People’s Limbo in RMB City (2009) is a 20-minute video featuring twelve short scenes of virtual activities documenting an event held on the gaming platform, Second Life.
The environment feels dreamlike—a fusion of real city and video game where normal rules of physics don’t apply. Tall buildings pierce neon-lit skies while objects float freely through space. Bold colors and vibrant lights create a futuristic atmosphere, with digital textures and overlapping images. Characters explore the virtual streets as playable avatars, who were controlled by artists, collectors, and Second Life celebrities invited by artist Cao Fei.
Key Landmarks
The Monument to the People’s Heroes—a granite obelisk in Tiananmen Square—bears a spinning Ferris wheel on its peak. Mao Zedong’s carved inscriptions commemorate revolutionary martyrs while water from the Three Gorges reservoir floods the square below. This vast public space, China’s political heart, has witnessed pivotal moments from the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic to the 1989 student demonstrations, surrounded by government buildings that reinforce its role as a symbol of state power.
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower, completed in 1994, rises as a giant totem symbolizing Shanghai’s transformation into a global financial hub. Beside it, the wooden Feilai Temple’s traditional Buddhist architecture creates a striking contrast. Massive concrete factories from Northeast China’s “Rust Belt,” once proud symbols of Mao’s planned economy (1950s-70s), stand as remnants of industrial history amid gleaming modern malls.
The Grand National Theatre (“The Egg,” 2007) appears to float, its controversial silver-gray surface reflecting sky and water—a pre-Olympic statement of contemporary design amid historical monuments. Planes glide over green terraces while super-malls hover alongside drifting Mao statues.
The Olympic Stadium (“Bird’s Nest”), designed by Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron for the 2008 Games, shows digital decay in its interwoven steel beams—a symbol of China’s global emergence now weathered by time.
A band performs atop a hovering Chinese flag, their music ultimately collapsing the CCTV building (2012), Rem Koolhaas’s radical architectural statement. Known locally as “The Pants,” the building’s distinctive loop-like form—created by two leaning towers bent at 90-degree angles—challenged traditional skyscraper design. Its 44-story optical illusion of instability makes its virtual collapse particularly poignant, suggesting the precarious balance between media power, architectural ambition, and institutional authority in modern China.
The fast-moving visuals, unusual designs, and dreamlike atmosphere make it feel both fascinating and unsettling at the same time.
