Small town cinema
Text/Sun Hulin
After graduating from normal university, I was assigned to a remote and isolated school in the suburbs. Looking at me with a lost look, the eldest brother-in-law comforted me. He said that it was not far from the city, and it was only twenty miles away, and there was a post office and a movie theater, which was quite bustling. So I carried the futon on my back to the school, which was in extremely difficult conditions.
This area is about ten miles east of the Cockfighting Platform and belongs to the Wolong Temple community. Along the road from west to east, there are several villages such as Guangming Village, Longfeng Village, Liujiatai Village, nanpo Village, etc., and the pastoral atmosphere is like a place. The only few factories and enterprises, Liedian, China Railway Electrification Equipment Factory, Northwest Timber First-class Station, etc., live between villages, which rarely renders the atmosphere of modern industrial civilization. This is also the commonality of small towns located at the junction of urban and rural areas. After leaving the school gate, I went east, walked through a winding dirt road, and lived in low self-built houses on both sides, where railway workers lived. After arriving at Wolongsi Railway Station, cross the Longhai Railway Tracks and arrive at the side of the highway. Not far east along the road, a cinema stands out in the style of an auditorium, the largest building in the area. Across the road, there is a small house with a dense roof, which is to contact the Wolong Temple Post and Telecommunications Bureau of the outside world.
At that time, theaters throughout China were almost all in this style. However, the cinemas in big cities are more fashionable, and the exterior walls are decorated and beautified. Like the Bell Tower Cinema in Xi'an and the People's Cinema on Zhongshan Road in Baoji, it looks quaint and fascinating. Wolong Temple Cinema is original and simple, with exposed red bricks on the outer wall, full of village atmosphere. There are several square or round holes in the front wall facing the south, which are a distinctive symbol of the cinema.
At that time, I climbed the stairs and walked to the door of the theater. Enjoy watching movie posters pasted on the walls. I've always loved watching movies and stills. The new and vivid picture, the radiant star style, is fascinating. When I was in college, the weekly open-air movie was a favorite of my classmates. I still remember that the color photos of japanese star Keiko Matsuzaka that I clipped in my diary were snatched away by my classmates and asked for them unsuccessfully. Similarly, I also coveted the stills of Yamaguchi Momoe that my classmates treasured, but unfortunately I have not been able to get it. At that time, the TV series "Blood Doubt" was being broadcast. When familiar star faces appeared on the big screen, the audience was full of jubilation. Although after graduation, he was far away from the big city, exiled to the suburbs like an outcast, and his spiritual life fell into poverty for a while. Fortunately, there is a theater here, which can comfort my feelings of loneliness.
From the school to the theater, it is only about ten minutes away. That fall when I first started working, there was a time when I watched movies almost every night. Anyway, the ticket is not expensive, three or five cents a piece. Every time, when I walk through the ticket gates and walk into the theater, I listen to the pop music playing before the screening, and I feel at ease. Suburban theaters have a small audience and do not need to be seated in the right number, unless the unit is reserved. Only once in my memory, the cinema was packed. That time it was the sex education film "Before Marriage". When watching the movie, it was silent and orderly than ever. Now that I think about it, it was quite avant-garde to show such films at that time.
Usually, I like to sit in the middle. Positive for silver fundraising, the movie viewing effect is good. A movie is just over an hour, and at the end of the play, the music starts, and I look at the credits on the screen and walk out of the theater in love. Outside, a refreshing night breeze swept in, and I suddenly felt refreshed. The loud sound of the train whistle pierces the night sky, which is particularly refreshing. From the world of images that are both real and illusory, it suddenly returns to the worldly life of living and fragrant, and it feels wonderful. At that time, I walked north, ascended to the platform, crossed the railroad tracks, and walked toward my burrow. Lying on the bed, I was still unfinished, reminiscing about the plot of the movie I had just watched. Then, with a hint of satisfaction, I fell into a deep sleep.
In those days, the movie audience was mostly small-town youth. With long hair, cigarettes, fashionable costumes from Horse Lane, floral shirts, jeans, and shiny three-joint leather shoes, they marched into the theater with great vigor. Before the opening, the young people giggled and shouted, a little unethical. As soon as it was screened, they were immediately silenced and stared at the curtain. Only when watching martial arts movies did they applaud passionately. In the summer of 1993, on the eve of going to Guangzhou, I bought a tide coat in Madao Lane. A pair of floral short sleeves and a pair of black and white vertical shorts. That night, Mei Zizi wore new clothes and went to the Wolong Temple Cinema with a few friends, which attracted the admiring eyes of a group of young people.
