Open-Air Cinema

This article was written on July 18, 2013.

Author: Lü Jianfeng

Open-Air Cinema

My friends and I were stunned—

About open-air cinema

My memory starts from age 5. My home is in Datang Township, Chongren, Jiangxi. From a young age, I had a bad impression on people, probably because I developed intellectually very slowly. The village gave me a nickname that is still used today: Aodou Chunzi. What does it mean? Chunzi is easy to understand; Aodou means very ugly, meaning both stupid and ugly. Of course, I am much more handsome now. I digress. Let's get back to the point, starting from when I was 5.

In the summer of 1981, the village across the river was showing a movie, an open-air cinema. Going to see a movie was a big deal for me as a child. That day, several kids from my village and I waded across the river early to secure good spots. If you've seen open-air movies, you know you need to bring your own stool and arrange them neatly. There were about 500 to 1500 people, with some maintaining order. They said the movie couldn't start until it was time, and sometimes people gave speeches, similar to today's variety shows. That night's movie must have been very exciting; I can't remember which movie it was. I remember on the way back, in the middle of the river, we realized one person was missing. I was being held by an older kid about 8 years old. After returning to the village, we found the missing child's parents and told them. They mobilized dozens of people to search everywhere, asking door to door, and searching along the river. It didn't take long to find him. My friends and I were stunned—he had drowned. Heart-wrenching cries lasted all night. I will never forget that painful and desperate crying. The next day, while my parents whipped me with an ox whip, I was still thinking: how could water not even reaching my neck drown a 7-year-old boy who was a head taller than me?

In 1982, still an open-air movie, this time in our village, shown in an open space outside an ancestral hall. There were several big trees around the open space. We kids climbed up the trees early to wait for the movie to start. Do you remember the CCTV program "Same Song"? There was an episode where they went to a place I can't recall. When Zhang Xing paused in the middle of a song, he waved to the audience in the trees and shouted, "Hello, friends in the trees!" That's how it felt watching from the trees—it was really good. The movie was quite long, and we had to save spots an hour early. When we needed to pee, we would pee in a direction with no people, but it often splashed on others. That night, about halfway through the movie, someone suddenly shouted, "Fight!" A tragedy happened. My friends and I were stunned. The crowd rushed out desperately, some carrying stools. Those who were slow got knocked down and were stepped on. The commotion stopped after a while. It turned out two hooligans were arguing but hadn't even started fighting. The movie continued to the end. The next day, I heard that several people had broken arms or legs, but fortunately no one died.

Open-air movies were usually shown during the slack farming season, supported by the policy of sending movies to the countryside. The worst thing was rain; if it rained, the movie would be temporarily canceled and continued the next day when the rain stopped. I remember several times we got soaked, shivering so hard our teeth chattered. Fights often broke out during open-air movies, and there were cases of deaths from beatings or trampling. Later, they gradually banned them. Our village only got electricity in 1995. My entire childhood multimedia memory is the village broadcast. Now thinking back, open-air movies really had a big impact on us kids.