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ParksWiki backfill Wave 5 (SUPAPARK-937)

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{{Infobox attraction
| name = Reflections of China
| park = [[EPCOT]]
| land = [[World Showcase]]
| area = [[China Pavilion]]
| type = Circle-Vision 360 film
| opened = May 22, 2003
| designer = [[Walt Disney Imagineering]]
| status = Operating
| replaced = Wonders of China
}}

'''Reflections of China''' is a Circle-Vision 360 film in the [[China Pavilion]] in [[World Showcase]] at [[EPCOT]] in [[Walt Disney World]], Florida. Guests stand in a circular theatre surrounded by nine screens while a guide from China's distant past leads them through the country's landscapes, historic monuments and modern cities. The film is an updated successor to ''Wonders of China'', the pavilion's opening-day film, reusing some of that production's most celebrated footage alongside material filmed two decades later.

== History ==

The China pavilion opened on October 1, 1982, with ''Wonders of China: Land of Beauty, Land of Time'', a roughly 19-minute Circle-Vision film directed by Jeff Blyth. Making it had required unusual access: Disney crews filmed with a nine-camera Circle-Vision rig in locations that few Western film crews had then been permitted to shoot, and the finished film introduced many of its first audiences to parts of China they had never seen photographed, let alone filmed in the round.<ref>https://themickeywiki.com/index.php?title=Reflections_of_China&oldid=7832</ref>

By the early 2000s the film's picture of China was badly out of date, above all in its cities. ''Wonders of China'' was shown for the last time in March 2003, and its replacement opened on May 22, 2003, as Reflections of China.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_of_China</ref><ref>https://www.themouseforless.com/walt-disney-world/parks/epcot-park/reflections-of-china-world-showcase-epcot/</ref> Blyth returned as director. The new version kept the earlier film's framing device and much of its rural and historic footage, added newly filmed sequences including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Macau, recorded fresh narration and received a new score by Richard Bellis. At about twelve and a half minutes it runs notably shorter than its predecessor.

A further replacement, ''Wondrous China'', was announced as part of EPCOT's transformation and was at one stage expected around Walt Disney World's 50th anniversary period. It did not open on that timetable, no opening date has since been confirmed, and Reflections of China remains the film in regular operation in the pavilion. Guests should therefore treat any reported opening date for the successor as unconfirmed.

== Experience ==

The theatre sits inside the pavilion's replica of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests from Beijing's Temple of Heaven complex, entered through the pavilion's gardens and exhibition space. As with other Circle-Vision theatres there are no seats; guests stand, with lean rails provided, and are free to turn to follow the action across the nine screens.<ref>https://www.themouseforless.com/walt-disney-world/parks/epcot-park/reflections-of-china-world-showcase-epcot/</ref>

The on-screen guide is Li Bai — also rendered Li Po — the Tang dynasty poet, played by an actor who appears within the scenes as well as narrating them, a device carried over from ''Wonders of China''.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_of_China</ref> From the Huangshan mountains and the Li River he moves through the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Terracotta Army near Xi'an, desert and grassland country in China's west, and the rice-growing south, before the film turns to its newest material: the skylines and harbours of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau as they looked at the start of the twenty-first century. It closes, as its predecessor did, on the Great Wall.

The contrast built into the film is deliberate. The poet-guide belongs to an era more than a thousand years before the camera, and his commentary sets ancient monuments and modern motorways in the same frame — a country presented not as a museum, nor as a skyline, but as both at once. Because a substantial share of the photography still dates from the early 1980s, that contrast has acquired a second, unintended layer with time: the "modern" China of 2003 is itself now a period piece, which is precisely the gap the still-awaited successor film was announced to close.

== See also ==
* [[EPCOT]]
* [[China Pavilion]]
* [[World Showcase]]
* [[Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360]]
* [[Walt Disney World]]

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Attractions]]
[[Category:EPCOT]]
[[Category:World Showcase]]
[[Category:Films]]
[[Category:2003 establishments]]

Reflections of China - Revision history

Admin: ParksWiki backfill Wave 5 (SUPAPARK-937)