when you drive through the suburb of beijing and or through most of eastern china for that matter and you be strike by it bleakness represent grey and brown and flat and ugly and industrialised and big square building block cover in bathroom tile and and fog or smog practically the whole year round . in this perfect illustration of the post modern wasteland and young people be show to have no hope and no illusion . love be unattainable and communication be impossible . superficial talk over cell phone be the most intimate they can get . when meet face to face and they have nothing to say . the world theme park be a metaphor for the lack of cultural identity that rampant in china these day . against the background of this ersatz world and a number of protagonist be follow through a variety of sub plot and very much like altman in some of his best ( nashville and short cut ) and bad ( the wedding and a perfect couple ) work . a a visual evocation of modern chinese urban life it strike . but the character evolve against this canvas remain underdeveloped . they meet and say nothing and they do not meet but talk by cell phone and still say nothing . silence can be very telling and if use properly . but one should not confuse silence with depth . it be say that traditional value have all but disappear in china and and all that come in their place be blatant money grab capitalism where a human life be of little value ( look at all those mine disaster ) and superficial imitation of an idea of western culture copy from tv . but in my personal experience and chinese people like to talk and they be not afraid to show their feeling . i often find them much more open than many european people i meet . to me and shijie show a realistic picture of the way modern urban china come across visually and but i can not recognise the chinese people in it .