“WELCOME TO Dragon Restaurant”, a new Chinese box-office hit set in a thinly disguised Iraq, will not win any Oscars. The plot is outlandish, many characters cartoonish. Yet people outside China should still watch it. For one thing, it depicts the American invasion of 2003 from an unfamiliar vantage: not the green-tinged light show beamed into Western homes, but the shriek and crash of bombs slamming into a slumbering city, shocking and awful.
In following a Chinese chef who profits from the war until it turns on him, the film also carries political significance. It sheds light on China’s self-image and its positioning in the Middle East and beyond. If it seems absurd to read so much into a movie, remember that commentators have used another one, “Wolf Warrior”, as shorthand for China’s aggressive diplomatic stance over the past decade. Dragon-restaurant diplomacy reflects a different style—and a better approximation of Chinese foreign policy in the round. Its organising principle is to be friends to all people, motivated more by mercantilism than political ideology. The approach, both in the film and on the ground, is often superficial and contradictory. Yet it would be a mistake to ignore its appeal to countries tired of overweening Westerners.
