Located on the east side of the south entrance of Chaoyang Street in Yantai, the New China Cinema was known to women and children in Yantai City in the past, and everyone knew it. It is the earliest cinema in Yantai, formerly known as the Moon Palace Cinema built by the British rende foreign firm, which opened in 1932 and has been remodeled several times. After the founding of New China, the cinema was renamed the New China Cinema.
The 1930s and 1940s were a period of growth and maturity for Chinese cinema, and the art of cinema changed from entertainment to reflecting the reality of life. Films have sprung up, and a large number of household names have emerged. Ordinary people open their mouths and shut their mouths to talk about the names of movie stars, such as Zhao Dan, Sun Daolin, Wang Xingang, Wang Danfeng, Wang Xiaotang, Zhang Ruifang, Bai Yang, etc. Everyone talks about it like a number of family treasures, no less than the current star-chasing family.
Since 1957, I have been studying at Jiefang Road Primary School (now Yangzheng Primary School), often not going home directly after school, carrying my school bag along the coast to the west and further south, to Chaoyang Street. The front of the new Chinese cinema is often crowded and very lively. If you encounter a theater break, the scene is really bursting, crowded with people, endless.
New China Cinema in the 1980s
My hobbies are browsing movie posters, movie trailers, and movie content introductions, and some movies also post movie picture introductions like quad screens. At this time I would be as happy as a greedy hunter catching prey, the advertising window was high, and I tiptoed my head and looked at the picture from beginning to end, reading word by word, excited as if I were tasting a rich meal.
The school also regularly organizes primary school students to watch movies, and the student ticket price is 5 cents. Movies such as "The Adventures of Xiao Muke", "Shangganling", "Chicken Feather Letter", "Battle Shanghai", "Red Child", "Heroic Children", "Immortality in the Fire", "Eternal Electric Wave" and so on were all watched at that time, as well as the Sino-French co-production of children's feature films "Kite", the costume feature film "Chasing Fish", "Autumn Weng Meets Immortals", "Ma Lan Blossom" and so on. When it came time to watch the movie, the students were very excited, almost happier than the New Year.
When I was in the second grade, once the school organized a movie, during the screening I suddenly wanted to go to the toilet to urinate, but the homeroom teacher just wouldn't let me go, because I wanted to maintain discipline. Despite my repeated requests, I was still not granted, and finally I couldn't stop peeing in my pants. On the way home, I dragged my wet pants and walked alone on the side of the road, full of grievances and helplessness, and I cried loudly after seeing my mother. Think about the teacher was indeed a bit rigid and dogmatic, and it was too harsh to treat an eight- or nine-year-old primary school student, which was a little impersonal.
At that time, watching movies was always a luxury for children, and there were always a number of times a year when the school organized movies. A lot of movies for us can only be a look at the movie. Movie ticket prices are also unaffordable for elementary school students. Student tickets are 5 cents, ordinary adult ticket prices according to the number of seats, divided into 1 corner 1 point, 1 corner 3 points and 1 corner 7 cents several kinds, morning, middle and evening have two movies, sometimes there are extra scenes at night, too many good movies can not be seen but helpless, I can only watch the film trailer to solve the problem.
But life always has unexpected surprises happening. Once I learned that my mother's old companion Uncle Liu, a colleague of the Children's Shoe Factory in the city, was a ticket inspector in the New China Cinema, and I peeped at the entrance of the theater many times after school, and as soon as I found Uncle Liu on duty at the door, I plucked up enough courage to walk to the door, and my eyes were timid and hopeful to glance at Uncle Liu. When the uncle saw me, he greeted me with a smile and let me walk directly into the theater door. Ecstatic, I walked into the pitch-black screening hall and found an empty seat, mostly sitting in the hallway watching a movie. After this happened a few times, my mother knew about it, and my mother criticized me fiercely, and I no longer dared to go to Uncle Liu to take advantage.
In February 1968, I was recruited to work as a worker in the electroplating workshop of Yantai Watch Factory. When I was on the night shift, my master told me that there was a convenient door behind the alloy HDB house that led directly to the theater hall. After eating that night, I quietly opened the back door and sneaked into the screening hall with my cat waist. Sitting in the front seat, I was momentarily blinded by the light on the screen, so after only a few minutes of watching, I sneaked back to the workshop from behind, and I didn't even see what movie I was playing, which was a different kind of experience to recall.
Movies are undoubtedly the spiritual food that people dreamed of in the past era, the photos of the stars and the magazine "Popular Movie" have become hot and sought-after goods, and the topic of chatting among workers and colleagues is always inseparable from movies. When someone watches a movie, everyone will invariably ask him to tell the plot to everyone. The speaker was triumphant, dancing with his hands, spitting wildly, and the people who listened were full of relish and interest, and they were still unfinished after listening.
Popular Cinema in the 1980s
There is a small studio on the right side of the gate of the New China Cinema, which is a studio specially set up for film painting advertising and propaganda, and the owner of the studio is a dignified and elegant female painter named Yu Ming, who has a younger brother yu Huizhou, a famous cross-talk actor in yantai music art. The first thing that comes into view when entering the cinema is the dazzling advertising poster, and the conversion cycle of the advertising painting is also constantly changing with the cycle of the film staged, as short as three or four days, more than five or six days, those are all painted by Yu Ming.
Sometimes when I walk to the side of the theater studio, I can't help but stop and stand there and carefully watch Yu Ming's paintings. Only to see her delicate hand waving a flexible brush, like a magician to change different images, colorful colors jumped on the advertising board, and the female painter's elegant temperament and beautiful face together to form a beautiful and moving picture. If the female painter were still alive today, she would be an elderly man in her eighties, right?
I thought to myself, how nice it would be if I could paint such a beautiful and engaging painting! In 1971, Mr. Zhang Liguang, who presided over the publicity work of the General Factory, invited me to his studio to help paint an advertising poster "One is not afraid of suffering, the other is not afraid of death", which gave me a rare opportunity to exercise. On the front of the propaganda poster is a spirited and heavily armed SOLDIER of the People's Liberation Army, standing proudly on the screen with a submachine gun in his hand, and the background is the image of Huang Jiguang, Qiu Shaoyun, Dong Cunrui and other martyrs. The manuscript is ready, I just need to color it. Because I was painting oil for the first time, I couldn't help but feel timid. With the encouragement of Teacher Zhang and my unremitting efforts, after several days, I finally completed this large-scale advertising poster and realized my long-cherished wish for many years. The nearly two-meter-tall oil painting is said to have later hung on the walls of the large house in the assembly workshop.
In the 1980s and 1990s, in order to conform to the changes of the trend of the times, the New China Cinema was transformed into a comprehensive cultural and entertainment venue "New China's Disco Plaza", which was closed in 1998, and the New China Cinema bid farewell to its sound and light stage.
Nowadays, the transformation of key projects in Chaoyang Street in Yantai City and the old town in the city is being carried out in an orderly manner, and it is expected that the new Chinese cinema will reappear in front of the world with a new look.
Text | Zhang Shanwen