Zhuang Wubin /// Interview with Wang Xiaoshuai

Born in Shanghai in 1966, Wang Xiaoshuai was two months old when his parent left for Guiyang, a poor and isolated city in the mountains of Guizhou province, because his mother's factory was relocated to form a "Third Line of Defence" against the Soviet Union. This is vaguely the setting for Wang Xiaoshuai's Shanghai Dreams, winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes 2005. In 1979, his family moved to Wuhan, where Wang experienced for the first time the lures of materialism in a metropolis. He moved to Beijing in 1981 and enrolled in the Department of Directing, Beijing Film Academy, in 1985. His early films were underground projects, which landed him briefly on the blacklist of the Film Bureau. At the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival, his Beijing Bicycle (2000) fetched him the Silver Bear Award.