The World (film)

The World (Chinese: 世界; pinyin: Shìjiè) is a 2004 Chinese film written and directed by Jia Zhangke, starring Zhao Tao and Cheng Taishen. It was his first film shot outside his hometown of Shanxi Province, and also the first of his works to be granted official production approval by the Chinese government.

The World
Film poster
Directed by	Jia Zhangke
Written by	Jia Zhangke
Produced by	Hengameh Panahi Takio Yoshida Chow Keung
Starring	Zhao Tao Cheng Taishen
Cinematography	Yu Lik-wai
Edited by	Kong Jinglei
Music by	Lim Giong
Distributed by	Zeitgeist Films (U.S.) Celluloid Dreams
Release dates	4 September 2004 (2004-09-04) (Venice) 15 April 2005 (2005-04-15) (China) 1 July 2005 (2005-07-01) (U.S.)
Running time	135 minutes
Country	China
Languages	Standard Mandarin Jin Chinese

According to the documentary Jia Zhangke, un ragazzo di Fenyang 2014, the inspiration for The World came from a 2003 conversation between Jia and Zhao Tao, in which she recounted her experience working as a dancer at Shenzhen’s “Window of The World,” a theme park filled with miniature versions of international landmarks.^[1] This inspired Jia to explore the gap between fantasy and survival for China’s urban underclass and the symbolic role of such theme parks in shaping the spectacle of globalization. However, the film was ultimately set in Beijing World Park, a similar attraction on the outskirts of the capital.

The film is set in early 21st-century China, during a time of accelerated integration into the social transformation of globalization. It follows a group of young rural migrants, including performers and security guards working at World Park, and some construction workers employed elsewhere in the city.

The migrant’s lives were swept up in the spectacle of modernization and global consumer culture, where personal dreams frequently clashed with structural realities. Although they appeared to be at the center of a stage representing The World, this “world” is merely a glamorous surface built for tourist consumption. Their jobs still remained low-paid, repetitive, and precarious. The migrants are still trapped in cycles of emotional isolation, unstable employment, and social marginalization.

Stylistically, scholar David Richler notes that Jia Zhangke departs from his usual observational realism in The World, incorporating computer animation and digital effects to express emotional dislocation and imagined mobility (Richler 7).^[2] The film blends documentary-style cinematography with animation and electronic music, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy, local and global.

Through the spatial logic and symbolic function of the theme park, Jia Zhangke presents a lived condition in which the promise of “freely traversing The World" masks a reality of constrained mobility. The film highlights the structural limitations and class immobility faced by marginalized individuals in post-socialist urban China.

The World premiered in competition at the 61st Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2004, and received critical acclaim for its subtle yet powerful portrayal of contemporary Chinese urban life and its complex entanglement with global spectacle.

Plot

At Beijing World Park, performer Tao (Zhao Tao) is visited by her ex-boyfriend en route to Ulaanbaatar. Her boyfriend Taisheng, a security guard, meets them and insists on driving him to the Beijing railway station. Taisheng, frustrated that Tao refuses to have sex with him, is also busy with fellow migrants from his home province of Shanxi. Chen Zhijun is an introverted childhood friend of Taisheng's who has just arrived at the park; he eventually becomes a construction worker.

Tao, meanwhile, meets Anna, one of the World Park's Russian performers. Though Anna speaks no Chinese, and Tao no Russian, the two become unlikely friends. Anna confesses to Tao that she will quit her job and implies that she must prostitute herself in order to make enough money to see her sister, also in Ulaanbaatar. Later, Tao runs into Anna and it is clear that she has indeed become a prostitute. Anna runs away and Tao cries. Meanwhile, Taisheng is asked by an associate to drive a woman named Qun to Taiyuan so she can deal with her gambling brother, and he eventually becomes attracted to her. The two often meet at her clothing shop, where she tells him about her husband who left for France years ago. Since, she has tried with some difficulty to obtain a visa to join him. Though he pursues her, Qun rejects him.

