那一年，我刚毕业

Translated by ChatGPT

That year, I had just graduated, and Avatar was released.

What was the atmosphere like back then? In a third-tier city in Hunan Province, a rather backward place, word spread from person to person that everyone had to see Avatar. This craze led to many people not even realizing they needed to watch it in 3D—most ended up watching the 2D version. Yet, that didn’t stop Avatar from sweeping the world.

Its global success was fueled by admiration spreading from person to person, without any political or nationalistic factors, and certainly without any sense of inferiority. An inferiority complex is when someone gets rich and powerful and then desperately wants the whole world to acknowledge them.

I went to see Avatar in 3D after drinking with a client. In my half-drunken, half-dreamy state, I was so amazed that I instantly sobered up. At that moment, I thought: “There are so many geniuses in the film industry. I probably wouldn’t even qualify to be the fifth screenwriter.”

Moreover, in the Chinese internet slang of the time, people joked: “Amazing! A blockbuster about nail-house residents fighting against urban management officers!” There was no censorship, no deleted posts, no strict control.

This shows just how eager people were for new technology back then. It was purely a reaction of: “Holy crap, the world is getting insanely advanced! I have to see this! And after watching, I feel like, damn, they are so incredible while we’re still using Nokia phones…” There was no East vs. West bias. My first instinct after watching was to go buy an iPhone 3.

No government department ever issued any notice urging people to go watch it. It was purely driven by curiosity and the desire to see what the world had to offer.

However, 14 years have passed since 2009, and not a single film has managed to deliver even half the impact Avatar did. Yet now, some are claiming that Chinese films are overturning global cinema history.

Just let movies be. The entire annual global box office barely reaches $10 billion. Last year, China’s total box office revenue was just 42.5 billion RMB (~$6 billion). Movies are too insignificant to warrant attention from the authorities.

But at the same time, movies are also great, as they are the ultimate fusion of multiple forms of art.

At this point, things have taken an amusing turn, and Chinese cinema history has been rewritten: In the past, directors would gather and sigh, saying, “Chinese filmmakers can be divided into Wu Jing and all other directors.” Soon, this evolved into: “Chinese filmmakers can be divided into Wu Jing, Chen Sicheng, and all other directors.” Then, it became: “Wu Jing, Chen Sicheng, Guo Fan, and all other directors.” And eventually: “Wu Jing, Chen Sicheng, Guo Fan, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and all other directors.”

Fortunately, the focus has finally returned to movies themselves: “Chinese films can be divided into Ne Zha 2 and all other movies.”

Well, fair enough.