The Geopolitics of “Being Lost” (jiong) in China’s Most Popular Movie Franchise

This paper uses geopolitics as a critical lens to analyze how four films in China’s most popular movie franchise—Lost on Journey (2010), Lost in Thailand (2013), Lost in Hong Kong (2015), and Dying to Survive (2018)—construct different dimensions of post-socialist spatial and temporal sensibilities. All four films portray a morally flawed businessman amidst a journey that would profoundly transform him in the end. This paper examines how these journeys unfold in an expanded geography—China’s second-tiered cities, Thailand, Hong Kong, and India—but fail in seriously engaging geopolitics. In particular, the last three films use China’s geopolitical others as strategic lure, playing up cultural stereotypes and cultural tourism. The depiction of China’s geopolitical others ultimately serves as a vehicle to process China’s rapidly changing realities and reflect upon distinctively Chinese experiences in the 2010s.