How ‘Ascension’ Became the Must-Watch China Documentary of 2022

Outside a five-star hotel on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan, a young model wearing a flowing white dress and an oversized sun hat is complaining bitterly about having to work in the afternoon heat. “I’m dying under this sun,” she says to her photographer. “Oh god, I can get a heat stroke here.”As the woman strolls back toward the shade, the camera lingers on a middle-aged worker squatting