Ni Hao, Kai-Lan
American animated television series

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan is an American animated television series produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio. It began as a series of three interstitial shorts on Nick Jr. called Downward Doghouse. The first full episode was initially set to premiere on October 22, 2007 on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block in the United States, but was delayed to February 7, 2008, to coincide with Chinese New Year.
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan is based on the childhood of series creator Karen Chau, who grew up in a bicultural Chinese-American household. "Ni hao" (你好 nǐ hǎo) means "Hello" in Mandarin, and Kai-Lan (凯兰 kǎi lán) is the Chinese name Chau was given at birth, which was later anglicized to Karen.
The first two seasons had 20 episodes each. The third season consisted of a two-part series finale. Sascha Paladino was the head writer and developer for the show.
The public source identifies “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan” as american animated television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kai-Lan, American and animated.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q518874. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.