Vernacular prose: Childhood Shadow Fun
Text: Wang Weide
The past of childhood is like an old wine, mellow and luscious, with a long aftertaste.
I spent my childhood in a small, remote mountain village in the countryside. In the early 1970s, the cultural life in the countryside was poor, and watching a movie became the most "luxury" enjoyment. The commune has a film screening team, which tours for many years and months. Whenever a movie is played, the village is as lively as the New Year, and the masses of the eight villages in ten miles help the old and the young, and come in groups to watch. Whether it is an old film or a new film or a good film, it is almost "full".
At that time, it was open-air movies in the countryside. Two tree poles were buried in a spacious open space, and a screen was hung, and a low-power diesel generator was placed tens of meters away, using a very backward 16 mm projector, which often failed. The open-air theater is afraid of rain, the second is afraid of wind, and the third is afraid of mosquitoes. Sometimes God changed his face, it rained, everyone rushed home to get rain gear, opened the umbrella, put on a bucket, put on a raincoat, and continued to watch, and the field was suddenly full of colorful "mushrooms". Sometimes when there is a strong wind, the wind blows the screen into the shape of a pot, the drums swing around, the image is deformed, the sound is inaudible, but no one is willing to leave.
Watching movies, the most exciting thing is the children. We, the most active small movie fans, inquired early into the village on which day the movie was played, did not care about dinner, early to the movie venue to occupy the best position, and circled a large place with stones, in order to prevent other children from sneaking attacks, we often starved there and guarded it until the family came.
Whenever the projectionist tried the machine, we naughty ghosts used our small hands to make various shapes and cast them on the screen, causing bursts of laughter from the audience from time to time. As soon as the movie began, the noisy screening venue was immediately quiet, and the children stretched their necks and looked attentive, their eyes staring like pigeon eggs, not blinking.
At that time, although there were no special effects shots in the movies, because the theme was mostly war films, it was mostly in line with the "appetite" of our small film fans. Such as "Southern Expedition and Northern War", "Crossing the River Reconnaissance", "Shining Red Star", "Railway Guerrilla", "Chicken Feather Letter", "Little Soldier Zhang Ga", "Mine Warfare", "Tunnel Warfare", "Two Little Eight Roads", "Plain Guerrilla", etc., there are many more, in many films, my favorite to watch is "Little Soldier Zhang Ga", I watched it three times in a row or felt that it was not too addictive, so I went to the outer village with the adults to see it. Unexpectedly, when the film was halfway through, suddenly lightning and thunder began to rain heavily, and the good end of the movie field was scattered. In the panic, I ran out with the flow of people, in the dark night I could not distinguish between east and west, north and south, followed a group of strangers to run to the outer village of more than 10 miles, I was anxious and afraid of wow wow crying, fortunately the kind people sent me home. Although I suffered a loss that time, I did not regret it at all, and as soon as I had a good film, I still followed the adults to the village as always.
It is the nature of children to love imitation. We like to live and lively perform a wonderful clip from the film. Although we stink, we love and hate, worship heroes, and hate bad people.
Every time we performed, we competed to play positive characters such as underground parties, guerrillas, and commanders and fighters of our army, and we were unwilling to play negative characters such as devils, traitors, landlords, and spies. The performances of the little friends, from language expressions, facial expressions to physical movements, are exquisite, which makes the onlookers marvel.
There were seven or eight stacks of grass several stories high in the production team's threshing ground, and we dug them into holes, and there were holes in the haystacks, and the holes were connected. On a moonlit night, according to the plot of the movie "Tunnel War", as soon as we found someone coming, we shouted: "The devil has entered the village!" "More than 20 friends all burrowed into the grass hole, and disappeared without a trace in the blink of an eye."
Thinking about the past of watching movies in my childhood, I seem to have plugged in the wings made of film film, flew over time and space, and returned to the innocent, happy and happy childhood.
About the author: Wang Weide, male, born in the 60s, a member of the Communist Party of China, works in Rizhao Radio and Television Station, likes to write, so far there have been more than 300 news and literary works scattered in national, provincial, municipal newspapers and periodicals, many works have won awards.