When the Erhu Meets Big Fish & Begonia: A Frenchman's Chinese Animation Odyssey

Cultural Context

A French Erhu in a Chinese Fairy Tale

A French musician walks into a Paris concert hall with a Chinese erhu. He’s there to play the theme from a Chinese animated film about a mystical realm beneath the sea, alongside the Chinese Oriental Orchestra. If this sounds like the setup for a cultural collision, it is — but it’s the kind of collision that creates stars.

The song is Da Yu (大鱼, “Big Fish”), the theme from Big Fish & Begonia (大鱼海棠), a 2016 Chinese animated film that drew comparisons to Studio Ghibli for its hand-drawn beauty and philosophical depth. The erhu player is Eliott Tordo. The orchestra is the Chinese Oriental Orchestra based in Paris. Together, they’ve created one of the most beautiful erhu performances on YouTube — 2.6 million views from an audience that spans every continent.

The Film: Zhuangzi’s Dream, Animated

Big Fish & Begonia is loosely inspired by a passage from the ancient Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (莊子): “In the Northern Ocean, there is a fish named Kun. I do not know how many thousand li in size it is. It transforms into a bird named Peng…”

The film tells the story of Chun, a 16-year-old girl from a mystical realm beneath the ocean who visits the human world in the form of a red dolphin. She encounters a human boy who sacrifices himself to save her, and she then defies the laws of her world to restore his soul — even at the cost of destroying her own.

The theme song Da Yu captures this sacrifice: a melody that rises like a creature breaching the surface of the sea, hangs in the air for one breathless moment, and then descends back into the depths. It’s a song about the impossible beauty of crossing boundaries — between worlds, between species, between life and death.

Why the Erhu Was Born for This Song

The erhu’s two strings and bowed technique make it uniquely suited to music about crossing boundaries. The instrument itself exists at a boundary — between pitched and unpitched sound, between Chinese and Central Asian musical traditions, between folk music and art music.

In Tordo’s performance, the erhu handles the vocal line of Da Yu — the part that, in the original recording, is sung by Zhou Shen in a countertenor voice of supernatural clarity. The erhu can’t match a human countertenor’s breath control or dynamic range, but it has something the voice doesn’t: the ability to bend a note continuously, to slide from one pitch to another without discrete steps, to make the transition itself the expression.

When the melody of Da Yu rises from the low register to its soaring peak, the erhu doesn’t jump — it climbs, note by note, each step audible, the effort tangible. That effort mirrors the film’s central metaphor: the struggle of crossing from one world to another, where the crossing itself is the point, not the arrival.

The Chinese Oriental Orchestra: Context and Contrast

Tordo doesn’t play alone. The Chinese Oriental Orchestra provides the orchestral backdrop — erhu, pipa, guzheng, dizi, and Western strings woven together. This context elevates the solo from a cover to a concerto, from a personal interpretation to a cultural event.

The orchestra’s presence does something specific: it locates the erhu. Hearing an erhu alone, a Western listener might hear “exotic instrument.” Hearing an erhu embedded in an orchestra that includes both Chinese and Western instruments, the listener hears a voice — one voice among many, distinct but integrated, different but essential. It’s the difference between hearing a foreign language spoken in isolation and hearing it in a conversation where you understand the context even if you don’t understand the words.

The Philosophy of the Performance

There’s a philosophical dimension to this performance that goes beyond musical appreciation. Big Fish & Begonia is a film about a being who crosses into another world and is transformed by the crossing. Tordo is a musician who crossed into another musical culture and was transformed by it. The song is about sacrifice and connection. The performance is an act of sacrifice and connection.

When a Frenchman plays a Chinese instrument in a Paris concert hall to honor a Chinese animated film inspired by a Daoist text from the 4th century BCE, every boundary between “East” and “West,” “traditional” and “modern,” “mine” and “yours” becomes porous. The music doesn’t erase these distinctions — it renders them irrelevant. For five minutes and forty-four seconds, there is only the song, and it belongs to everyone.

The Audience Response

The comments on this video are unusual for YouTube — less noise, more reflection:

• “This is what cultural exchange actually looks like. Not politics. Not treaties. Just music.”
• “I watched Big Fish three times and cried every time. This erhu version made me cry on the first note.”
• “A Frenchman preserving Chinese culture better than some Chinese people. Respect.”

That last comment touches on something real but often unspoken: when an outsider embraces your culture with genuine depth and skill, it doesn’t dilute the culture — it validates it. It proves that the culture’s value isn’t contingent on geography or ethnicity. It’s universal, waiting for anyone willing to meet it halfway.

Eliott Tordo met Chinese music halfway. Chinese music met him back. And Da Yu — the big fish — leaped.