Abstract: In this article cultural translation will be approached through the events surrounding the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Comparing the ‘spectacle’ of 2008 Beijing Olympics ceremony to the 1964 production of the song-and-dance epic The East is Red (Dongfang hong) forms the basis for this article in thinking through the formation of these productions as taking part in the construction of the ‘aesthetic regime’ in China. Here, the ‘aesthetic regime’ brings forward the ‘divisions of worldly senses’ to generate a new culture for China that invokes the merger between art, aesthetics and politics in China, and provides ways of approaching communal experiences of contemporary cultural production and cultural translation in China.