Taisheng eventually convinces Tao to have sex with him, with Tao threatening that she will kill him if he ever betrays her. His life, however, quickly spirals out of control when Chen is killed in a construction accident. Some time afterwards, Wei and Niu, two other performers at World Park, announce that they plan to wed despite Niu being dangerously jealous and unstable. At the wedding, Tao discovers a text-message from Qun, who has at last received her visa, to Taisheng, saying that their meeting and relationship was destined. Believing that Taisheng has indeed betrayed her, Tao is devastated and cuts off contact with him while she house-sits for Wei and Niu. When Taisheng goes to visit her, she ignores him. Some time later, Taisheng and Tao have succumbed to a gas leak, presumably in their friends' apartment. As the film fades to black, Taisheng's voice asks, "Are we dead?" "No," Tao's voice responds, "this is only the beginning."

Cast

• Zhao Tao as Tao, the film's heroine, a young woman and a performer at the Beijing World Park.
• Chen Taisheng as Taisheng, a Shanxi-native who has lived in Beijing for three years. Taisheng has become something of a fixture for Shanxi migrants who come to him looking for a place to work.
• Jing Jue as Wei, one of Tao's fellow performers.
• Jiang Zhongwei as Niu, another performer and Wei's possessive and paranoid boyfriend.
• Huang Yiqun as Qun, a native of Wenzhou, Qun operates a clothing shop, Taisheng's mistress.
• Wang Hongwei as Sanlai, a friend of Taisheng's and another Shanxi native.
• Ji Shuai as Erxiao, a Shanxi native and Taisheng's cousin, whom Taisheng has gotten a job as a security guard at World Park. Erxiao is later fired for stealing from the performers while they are on stage.
• Xiang Wan as Youyou, another performer, Youyou carries on an affair with the park's director and parleys it into a promotion to troupe director.
• Alla Shcherbakova as Anna, a Russian immigrant and performer at World Park.
• Han Sanming as Sanming, a relative of Little Sister who comes to Beijing after his death to help his family collect compensation. Sanming reappears in Still Life, Jia's follow-up to The World, this time as a lead actor.

Production

The World was a joint-production by Jia Zhangke's own Xstream Pictures, Japan's Office Kitano, and France's Lumen Films. It received additional financial support from the Shanghai Film Studio and several Japanese corporations including Bandai Visual and Tokyo FM, among others.^[3]

The film's nascence began after Jia had lived in Beijing for several years in 2000. After two films based in his native province of Shanxi, Jia decided to make a film about his impressions of Beijing as a world city,^[4] after a cousin back home asked him about life in a metropolitan environment.^[5] Jia, however, would not began writing the screenplay until after the release of his next film Unknown Pleasures, in 2003 during the SARS outbreak.^[4] The screenplay took approximately a year to write, over which time the story slowly changed, such that it became harder to distinguish the fact that it took place in Beijing, and the focus of the setting shifted to that of any large city with many migrants in it.^[4] Filming of The World took place on location at the actual Beijing World Park, as well as at an older but similar park, Window of the World, that sometimes served as a stand-in and is located in the southern city of Shenzhen.^[6]

The World sets the scene in a World park in Beijing, the capital of China, to present China’s desires and ongoing process of becoming a new global center, and the famous buildings from different countries of smaller sizes are to show a united and harmonious world. Jia is a migrant from Fenyang, Shanxi to Beijing, in his interview he said he “wants to focus on my viewpoint on big cities”. This miniature of a world inside the park presents the migrants wave as a significant global issue.^[7]

Legitimization

As Jia Zhangke's first film made with the consent of the Chinese Film Bureau, many felt that Jia's hand would be unduly restricted by Communist bureaucrats. As it turned out, Jia claimed that the main impact of government approval was the ability to screen abroad and at home without major obstacles; Jia stated that,

"[F]or me personally, government approval did not markedly change my creative process. My basic principle as a filmmaker stayed the same – to protect the independence of my research on society and people. Whether I shoot openly or in secret, my work cannot be influenced because during the shoot I am a filmmaker and nothing else."^[5]

Jia attributed the loosening of restrictions as part of the Film Bureau's overall liberalization and acceptance of so-called "outside directors."^[4] Outside observers agreed with Jia's assessment, dismissing claims that Jia had compromised his principles and "sold out."^[8] One definite result of working within the system, however, was that the film became much easier to produce, as Jia no longer had to worry about interference from the central government or from local officials.^[4]

