ABSTRACT
‘The Expo is your ego gone crazy!’ This is a line from the film Iron Man 2, in which the title character vaingloriously stages the Stark Expo 2010, ‘Better living through technology’, to show off his weapon power. Although the Shanghai Expo offered a thematic parallel with its theme of ‘Better City, Better Life’, rather than using a filmic narrative familiar to Hollywood, organisers showed the oral history documentary I Wish I Knew at the site’s vast Cultural Centre in order to convey the event’s significance. Premiered at the 2010 Cannes film festival and with a storyline that placed the event within a rapidly changing China, I Wish I Knew is much more than an infomercial or promotion for Expo. It prompts a review of the vicissitude of China – as the director, Jia Zhangke, stated in his note in the movie press book: ‘the causes of almost all of the problems facing contemporary China can be found taking shape in the depths of its history’ (Jia 2010a: para. 1). Jia has revealed that he changed the original Chinese title of the movie from Shanghai Chuanqi (‘Legend of Shanghai’) to the present Hai Shang Chuanqi (‘Legend on the sea’) (Jia 2010b) – a seemingly slight, yet profound, change that implies a larger picture, one that reaches outside the city of Shanghai to explore China’s history since the First Opium War of 1840. It was after suffering defeat in this war that imperial China (under its seclusion policy) was coerced to open its maritime trade and to establish Shanghai as one of its earliest treaty ports.