In those years, many films were screened in the Wolong Temple Cinema. However, there are only a few that are impressive. That year, the school organized a movie, the Taiwanese film "Mom Loves Me Again". Colleagues said the film was tear gas and that you had to bring a few more tissues with you. After the film was over, I secretly looked at several female colleagues, and they really had red circles. The film interlude "Only Mother is Good in the World" is popular and has been sung to this day. The film "Yang Guifei" is also good, the famous actor Zhou Jie plays Yang Guifei, plump and rich, graceful and luxurious, which is enviable. "Jiao Yulu" is also good, and the drama bone Li Xuejian acted really well, simple and touching. These films are all organized by the unit to watch, after watching, we talk about the plot while walking, its music is harmonious, and laughter echoes in the night sky of the town.
Most of the time, I watch movies alone, and others aren't as obsessed with me. "The Police Officer's Promise", starring Alain Delong, I watched it twice in a row. It was his work after the age of fifty, exuding the masculine and steady charm of a mature man. At that time, in the open-air theater of Shaanxi Normal University, I saw "Zorro" starring him. Alain Deron on the screen is heroic and handsome. Coupled with the voice blessing of the voice actor Tong Zirong, it is the icing on the cake. The magnetic voice is vibrant, exuding a dashing and flowing youthful charm, and the aftersound is lingering. Sometimes, when I watch too many movies, I get unconscious. Once I walked into the theater and watched it for a few minutes, only to realize that I had seen it more than a month ago. Therefore, he left the scene in a displeasure.
Within a few years, video halls were flooded, and theaters began to take a hit near the downtown train station and even all-night screenings. The Wolong Temple Cinema, located on the outskirts, bore the brunt of the attack, with a sharp decline in the number of moviegoers. Finally, one day, when I bought a movie ticket to enter, the projectionist apologetically told me that there were too few people to let go tonight. When I looked, there were fewer than five people in the room. The projectionist' surname is Li, and he is a native of Longfeng Village across the road. Looking at him with an apologetic look, I felt lost in my heart. I expected such a day, but I didn't expect it to come so quickly. That was the last time I got close to wolong temple cinema.
Yesterday at noon, I suddenly remembered it. So, I was excited to search for it. I cycled slowly down the sidewalk on the south side of the road while looking at the north side of the road. In late autumn, the street trees are still lush and the view is limited, making it difficult to find the outline of the cinema for a while. In a trance, I even thought the cinema had been demolished, but I thought it was unlikely. More than ten years ago, in order to keep out the cold, I installed earth heaters indoors. I once went to a movie theater to buy anthracite coal. At that time, the theater had no choice but to lower its dignity and turn into a coal yard. Thinking of this, I crossed the road and carefully identified it in a row of façade rooms. At that time, it was the most prominent building in the area. I finally saw a familiar triangular building in the sky above a façade room, and the holes in the red brick façade were still there, which was a distinctive sign of the theater. So I approached it from a gate on the east side. Only then did I find that it had become a waste collection station, and there was a pile of garbage to be sorted on the left side of the gate. At this time, the entire side of the theater emerges from the east. It still exists intact, but it looks desolate and lonely under the cluster of low façade houses. A gate opened wide open on the east wall, and the desert clouds swallowed into a lonely place. I walked in, and the huge theater was split in two, with an open space on the south side, a row of container-style garbage stacked in the west yard, and a garbage baler working. The north side, separated by a wall, became a courier delivery station. I held up my phone and took a few shots. At this time, someone at the door greeted me with a question, and I said that I used to watch movies here. He smiled and didn't say anything. At that moment, I was glad that the theater where the tragic and joyful films had been shown was still there. After all, it had settled into a period of my youthful state of mind.
At this point, I was reminded of a film called Cinema Paradiso. The cinema is located in a quiet village in Sicily, Italy, with a chapel in front of which there is a cinema called "Cinema Paradiso". At only 8 years old, Xiao Duoduo met the film projectionist Effedo, which led to a touching film story. Many years later, when Toto returned to his hometown, he had become a world-famous director. At this time, small-town movies have been replaced by television, the former beautiful cinemas have been converted into parking lots, and Affedro, who is also a teacher and friend, has passed away. This is a famous film about the legend of cinema, and those precious shots will make people fully appreciate the meaning of life. It can be seen that cinemas have played an irreplaceable role in people's cultural life in entertainment and education. Borges once compared the library to a paradise, and I thought that the cinema was also a veritable paradise, a paradise for purifying the soul.
October 20, 2021
Sun Hulin, a native of Qishan, Shaanxi, is a member of the Shaanxi Writers Association and a columnist of urban headlines, publishing the essay collection "Youth Festival" and "Half Life".