Unknown Pleasures (Chinese: 任逍遥; pinyin: Rèn xiāo yáo; lit.

Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.

[5] Unknown Pleasures follows three disaffected, aimless young people in the industrial city of Datong in China's Shanxi province throughout 2001.

When an explosion rocks part of the city's textile mill, the characters are briefly pushed into action.

Fleeing, Xiao Ji drives his motorbike down the highway until it breaks down and he hitches a ride to locations unknown.

[6] The competition (which also drew entries from Tsai Ming-liang and John Akomfrah) required that the shorts be filmed entirely in digital video.

"[7] Unknown Pleasures was filmed using digital video in only nineteen days, as a result of time and budgetary constraints.

[8] In his production notes, Jia claims that the use of digital video produced a slight color discrepancy that lent itself to the tone he wanted the film to take.

[9] According to Jia, the final scene of Xiao Ji riding down the highway as a thunderstorm approaches would not have been possible had traditional film cameras been used.

But because of the flexibility of digital video, Jia Zhangke was able to capture the scene with the storm and in the director's words, creates a moment where the "environment is complementing [Xiao Ji's] internal feelings.

Cinematographer Yu Lik-wai, who has served in the role in nearly the entire Jia filmography, returns once again for Unknown Pleasures.

Editor Chow Keung is also a frequent Jia collaborator and would help produce several of his subsequent films, including 24 City, The World, and the Golden Lion-winning Still Life.

Along with producer Li Kit Ming, Chow and Yu have been described by Jia as the "core of his creative team.

In his production notes, Jia has stated that the portrayals of youth by Wu Qiong, Zhao Weiwei, Zhao Tao was meant to illustrate the "birth control" generation, or the generation to emerge from China's One-child policy.

Elvis Mitchell, for example, wrote, "[t]he saddest thing about it is that the social ineptitude of the Pleasure youth doesn't even belong to them -- they've sampled it from Western culture, just like the clangorous funk of the dance club music.

At numerous instances in the film, newscasts and other media link the characters to external current events.

Like in Xiao Wu, Unknown Pleasures takes place in a run down industry town in China's Shanxi province.

Jia noted in an interview that in one sense, Datong was "truly a city in ruins, and the people that inhabit it very much live in a spiritual world that reflects their environment."

Meanwhile, when Beijing is selected as the host city for the 2008 Olympics, a crowd of people gathered around a television burst into cheers.

Towards the end of the film, a newscast states that the Datong-Beijing Highway is soon to be completed, hinting that escape and progress are not far behind.

"[15] Stylistically, however, Mitchell felt that Jia's long-takes and slow pans started to feel repetitive, a sort of "reductive neo-realism.

One common complaint was that like the film's aimless protagonists, Unknown Pleasures seemed lost in its own narrative.