In Mainland China, directors who insisted on independent views and productions were banned from making films. Despite his director status being banned by the Chinese government in 1999, he persisted to make films. In 2004, he was the first banned director to be reinstated after years of campaigning. Advocations by the film industry were one of the reasons that led the Chinese government to reconsider the functions and role of moves as an economic tool.^[9]

Jia’s first two films (Xiao Shan Going Home and Pickpocket) were primarily self-funded. He gained recognition after winning awards at Berlin, Vancouver and Nantes. His third film Platform received private funding from Pusan, and his next film Unknown Pleasures was also privately funded with support from international companies. Although raising funds was challenging for him, Jia was able to produce and control his films. When The World was being made, Jia finally received national funding from The Shanghai Film Group along with other companies around the world. The World is his first above-ground film, and with support and funding from China, he was finally approved and recognized as a filmmaker in China.^[10]

Creative team

Jia Zhangke’s longtime collaborators formed the core creative team of The World. These including cinematographer Yu Lik-wai, sound designer Zhang Yang, and editor Kong Jinglei, all of whom had previously worked with Jia on Platform and continued to collaborate with him on Still Life and 24 City. The film was produced by Office Kitano and Lumen Films, with additional support from Shanghai Film Studio and international parteners.^[4]

Digital Aesthetics and Visual Style

Music and Digital Aesthetics

Music plays a more prominent role in The World than in Jia’s earlier films such as Unknown Pleasures, which relied solely on diegetic sound. Jia brought in the Taiwanese composer Lim Giong, who had previously worked with Hou Hsiao-hsien, to score the film using primarily electronic music.^[4] The film features dance performances within the park and employs a soundtrack composed by Lim Giong, a Taiwanese musician known for his collaborations with Hou Hsiao-hsien. Lim’s score incorporates primarily electronic music, which Jia described it evokes the emotional emptiness of the characters’ lives, stating that “Life’s heaviness fades when confronted by the silky lightness of dance and music."^[5]

The integration of music with animated sequences further emphasizes the film’s digital aesthetic, These animations visualize the characters’ internal thoughts, contributing to what Jia has referred to as an “Asian digital life”.^[5] The animated part reflects both the limiting and liberating potential of new technologies and reminds the world that “analog and digital media, realism and simulation, the local and the global, are in fact contemporaneous phenomena”, as the animation in the film blurs the boundaries between the reality and visual fantasy attractions.^[11]

Blurring of Reality and Gaze

The World was shot using digital video and includes various moments in which the real and artificial merge. For example, during the scene where Erguniang dies, the image of writings on the wall from Erguniang is not actually written on the wall but instead shown through a digital effect. According to Cecilia Mello, The World does not provide a clear division between the real world and the digital/artificial world. It rather "point[s] towards a confusion between both, corroborating the point made in the introduction about the coexistence of contraries, so typical of the reality of China's cities."^[12]

The circular discourse is not Jia's fundamental device on film making, but the reversal of the gaze. "The possibility to poke holes in the fictional system rests on the filmed subject's response to the enquiring gaze of the filming subject."^[13] Based on the transition from the circular. discourse to the reversal of the gaze, Anna and Tao from the film as an example on the response to the enquiring gaze between each other. Two characters supposed to not communicate with each other due to the language difference, however, the gaze helped them to talk and feel each other's pains and worries. Outside the movie, the transition to the gaze can create an emotional appeal to audiences. Factual elements from Jia's movie resists the seduction of a seamlessly real fiction, "you cannot. reveal the world without the world also bearing witness to your presence."^[13]

Theme

The World serves as a cinematic lens into a transformative moment in China’s contemporary history, using the symbolic space of the amusement park to interrogate the broader implications of globalization, migration, and identity formation in the new millennium.^[14]

Jian Zhangke uses the constructed environment of the Beijing World Park to symbolize an idealized life in which characters perform happiness while avoiding deeper truths about their personal relationships and social conditions. However, as the film progresses, these illusions inevitably collapse, forcing the characters to confront the harsh realities of their lives. This narrative arc reflects not only the psychological struggles of the individuals but also broader societal tensions in contemporary China–where the pursuit of modern dreams often obscured underlying social and emotional dislocation.^[15]

