Zou Peng (b. Harbin, 1971) studied painting and fashion design in his youth and early adult life, and worked as an independent fashion designer until 2005, when he enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy. His first feature film, *A North Chinese Girl* (Dongbei, dongbei), was entered for the Berlin Film Festival in 2009 shortly after he graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. His second feature film, *Sauna on the Moon* (Chang'e, 2011) is an ambitious, sprawling satire on the intimate connections between China's phenomenal recent economic growth and the equally prodigious growth of the sex industry, particularly in south China. Set in a 'sauna' in Dongguang, the 'capital' of the sex industry in southern China, *Sauna on the Moon* portrays the lives of a group of local sex workers using an extraordinary mix of quasi-documentary-style scenes, outrageous satirical comedy and surreal fantasy. Refused permission for screening in China due to its highly sexualised subject-matter, costumes and decor, and no doubt also its highly irreverent depiction of the relations between the police, Party cadres, the local business elite and the sex industry, *Sauna on the Moon* has sharply divided opinion among Western film criticis and commentators. Some have described its portrayal of the lives of Chinese sex workers as sensitive and sympathetic, while others have denounced the film for glamorising prostitution, reinforcing male chauvinist perceptions of women as sex objects and presenting a wholly unrealistic, naive view of the frequently dangerous and degrading conditions under which most sex workers are compelled to live and work. Nevertheless, it offers a compelling portrait of the extremes to which commodification of the human body and sexuality has been taken by the development of capitalism in China the post-socialist, post-modern era, whose critical application and relevance to modern social and economic conditions extends far beyond the sex industry in the Pearl River Estuary region.