The "never stop" veteran screening team

In June 1996, a picture on the TV news made the 43-year-old Liu Chengjin feel sad.

On the screen, a white-haired mother, step by step, carries her disabled son on her back to the village to watch an open-air movie. The old man said: "The village has not played a movie for many years, and I want my son to see it." ”

That night, Liu Chengjin lay in bed and lost sleep: It has been almost 20 years of reform and opening up, why can't the countryside still watch movies?

At that time, Liu Chengjin, who had bid farewell to the military camp for two years, contracted a small printing factory, and business had just begun to pick up. When he was in the army, he was always rated as a "Lei Feng pacesetter", thinking about what he should do.

A few months later, a movie "caravan" appeared in the fields of the mountain village of Liaoxi. In the following 23 years, the film "caravan" traveled more than 300,000 kilometers, went deep into more than 1,000 remote mountain villages, and screened more than 6,000 films on a voluntary basis... Behind these figures is Liu Chengjin's persistent persistence as the captain of the volunteer film screening team and 7 team members of the Jinzhou veterans in Liaoning.

"As long as there are people who want to see the movie, we will continue to show it."

"As long as the villagers want to see it, we will definitely come back"

Liu Chengjin, who grew up in the countryside, had difficulties at home when he was a child, and thanks to the help of the villagers, he grew up to be an adult, and he also developed a helpful quality with a grateful heart. In his 26 years of military service, Liu Chengjin, who was awarded the second class merit twice and the third class merit seven times, was also a model of lei feng, and most of the allowances and salaries were used to support 43 out-of-school children and take care of two disabled orphans and widows. When he was in the army, he worked as a projectionist and knew very well what kind of spiritual pleasure and comfort movies could bring to people.

How can the peasant masses see movies regularly? Liu Chengjin had the idea of using weekends to go to remote mountain villages to volunteer to show movies for villagers. He quickly contacted 7 old comrades-in-arms, including Zhang Xianlong, Han Yanbin, Zhu Chinese, Peng Yude, Chen Fengjiu, Zhao Yunji, and Han Hanxi, all of whom had worked as projectionists in the army. Everyone hit it off: volunteering to play movies can not only enrich the cultural life of the villagers, but also make their own amateur life more fulfilling.

The biggest difficulty in volunteering to play movies is funding. When the screening team was first established, there was no projection equipment, and they rented equipment and films from film companies at their own expense. Without a vehicle, Liu Chengjin borrowed it from friends and family.

Their first voluntary screening was in the magpie village of Xibachi township, a remote village on the Bohai Sea, and the film screened was "Garland Under the Mountain". The villagers were as happy as the New Year, wearing new clothes, waiting at the screening venue early, and many villagers also came from outside the village, and the walls, trees, and roofs were full of people.

In small talk with the villagers, Liu Chengjin found that the village had not played a movie for more than 10 years. Seeing that rural cultural life is so barren has strengthened Liu Chengjin's determination to volunteer to play movies for villagers.

A few days later, several elementary school students in Magpie Village wrote a letter to Liu Chengjin, telling them that they "saw the outside world from the movie" and "when they grew up, they would play movies for everyone like uncles"... Liu Chengjin said: "After reading the children's letters, I feel that my whole body is full of energy, and no matter how tired I am, I have to put down the movie." ”

What moved Liu Chengjin even more was that every time the movie was released, the hordes of villagers would send them from the village to the village entrance, and then from the village mouth to the road. What made Liu Chengjin most memorable was an old man in his seventies who took his hand and said, "Our village is biased, can you come next time?" Liu Chengjin shook the old man's hand and said, "As long as the villagers want to see it, we will definitely return it." ”

It was on this night that Liu Chengjin decided to take out the 50,000 yuan he was going to buy a new house for his daughter and bought a van specifically as a "caravan" for movies.

"If money is collected, the word 'obligation' will change its flavor and disappear."

In the past 23 years, Liu Chengjin and the members of the screening team have traveled more than 300,000 kilometers, footprints throughout more than 1,000 remote mountain villages and more than 200 communities, enterprises, schools, border posts, for nearly one million people to screen more than 6,000 films, to buy, repair, update projection equipment and vehicles spent nearly one million yuan, almost spent all of Liu Chengjin's income from operating a printing plant. Many people do not understand Liu Chengjin, is he not at all distressed? Liu Chengjin smiled frankly: "If you are worried about money, you will not do this." ”

Liu Chengjin volunteered to put on movies for the vast number of peasants at his own expense, which not only enriched the cultural life of the villagers, but also "drummed" their pockets.

