When I began college in China, I decided to learn oral English from the very famous TV show, Friends. My first impression after having watched the show, was that Americans are very into film, and expressions like “wanna see a movie?” or “I’m going to see a movie, wanna join me?” were used almost as frequently as “How are you?”. Then, after having noticed the love for film in The States, I assumed that all U.S. citizens were very rich, since it was very expensive and considered a luxury to watch a movie at a theater in China at the time.
Two years ago, when I came to the U.S. to study, I found that I was half right. It is true that the majority of my American friends find it entertaining to talking about on-air movies, but I quickly realized I was wrong about assuming all U.S. citizens were rich just because they went to the movies. It turns out that movie tickets were not as expensive as I imagined, especially with the student discounted price of $6 – $7 dollars/movie.
I personally love watching movies. After having seen so many well produced films from Hollywood, I couldn’t help but wonder what is going on in the film industry across the Pacific Ocean — in China.
Before China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, only 88 films had been made on Chinese land. Under the WTO agreements, 20 foreign films were allowed to be imported per year and foreign cultural enterprises were allowed to enter the Chinese market by establishing joint ventures, with a shareholding of up to 49 percent. About10 years later, the number of China produced films surged to 526 in 2010, and domestic box office revenues rose 64 percent to a record of 10.17 billion Yuan ($1.6 billion) according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).