Social issues

Jia Zhangke, himself a native of the provincial city of Fenyang in Shangxi, draws upon his personal background to offer a nuanced portrayal of migration and marginality. His perspective as an outsider in Beijing informs the film’s sensitive depiction of the psychological and emotional toll of relocation. Jia’s engagement with themes of disconnection and impermanence reflects a broader concern with the human costs of modernization.^[16]

Jia used the created world as people's ideal life, people in the fictional world pretended to be happy. They did not recognize facts and truth between their relationships and real life, but they finally needed to accept the reality that broke their ideal life in "The World". It not only demonstrated the phenomenon in the film, but also revealed the issue within the society.

"Underneath reality, one does not find confirmation of ideological truths, but truth as an imposed and contingent construct. Film should not directly oppose ideology, but subtly punctuate and therefore fragment the solidity of acquired world-views ^[17]."

Jia used a film to describe a general social problem on the young generation in the society. For instance,economic inequality is a serious social issue reflected in this film. It contrasts the life people live with wealth enjoying fancy shows to those who perform these shows live poverty and get paid at lower wages. In addition, another social issue reflected in this film is labour rights. Workers typically overwork in the amusement park but they live in poor living and health conditions.^[18]

Animation

In The World, animated sequences are not decorative interruptions that oppose live-action scenes, but an integral part of the film’s narrative structure, which functions as a visual mechanism to reveal and alienates the character’s psychological states, emotional ruptures and self-imagination.Through multiple animated sequences filled with symbolic resonance, the film breaks the closure of the realist style without disrupting the overall narrative flow, making animation a crucial medium for understanding the character’s inner experiences and social predicaments. Meanwhile, the animation also turn raw feelings into the stylized and consumable images. This not only distances the characters from their own emotions, but also turns their inner lives into something staged and impersonal. Therefore, the film creates a sense of double alienation: the characters are trapped not just by their social realities, but also by the way their emotions are turned into images they can no longer fully feel or control.

Scholar David Richler uses the animated sequence that appears after Taisheng reads Qun’s text message to illustrate how animation visualizes the character’s inner thoughts. In this scene (Richler 15).^[2] Taisheng fantasizes himself riding a white horse, dressed in his security guard uniform, walking through falling petals. The whole scene is romantic and absurd. The poetic style of this animation stands in sharp contrast to his actual job and dull, repressed daily life. This sequence is not portraying an event that actually happens, but visualizes Taisheng’s fleeting emotional excitement and his illusory sense of masculine pride. Taisheng is aware of his lack of masculinity, especially as highlighted in his relationship with Tao, and thus attempts to reconstruct a brief sense of self-worth through fantasy and cheating (Richler 15).^[2]

Scholar David Richler further notes the animations help the characters articulate emotions they find difficult to express in words (Richler 15).^[2] For instance, after Tao discovers Taisheng’s betrayal, the screen cuts to an image of a half-skeletal fish slowly swimming. The cold color palette, and underwater murmur create a death-like stillness. This symbolic animation expresses her psychological collapse and frozen emotions, portraying her “sinking” emotional state. On the top of that, scholar Tonglin Lu interprets the fish in this animated sequence as a failed carp attempting to leap over the mythical dragon gate, which a metaphor rooted in the Chinese legend of liyuyue longmen （鲤鱼跃龙门）, which traditionally symbolizes personal transformation and upward mobility (Lu 177).^[19] In the animation, however, a curved barrier continuously blocks the carp’s passage. This suggests that even within Tao’s inner world, the possibility of social ascent is foreclosed. The betrayal thus not only ruptures Tao’s intimate relationship but also extinguishes her last imagined pathway to escape structural marginalization. These layered symbols in this sequence reinforce the film’s broader critique of emotional alienation and systemic confinement faced by rural migrant workers (Lu 177).^[19]

Moving beyond these individual examples, the film’s use of animation operates within a larger visual regime, as described by scholar Tonglin Lu. While The World constructs a broader dispositif of alienation through performance, labor, and technology, animation plays a particularly revealing role within this structure. Lu observes migrant workers are constantly drawn into visual systems that turn both their labor and emotions into staged images. Among these systems, animation is the most explicit form through which personal feelings often conveyed via text messages are instantly transformed into “cheerful and caricatured spectacle” (Lu 170).^[19] In this sense, animation is not merely a stylistic device, but a crucial visual mechanism that exposes and intensifies the characters’ emotional dislocation.

