ABSTRACT
It is found in an internet-based series of advertisements titled Words of a Journey, produced by the Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke for the whisky manufacturer Johnnie Walker. This series is part of the company's larger marketing campaign designed to 'speak to China's aspirational consumers', and is based on market research that indicated 'A man was judged a success not by where he was, but where he was going'. During the Maoist period, the state promoted the idealised classes of the workers, peasants and soldiers, and they were celebrated in politics and culture. In their analysis of the autobiographical stories of American and British entrepreneurs, which they refer to as 'e-tales' for 'Entrepreneurial Tales', Robert Smith and Alistair Anderson describe these stories as 'hagiographic entrepreneurial narrative(s)' that combine '"Morality", "Success" and the "Entrepreneurial Dream"'. The entrepreneurs' e-tales promote individual determination, independence and self-improvement, valorise market liberalisation and the expansion of capitalism.