"We can't just be satisfied with the obligation to put on movies, it is also our responsibility to help farmers get rid of poverty and become rich." When Liu Chengjin played the movie, he found that the reason for the poverty of many villagers was the lack of information, so he proposed to the team members to take the opportunity of the movie to send scientific and technological books and information materials to the villagers. He also told his villagers his phone number, telling them that they did not have to go to the city, and he would think of helping to solve them by making a phone call. Wenjiagou Village is rich in high-quality jujubes, but because of its remote location, suffering from finding no market, Liu Chengjin learned about it and publicized it for free to help Wenjiagou Village open the market for jujubes. With the help of Liu Chengjin, potatoes from Baimiaozi Township, sweet apricots from Xingshan Town, wild vegetables from Lengjiagou and jellyfish from Cuijiatun have also entered the market.

"The screening team is not a 'drama team', but a welfare team for the people." Liu Chengjin said: When the screening team was established, it made a rule: Do not charge the masses a penny, do not eat a meal from the masses, do not smoke a cigarette from the masses, and do not add a little trouble to the masses. In recent years, with the growing fame of the veteran screening team, some merchants have found Liu Chengjin and proposed that as long as they help them broadcast advertisements for a few minutes before the screening, they are willing to take out hundreds of thousands of yuan of sponsorship fees every year, but Liu Chengjin has rejected them. The villagers who embarked on the road to prosperity thanked Liu Chengjin and the screening team for sending money and gifts, and Liu Chengjin politely refused, "If you receive money and goods, the word 'obligation' will change its taste and go out of shape." ”

He also never forgot to say that sentence: "In the land of Jinzhou, the People's Liberation Army has a good story of 'not eating an apple under an apple tree'. We are from the military and cannot discredit the military. ”

"No matter how much difficulty you encounter, never give up and never stop"

There is another reason that supports Liu Chengjin to lead the screening team for 23 years. On January 8, 1999, Han Hanxi, a member of the screening team, died of a sudden heart attack due to overwork during the screening, at the age of 42. At the last moment of his life, Han Hanxi instructed him: "Captain, no matter what difficulties you encounter in the future, you must grit your teeth and hold on, don't give up..."

Later, Liu Chengjin wiped his tears and led the team members to swear to the flag of the screening team: no matter how much difficulty they encounter, they will never give up, never stop, and never fail to live up to the deathbed instructions of their old comrades-in-arms!

"As long as the masses need it, no matter how great the difficulties, they must be raised." After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Liu Chengjin organized team members to rush to the disaster area overnight and played more than 50 movies for the affected people for more than 20 consecutive days. During the period, Liu Chengjin and the team members also assisted the rescue team in checking the damage to the houses, transferring the affected people, and rescuing the injured and carrying materials.

In 2013, several soldiers on an island found Liu Chengjin through the media, hoping to show them a movie, Liu Chengjin learned that the soldiers were stationed on the island with difficult conditions all year round, without saying a word, the next day he and the team members carried 5 large boxes of screening equipment on the isolated island by boat, specifically for several soldiers to play movies.

When the movie was played on the island, the sea breeze struck, and Liu Chengjin was afraid that the curtain would be swept away, so he and another team member dragged the curtain under the curtain with both hands until the movie was finished. There were no extra beds in the barracks on the island, so Liu Chengjin and the team members found some wooden planks and set up simple wooden beds and clothes to sleep.

With this dedication and deep friendship with the masses, in the past 23 years, from the border to Zhenbao Island, Black Blind Island to the earthquake-stricken areas of Sichuan, the footprints of this veteran volunteer film screening team have been left behind. Liu Chengjin is often asked, now that television and the Internet are so popular, will anyone still watch open-air movies? Liu Chengjin still said, "As long as there are people who want to watch movies, we will continue to show them." ”

Nowadays, the team of Jinzhou veteran volunteer film screening team is growing, and there are more and more volunteers in the screening team, and screening teams have also been set up in Hebei, Jiangsu and other places.

When the reporter interviewed Liu Chengjin, it was just in time for the weekend, he and his team members drove more than 100 kilometers to a home for the elderly in a remote township to play a special movie for more than a dozen widows and elderly people...

Above: In 2008, Liu Chengjin (second from right) led a volunteer film screening team of veterans in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, to the Sichuan earthquake-stricken area to screen movies for the affected people and send books to children. Photo by Jiang Yukun