From post-empire to the new Middle Kingdom: what was once America is now China. After his project Insert Coins (2016), devoted to the decay of Las Vegas, Swiss photographer Christian Lutz heads to the Chinese special economic zone of Macao. In The Pearl River, too, everything revolves around money, luxury and surfaces. The liberalization of gambling in the early 2000s marked the rise of the former Portuguese colony. What followed: generic, algorithmically designed monumental buildings modelled on Venice and Paris, lined with marble and gold, and 30 million — mostly Chinese — tourists a year. In the regulated microclimate of the casinos, boutiques and bars, the usual businessmen and politicians move about in ill-fitting suits, and upwardly mobile Chinese families in sweatpants and flip-flops. Everything is aseptic, dust-free. Everything points to Europe and America. More hollowed-out than in Las Vegas, the architectural set pieces are a simulation of a simulation. Lutz's photographic gaze scans the smooth surfaces of this brave new world, laconic and insistent at once. And the first cracks begin to show.