Liu Yi Fei To Play As Live-Action Mulan For Disney?

Just recently, I read that Liu Yi Fei who's already 30 but still looking so young will get cast as Mulan. Here's what I read from the Hollywood Reporter:

After a yearlong worldwide search, Mulan has been found.

Chinese actress Liu Yifei, also known as Crystal Liu, is set to star as the title woman warrior in Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic Chinese tale.

A team of casting directors visited five continents and saw nearly 1,000 candidates for the role, which requires credible martial arts skills, the ability to speak English and the most ineffable requirement of all: star quality. In deference to cultural accuracy, the studio focused on locating an ethnically Chinese young woman to play Hua Mulan, who disguised herself as a man to take her father's army conscription in fifth-century China.

In Liu, Disney found the complete package. Nicknamed "Fairy Sister" by the Chinese public for her pure and innocent looks and image, she has been one of the country's most popular actresses of the current generation since breaking out with a series of hit television dramas in the mid-2000s, while she was still a teenager enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy. She is fluent in English, having lived in Queens, N.Y., for part of her childhood, and acted in English in both 2008's The Forbidden Kingdom, alongside Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and 2014's Outcast, opposite Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen. She also starred opposite Emile Hirsch in Danish auteur Bille August's period romance The Chinese Widow, which opened the Shanghai International Film Festival in June.

Liu, who has served as a brand ambassador for Dior, Tissot, Garnier and Pantene, most recently starred in the fantasy romance Once Upon a Time, which earned $82.3 million in China this summer. Her other credits include 2012's The Assassins, which earned Liu her first major acting award (at the Macau International Movie Festival), Never Gone and The Four trilogy. She recently signed with WME and continues to be represented by Chinese manager David Chen.

Niki Caro, who most recently helmed The Zookeeper’s Wife, is directing Disney's live-action Mulan, which is produced by Chris Bender, Jason Reed and Jake Weiner and eyeing a 2019 release. The 1998 animated version, voice-starring Agents of SHIELD's Ming-Na Wen alongside Eddie Murphy and B.D. Wong, earned $304.3 million worldwide as well as Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

My thoughts? I personally think it's a new step upward then again I'm just having my extreme favoritism for her for really shallow and pitiful reasons. Yes, I remembered watching Forbidden Kingdom not for its plot but for her or picking up the Return of Condor Heroes' 2006 remake all because it has the hottest version of Xiao Longnu or Little Dragon in English. Worse, I think I'm ready to go on an Emma Watson bashfest (again for the nth time) since I always thought she wasn't the best actress to play as Belle for the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast. 

Though, I think there are still other younger Chinese or Taiwanese actresses that could be found. Perhaps part of my complaint is that she looks more like an Anime character or that her eyes are "too round". The same went for my complaint with Vicki Zhao as Hua Mulan - the actress' eyes are way too round. Not that I'd also recommend Esther Liu for the role also... that girl's eyes are also that round to play an ancient Chinese girl. But she's already done a lot of action scenes and that's what's important.