A new film telling the story of the Iraq war through Chinese eyes marks the latest in a series of soft power initiatives designed to get Beijing\u2019s message across to the wider world.<\/p>\n
Although Once Upon a Time in the Middle East does not explicitly state the name of the country in question, it is set in the 2000s and features an invasion by American troops.<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s central character, a Chinese chef named Xu Fu who is working off his debts at the time the war starts, turns his modest restaurant into both a shelter for local orphans and a bar for American soldiers.<\/p>\n
But despite suffering a series of traumas, which include the destruction of his business and imprisonment by both Americans and local militant groups, he continues trying to shield the children from the conflict.<\/p>\n
State media has also said that the film draws on the real-life experiences of several Chinese restaurateurs who lived through the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n
The film, which was largely shot in China, debuted on August 11 and had passed the 1 billion yuan (US$148 million) mark at the box office by Monday. It is also being released overseas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new film telling the story of the Iraq war through Chinese eyes marks the latest in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[70468,70466,9418,94,1684,22870,49,70465,40917,14676,70467],"class_list":["post-255395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-cctv","tag-chaoyang-shaoxia","tag-hollywood","tag-iraq","tag-iraq-war","tag-jodie-wen","tag-middle-east","tag-once-upon-a-time-in-the-middle-east","tag-soft-power","tag-southeast-asia","tag-yuyuan-tantian"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117119645348099926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}