Synopsis

China’s shipbuilding industry now ranks first in the world.

The shipyard I chose to film is located on the Yangtze River. With the help of the local government and banks, a private company used RMB one billion to refill this tidal flat and transform it into a world-class shipyard. The ten ships currently being built here are orders from Germany, and each ship costs 15 million euros. But 60% of the money is to be used to purchase German shipboard equipment and design costs for the German shipbuilding agency. The hard work of Chinese factories is using a lot of cheap manpower to build the largest and most attractive ship hull. This is like a symbolic picture of "Made in China" on the industrial map of the world's division of labor.

"Made in China" is a familiar term for many people, but who is doing the making and how they relate to the final product is puzzling and mysterious—just like the huge keel in the movie, which appears impressively on the horizon, with the workers crouched below like ants. This image reminds me of the industrial scene in the film Metropolis, shot by Fritz Lang in 1927.