Tao is living out her dreams at World Park where visitors can see famous international monuments without ever leaving the Beijing suburbs. The pretty young dancer and her friends perform daily in lavish theme park shows among replicas of the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, St Mark’s Square, Big Ben and the Pyramids. Tao and her boyfriend, security guard Taisheng, moved to the big city from the northern provinces a few years ago. Now their relationship has reached a crossroads. Taisheng becomes attracted to Qun, a fashion designer he meets on a trip back home. Tao’s fellow dancers are on sentimental journeys of their own. Xiaowei questions her future with irresponsible boyfriend Niu. Meanwhile, Youyou uses romance to the advantage of her professional ambitions. Not everyone who comes to Beijing with high hopes can land a job where SMS games are accepted parts of daily life. Many, like manual laborer Erxiao, experience a much harsher reality. But, despite the fun and magic, even theme park microcosms are vulnerable to change. For Tao and those around her, there will be marriage and break-up, loyalty and infidelity, joy and tragedy.

Jia Zhangke was born in 1970 in the small remote village of Fenyang in the province of Shanxi. With 18 years-old, Jia Zhang-ke studied arts in Taiyuan, the capital of the Province of Shanxi. It also developed a taste for the fiction, having written, in 1991, its first novel - “The Sun Hung on the Crotch”. Two years later, he was admitted in the Department of Literature of the Academy of Cinema of Beijing. His first film, “Xiao Wu”, in 1997, was acclaimed by the critics and received several awards. The film was made in the same year that he finished the course in the Academy of Cinema.

“As I’ve now been living in Beijing for over a decade, I decided to make a film that reflected my impressions on Beijing, on urban life. A couple of years ago, I went to visit my cousin, who still lives in my hometown. He felt more alone than ever, because most young people have left the countryside to work in big cities or in the South, where the economy is much better. Mostly old people and the disabled remain in the village. The land is not being farmed; the streets are practically deserted. My cousin asking me about life in Beijing made me think about the crowds and liveliness of the city’s streets. It’s too difficult to explain what goes on in the big city. I felt I had to show it by making a film about Beijing.”

Filmography
Shijie / The World (2004), Ren Xiao Yao / Unknown Pleasures (2002), In Public (2001, c.m. / short), Zhantai / Plataforma (2000), Xiao Wu / Pickpocket (1997)