Each animated sequence occurs at a moment of inner rupture or happiness, yet instead of allowing the character to express or process that emotion by the live-on scenes, it repackages the feeling into a stylized visual symbol. These moments reveal what Lu calls “double alienation”: the characters are distanced not only from the performative world they inhabit, but also from their own interiority, as their emotions become something external and unfamiliar. Animation thus becomes both a surface for emotional projection and a structure for emotional estrangement, it makes inner life visible, only to turn it into spectacle (Lu 170).^[19]

Through these examples, the animated sequences in The World are not visual distractions or stylistic flourishes, but meaningful extensions of the characters’ psychological landscapes. They give form to emotions that cannot be spoken, while simultaneously revealing how those emotions are shaped and sometimes distorted by the very conditions in which the characters live. Rather than offering escape, animation confronts the viewer with the characters’ inner struggles and fantasies, exposing how deeply their desires are entangled with structures of confinement and disillusionment. In doing so, The World uses animation to make visible the quiet emotional breakdowns and unresolved tensions that realism alone cannot express.

Global Reception and Spectacle

The World was Jia Zhangke’s first film to be officially released in China, but its reputation was largely built on international film festivals. As Scholar Xiaoling Shi claims The World present a window into the real contemporary China, highlighting its portrayal of rural migrant workers, emotional alienation, and the surreal environment of the World Park (Shi 220).^[20] Festival promotional materials, including posters and DVD covers, costumed performers, global replicas, and cross-cultural symbols, to construct a digestible image of “contemporary China”, these elements were emphasized to attract global audiences looking for cultural difference.

However, this version of The World is shaped by the preconceived notions of the interpreters. The film critiques early 2000s globalization in China, showing how a place like the World Park offers the illusion of mobility and counterfeit globalization to workers who remain stuck in low-paying jobs. The park becomes a symbol of China's uneven or hypocritical modernization process, where the promise of progress hides real inequality. For global viewers, the appeal of The World may lie in its seemingly authentic depiction of China's contemporary urban underclass, in which it also affirms their presumptions. However this authenticity is itself part of the cinematic spectacle.

A contradiction is now evident. What many international viewers see as a raw documentary-style exposure of China’s urban underclass is, in fact, shaped by carefully chosen aesthetics: long takes, muted performances, digital animation. It renders hardship beautiful, and alienation poetic (Rugo 5).^[17] In this sense, even the film’s most critical gestures are susceptible to global misreading and commodification. As a result, even the film’s most critical gestures are vulnerable to global misreading and commodification. International audiences may conflate realist aesthetics with national authenticity, interpreting Jia’s cinematic critique as a direct reflection of China’s broader social reality.

In the end, how a film is understood depends on who is watching and who gets to define its meaning. The World tries to “expose” the inequity across social class, but once it enters the global festival and cinema system, it risks becoming just another version of the spectacle it set out to critique. Thus, the international reception of The World mirrors the very conditions of spectacle and commodification it critiques. Its global success depends not only on its narrative or political insight, but also on its ability to be packaged as a form of cultural authenticity, reinforcing the same logic of selective representation that defines both theme parks like World Park and the broader mechanisms of globalization.

Top ten lists

Released in 2005 in the United States, The World appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of that year.

• 1st – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader^[21]
• 2nd – Robert Koehler, Variety^[21]
• 6th – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly^[21]
• 6th – J. Hoberman, Village Voice^[21]
• 6th – Andrew O'Hehir, Salon^[21]
• 6th – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly^[21]
• 7th – Ella Taylor, LA Weekly, tied with 2046 and Tropical Malady^[21]
• 10th – Michael Atkinson, Village Voice^[21]
• 10th – Dennis Lim, Village Voice, tied with Darwin's Nightmare, Mondovino, and Chain^[21]
• [Listed alphabetically] – Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor^[21]

See also

• Beijing World Park