South Street Bright Cinema

Text/Zhu Wenjie

The Guangming Cinema, which was once located at No. 30 South Avenue, is one of the "Eight Cinemas" in Xi'an. According to the "Xi'an Chronicle" and the "Beilin District Chronicle", "Guangming Cinema, address south of South Avenue. Built in 1954. It covers an area of 3.4 acres, with a construction area of 2309 square meters, and a total of 1100 seats upstairs and downstairs. The cinema was jointly built by Huang Yanru, vice chairman of the Xi'an Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, who organized 16 private industrialists and businessmen to raise 400,000 yuan. It was officially opened to the public on October 1, 1955, and in March 1956, it was converted into a public-private partnership. In 1988, it was remodeled into stereo. In 1989, the entrance facilities were renovated, the seats were replaced, air conditioners were installed, and a video hall and a merchandise department were added. Cinema facilities for comprehensive transformation, basically meet the needs of modernization, in 1990 by the provincial and municipal cultural departments awarded the title of civilized cinema, advanced cinema and so on. ”

Guangming Cinema was formerly known as Wansheng and Sauce Garden, and four privately operated companies were merged to form a cinema, which was later demolished and built into a cinema. Wansheng and the owner of the sauce garden (the representative of the capital) is the father of an alumnus of my high school, and I have heard him say it many times.

Guangming Cinema is a theater sitting west to east, the outer wall is pale yellow, there are 3 floors high, the main entrance is square, the entrance has 10 steps, belongs to the European style building, tall and magnificent, at that time in the urban area of Xi'an Also belonged to the landmark building.

There is also a relatively large square in front of the Guangming Cinema Building, about half the size of a football field, and a row of neat glass windows on each side, mainly for posting movie profiles and movie posters. There is a spacious and tall stage and a semi-circular orchestra pit in the stadium, a large and unique circular ceiling lamp in the center of the roof of the hall, many small ceiling lights around the venue, and many torch-shaped white wall lamps on the walls, and the whole scene is bright as day when the lights are all turned on. There are pool seats and building blocks in the field, and there are several boxes on both sides of the back of the second floor. The whole theater was comfortably and warmly arranged upstairs and downstairs, which was a first-class cinema in Xi'an at that time.

I have been a movie fan since I was a child, from 1956 to 1965 when I was in elementary school and junior high school, because the school and address were in the southwest corner of Xi'an City, I usually watched movies, most of them could only watch the mass cinema on West Avenue, and only half of them were seen in the Guangming Cinema. In September 1965 and May 1966, due to the work-study arrangement of the Xi'an Municipal Finance and Accounting School of the secondary school, he went to the Bell Tower Food Store and the Pastry Simen Market Department in Nanguan to work and exercise. "Nanguan Cake IV" is also a shop under the jurisdiction of the Accounting Shop of Qingfeng Food Store on South Avenue, and I was also drawn from the Nanguan Store by Qingfeng Food Store to run a blackboard newspaper to publicize Mao Zedong Thought. Therefore, the near water tower has more opportunities to watch movies in the light, and has watched no less than twenty times. Especially at night to live in the store on duty, the cultural entertainment activities were extremely poor, watching movies became my most obsessed cultural enjoyment, coupled with the fifteen yuan per month that year, there was no shortage of ticket money to watch movies, and there was a night show around 12 o'clock, and it cost five cents to spend a night. Especially buying a bag of Tianjin beans or fish rice peanuts for a late night snack, that is the ultimate enjoyment. I remember that the new films released in those years after Guangming watched were mainly the war films "Against the Wind", "Three Into the Mountain City", "Soldiers Under the City", "Independent Brigade" and "Sentinel under neon lights". Others include "Ashima", "Stage Sisters", "Early Spring february", "A Grass on Kunlun Mountain", "Li Shuangshuang", "Red Flowers on the Heavenly Mountain". At that time, I felt that I was very educated, who knows, just after watching it, I began to criticize what "Stage Sisters", "Early Spring February", "Headwinds" and so on. I recorded in my diary: "Stage Sisters" is an anti-party, anti-socialist, and propaganda of the "thirties" bourgeois personal struggle and bourgeois humanity. At that time, I also had to check what poison I had been poisoned, which made people dizzy. Then I criticize "Early Spring February", "Against the Wind" and other films that I have not seen, I do not care, but when I watch the film again, I naturally feel a burden in my heart, because the newspaper broadcast is always saying something with a critical eye, tightening the strings of class struggle. Soon, these movies were all suspended, as if only a few such as "Tunnel Warfare" and "Mine Warfare" were left at the beginning, and then there were eight model dramas made into movies, eight hundred million people and eight plays! In the late ten years of the "Cultural Revolution", there were successive films such as "Shining Red Star", "Spring Miao", "Break", "Golden Light Avenue", "Maple Bay" and so on, and I remember that in those years, I only saw a "Yi Meng Song" in the Guangming Cinema, or it was arranged at the meeting when the literary and artistic creation meeting was held in Xi'an. Looking back on it today, I felt a little confused when I watched the movie in the light.

Later, the Guangming Cinema was suddenly demolished and became the current Zhongda International Department Store, which witnessed the absurd years of my youth, and the sweet and bitter cinema has disappeared.

Editor: Sijia Gao