Young filmmaker Xiao Xing was born and raised in China, under the regime of Den Xiaoping. He left his home country aged 17 to settle in France.
In 2006,he returns for the first time to Shenzen to visit his father whom he has not seen since the end of the 1980’s when China only just began the change to a market economy.
Shenzen has been built at the beginning of the 1980’s, as a counter-part to Hong Kong, just across the water. In only two decades, it has grown into a brandnew city of nearly 8 million inhabitants. There is not a lot to do there…except to work and to do business. The main leisure attraction is a visit to the “Minsk”, an aircraft carrier that once belonged to the Soviet Marine and which has been acquired by a few enterprising Chinese businessmen who transformed the former pride of the Soviet Army into one gigantic amusement park, the “Minsk World”.
For XiaO Xing, the visit of the aircraft-carrier-turned-amusement park, combined with Musuem of Chinese Contemporary History, is an opportunity to revisit his own childhood… China has changed, “getting rich” has become the new religion of the party. Through the eye of his camera, Xiao Xing discovers the attractions, exhibition rooms and the music & dance show that on offer on the Minsk – and it is like a mirror that brings back the reflection of his own childhood.
When night falls on Shenzen, when the visitors have gone, when the curtain comes down on the show, what future do they dream of, the guides and showgirls of the “Minsk”?