Minsk World

“Insert one Yuan and discover ten marvellous worlds.” After years of absence, the filmmaker returns to China and meets his father in a theme park housed in a former Soviet aircraft carrier that has been bought up by some inventive Chinese businessmen. Thousands of visitors have their photos taken next to torpedoes, old crates and canons. They then move on to see the show on the main deck with a remix of old military tunes, exotic dancers and synthesised music. They eulogise in the Visitor’s Book for the Second World War exhibition: “A powerful China will never again be invaded!” The filmmaker wonders who is the new “Helmsman” of this modern-day China. The boat’s fate merges with the filmmaker’s vanished childhood, like two metaphors of a now unrecognisable China. When night falls and the show winds up, the young performers in costume uniforms dream of other places