney’s Oz The Great and Powerful opening March 8, audiences will explore fantastical new worlds and meet some spellbinding characters. One you may have seen in the trailers is the adorable China Girl, a doll-like child made of porcelain who joins the wizard on his quest to save the Land of Oz. She’s a citizen of the aptly named China Town, a village composed of myriad porcelain structures.
You may recognize one of them—the giant teapot in at the heart of China Town also made an appearance in Disney’s 2010 hit Alice in Wonderland. You might call it a big blue-and-white painted Easter egg for fantasy fans.
The unpredictable scale of Wonderland meant Alice might appear tiny next to a dish that fit perfectly in the hand of the Mad Hatter. But in the Land of Oz, China Town is a true mini-metropolis, with pint-sized residents who make their homes in such vessels.
Production designer Robert Stromberg says he wanted the village to have a very classic storybook feel and “took elements of porcelain designs and scoured the universe for different patterns and things.”
By The Walt Disney Studios’ Janelle Tipton
