As mentioned earlier, I was born in Beijing in the year the Cultural Revolution began, and my parents' ancestral home was in Guangzhou. A few years after the Cultural Revolution began, many central organs in Beijing set up May 7 cadre schools, and the collective staff and workers of the unit went to the May 7 cadre school, and the cadre school of my mother's unit, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, was in Shuibian Town, Xiajiang County, Jiangxi Province, so I was sent to my hometown in Guangzhou, when I was three or four years old, until I was about to go to school when I was six years old, and then I returned to Beijing, and at that time the May Seventh Cadre School was also abolished.
My childhood before school was in Guangzhou, and it was indeed a sunny day.
Our generation is ten years younger than Wang Shuo, Jiang Wen, and Feng Xiaogang. They were growing up in the Military Academy, and I was growing up in the Academy of Geological Sciences.
We have also seen the Red Guards, served as Red Soldiers, participated in the study of farmers, and seen brothers and sisters who wear large red flowers on their chests, beat gongs and drums, display red flags, and go up to the mountains and go to the countryside.
But because we were still very young at the time of the Cultural Revolution, the perspective of the Cultural Revolution period was very different from that of Wang Shuo, Jiang Wen, and Feng Xiaogang.
Pearl River, Guangzhou in the 60s, South Building
At that time, I lived in my grandparents' house most of the time. Our home is on Zhen'an Road on the north side of the Renmin Bridge, diagonally opposite the west gate of Guangzhou Cultural Park, about 50 meters away. During the Cultural Revolution, the West Gate was not opened.
Speaking of Guangzhou Cultural Park, it was my childhood favorite and had a lot of good times. We would go once every two or three days on average, most of the time my grandfather took me, and the rest of the time it was my uncles and aunts who took me to visit.
The main entrance of the cultural park is the south gate, and across the road is the Southern Building in Guangzhou, which is equivalent to a department store in Beijing or the first department store in Shanghai. The picture below is a later one, but I really don't find a map of the cultural park from the 60s.
At that time, Guangzhou people went to the cultural park at night, usually at six or seven o'clock in the evening, after dinner.
Directly opposite the gate, there is a center stage, usually a song and dance performance, but also a symphony band. I was only three or four years old at the time and wasn't interested in that. The song and dance performance seems to be a program such as "The Water of the Wanquan River is Clear and Clear", and the ballet "Red Detachment of Women" is a kind of program.
By the way, in the old anti-special movie "Secret Drawings", the scene where the male protagonist Wang Xingang meets with the female agent No. 23 is the center stage of this cultural park, and the female agent also performs a piano solo on the center stage.
The old version of the anti-special movie "Yangcheng Dark Sentinel", "Tracking Pursuit", "Secret Drawings", all have a large number of long shots to record the attractions of Guangzhou, and the old Guangzhou people can understand it when they see it.
My favorite at that time was the Seafood Hall on the east side of the square facing the center stage. Every time I entered the cultural park, I dragged my grandfather's hand hard to see the fishery museum.
Speaking of this aquarium, it was not simple in the 70s, it is equivalent to the oceanarium in many first-tier cities now (now also a favorite of children), with hundreds of kinds of fish, swimming around in different glass boxes. Every time I went to see it, I thought the fish were very wonderful, because I didn't know the words, and I often had my grandfather read me the text on the signs of each fish.
In addition to the various fish that live, there is a model of a shark that seems to be two meters long.
In addition, there are some models of distant-water fishing boats, in the glass display cabinet, those ship models are very finely made, I often love to touch the glass display cabinet, for more than twenty minutes.
Out of the fishery museum, there is an open-air cinema in the south, I will occasionally go to see, the movies that are played are basically three major wars, "Tunnel War", "Mine Warfare", "Southern Expedition to the North", because the number of times I watched it was too much.
On the west side of the center stage, there is a large windmill, equivalent to the current miniature version of the Ferris wheel, which is three or four stories high. My aunt and uncle both took me to sit.
There is also a rotating plane on the north side, which is a string of small planes, dressed in a large circle and rotating, and two people sit inside each small plane at a time. This is a little bit thrilling, because after turning up, every time it turns, each small plane will rotate 180 degrees on its own in a fixed position, this time the person is head down, and then turn to the opposite position, and then rotate 180 degrees.
The people who play this spinning plane are young people, and here I made a little joke myself. That time was the cultural park that my seventh uncle took me to, when I saw a young man drinking a bottle of dark brown water, which was SARS soda, equivalent to the Arctic Ocean in Beijing, which I had never seen before, and thought it was soy sauce, because I usually liked to use soy sauce to make rice (it was an era of material scarcity). I was surprised to say that seeing the man drinking soy sauce, my seventh uncle laughed...
This shashi soda is very famous among the old Guangzhou people and tastes like wind oil essence. Based on the Mexican plant Sarsaparilla as the main seasoning ingredient, Hong Kong people call Shashe soda, dark brown, sweet, caffeine-free. I don't know if there is any now.
Beijing around 2000 there was an American fast food restaurant Ed Bear, their drink is also dark brown, the taste of wind oil essence, I don't know if it is the same recipe. Ed Bear also went out of business later, no more.
On the north side of the rotating plane, there is a small theater, and there is a marquee exhibition every New Year's Festival, which is called a flower lantern by Beijingers.
Usually, this small theater often performs puppet plays. The puppet theater is also my favorite.
The puppet festivals are very short, when it was the Vietnam War, and China called the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Vietnam. The plots are all supporting the people of Indochina against the aggression of US imperialism.
The puppet show is set on the forest side of Cambodia, where local people, armed with bamboo, ambush and defeat the American devils, and Lon Nol puppet puppet army. This Lon Nol was an American president who supported the Chinese-Cambodian president, and he came to power through the positive change, and China supported Prince Sihanouk, Prince Binnu.
The puppet show ends with the local people escorting the American devils to return triumphantly...
In the eyes of children, they are still deeply impressed by the colorful puppet show.
Next to that small theater, there is a roller skating rink, and there are a lot of beautiful girls (Cantonese), and handsome men and beautiful women skating there. Roller skates are the kind of roller skates that have two ruts in front and back, a bit like Formula One, unlike today's roller skates, which are four rudders in a vertical direction. The roller skating rink is circular, there is an S-shaped ramp, the scene is still quite shocking, can accommodate more than a hundred people to rollerblading, some people are PK each other, very fast.
(This picture is a little clearer than the previous one, and I used a paperweight to press the sides of the remake when I remade it.) ）
Pearl River, South Building, Aiqun Building
To add an anecdote about the west gate of the cultural park at that time, it was 50 meters diagonally opposite our house. At that time, there was a workers' picket stationed at the West Gate, and they were usually majestic, wearing steel helmets and holding long sticks, and lined up neatly. At that time, every evening after work, if someone on the bus said that the wallet had been stolen, the bus conductor would tell the driver that it would close the door and not stop, and the driver would drive the bus to the courtyard of the workers' picket, and in less than ten minutes, the thief was caught, and other passengers came out of it one after another. Then every three months and a half, the workers' pickets organized a public trial meeting on The Street of Zhen'an Road, and escorted the accumulated dozen or so thieves to the stage for public display; the meeting was usually held for half an hour, and then the thieves were escorted away.
The original photo has turned yellow.