The Chinese rekindled their love affair with the cinema last month while the rest of the world went on a festive shopping binge.
In December, a string of locally made feature films cleaned up at the box office, with Sacrifice and Just Call Me Nobody each raking in 100 million yuan (Dh55.7m) within a week of being released.
Then, Let the Bullets Fly and If You Are the One 2 did even better, between them grossing more than 400m yuan in their first week. Let the Bullets Fly even beat the all-conquering Avatarto set a Chinese record of 60m yuan for single-day takings.
All this came less than six months after Aftershock, another Chinese feature, broke records when it made 100m yuan in its first three days.
With the dragon economy enjoying close to double-digit growth, it seems many people are prepared to pay 150 yuan for a cinema ticket.
In the first half of last year, China's box-office takings were 86 per cent up on the same period the previous year, totalling 4.84 billion yuan.
Wang Yunping, a researcher at the Institute of Industrial and Technological Economics of the country's main economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, was quoted recently as saying the movie industry in China had "entered a period of phenomenal growth".
The Chinese film critic Raymond Zhou is already predicting the day when Chinese box-office takings exceed those of the US, where the gross for last year is expected to be just below US$10.6bn (Dh38.93bn).
There is still a long way to go, but with takings having dipped slightly in the US last year, and with Chinese box office revenues predicted in a report by First Group to be 20bn yuan next year, compared with less than 1bn yuan in 2003, it is hardly an unrealistic prospect.
It is therefore little wonder that foreign cinema operators are keen to secure a growing slice of the market. The Canadian group IMAX plans to open close to 100 new cinemas in the Middle Kingdom, having signed contracts with a string of partners. In September, IMAX inked a deal with the Seoul company CJ CGV, which runs the largest chain of multiplexes in South Korea, to open 15 big-screen cinemas in China.
Also, the centre of focus of Chinese film-making is shifting towards the mainland, according to Sam Wong, a project manager for the Hong Kong production company Best Video.
"With local Hong Kong movies, I don't see there's [been] growth during the last years. But for the big movies, the co-operation between Hong Kong and China, you can see the numbers getting more and more," he says.
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, he says, most Chinese blockbusters were created solely by Hong Kong production companies, but now "most movies that we see are made by Hong Kong and Chinese".
"It's more mainland Chinese oriented," he says.
He says there is still "a gap" between Hong Kong and the mainland in the quality of film-making, however.
Dillon Xiang, the owner of the Beijing and Shanghai-based production company Bladedge, says the two areas are gradually "getting closer and closer" in terms of production standards.
"Especially in the [past] five years, we've witnessed big changes," he says. "People are getting more qualified."
This is reflected on the small screen as well as the big screen, he says. While some channels on China's state-run CCTV continue with what may be seen as rather bland output focused on the activities of the country's leaders, other channels are becoming more dynamic. According to Mr Xiang, "quite a few stations" are creating high-quality local output.
"I am sure in the future we'll have even more great television programmes," he says.
Some of the best television productions are also finding a big audience online.
China has 450m internet users, according to figures released by the State Council Information Office last Thursday, and more than 240m choose to watch videos online.
Some 40m people in China are believed to have stopped watching television altogether.
As a result, vast revenues are being generated through online video, and the internet copyrights for television shows are worth big bucks.
In March last year, the internet rights for the 60-episode television programme Journey to the West sold for 16.8m yuan, compared with just 100,000 yuan paid in 2006 for My Own Swordsman, an 81-episode epic.
Yet, for all the off-the-chart increases in revenue, the picture in recent years has not been overwhelmingly positive for the makers of films in China.
While the film industry on the mainland has been developing rapidly, the global slowdown has not gone unnoticed there, according to Mr Xiang, who says budgets for big projects "have been reduced quite substantially".
This, it seems, reflects the fact that many major projects are financed internationally. Funding from the mainland appears to be less affected than international funding, says Mr Xiang.
"When the projects are Sino-US, they may not be filmed finally because of the budget," he says.
He adds there are signs, however, the market is "picking up", with last year having been an improvement on the previous year. He predicts the recovery to gain speed this year, with 20 per cent growth.
Despite the difficulties of the global recession, he says the film industry in China is heading for major acceleration.
"It's growing, it's going to be booming," he says. "We have the fifth and sixth generation of local directors and we have many more great movies, and people, especially the younger generation, who love to go to the cinema and spend more money, [instead of] DVD watching at home."
TV talent shows a hit in China
As with the growth of the mainland's film sector, China's television industry has expanded in ways that parallel developed markets - including an explosion in the popularity of talent shows.
One of the most notable is Super Girl, which ran from 2004 to 2006 and was relaunched last year. The Hunan Satellite Television programme attracted criticism from a senior communist party official who described the singing contest as having a corrupting influence on China's young people.
International franchises have moved into the market, notably with China's Got Talent, the country's version of America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent, all based on a format developed by the British entertainment impresario and reality show judge Simon Cowell.
The inaugural series last year of China's Got Talent generated international notice when it was won by Liu Wei, a young man who plays the piano with his feet, having had his arms amputated as a child after an accident. A seven-year-old stand-up comedian came second.
Meanwhile, the mainland and Taiwan are moving closer to one another economically, with a series of agreements signed to reduce trade barriers. That is reflected on the programme with one of the three judges being Taiwanese.
In addition, as part of his prize, Mr Liu secured a spot performing as the special guest of the Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai.