Rituals

While in China, I searched for a common ground between the Western culture I am familiar with and Chinese culture, which I found in the form of actions and gestures derived from the overarching global phenomenon of capitalism exhibited through advertising imagery, reality television and the visual soundtrack of the rich. The viewer initially encounters young, androgynous men posing seductively amidst traffic. The discrepancy between the poses and the surrounding scenery reveals the artificiality of the gesture itself and the commercialized eroticism therein, simultaneously questioning the role of the young boys. Gradually the camera seduces the young men in the film using the promise of fame. While the boys innocently embrace these global gestures, a magician turns one RMB into a hundred RMB (a tiny fortune) and poor men shower insignificant bills and coins on working class women in a cheap imitation of having power and disposable wealth—a shower of nothingness.