1951 Shandong, China

Yuwen Wang
1943
Shandong, China
Interviewed on February 5th, 2024
by Joshua Gao

Movies. When I was young, because I grew up in the countryside, I didn’t have a concept of what they were. One day when I was five or six years old, while my friends and I were playing at the local lake, a sister in my village told us there would be a movie that night. She told us to go home early, eat dinner quickly, and then head over to the neighboring village. When we arrived, I saw the production people busy at work; they were setting up this massive white blanket (later I would this was a “screen”) and also this machine – spinning, spinning, spinning – at the center. The very first movie I saw was The White-Haired Girl. While we were there I thought it was so odd, how did people get onto the white blanket? I was so amazed. For me, I wasn’t too focused on what the people on screen were doing – I was just so amazed by the machine. How could people get inside it? I would walk around, trying to figure it out. At some point, the worker had to pull me aside; he said I was blocking the projector lens.

We were very silly and young, just five and six – we didn’t know anything compared with the kids today. At the time, we had our small benches pulled up at the front near the screen, and when I became restless, I would run behind the screen to watch the film in reverse for a bit – it still worked *chuckles*. This was the first movie I watched. It was black and white. At first, I didn’t really understand the content; I just saw people running back and forth on the screen. I didn’t understand why the White-Haired Girl went into the mountain or why her hair turned white. There was something about a large blizzard, really cold weather, and a girl who would sing and dance dance in her room… This girl was fighting with an old man.

Now, I understand the politics, that the old person was a land owner back in the day, who, with his power and authority, took this woman as his wife. She didn’t want this so she escaped into the mountains, and there, her hair turned white. When I heard the adults talk about this, I later understood that her boyfriend rescued her from the mountains and her hair eventually turned black again.

At the time, when I was 5 or 6, it was almost like we didn’t understand anything. We just saw people going in and out, fighting and brawling. Who were the actors? Who produced the music? Who filmed it? We didn’t know any of this information. We were just there for the 热闹 lively, exciting atmosphere.

At the time we watched it with the kids of the village, 四姨奶奶 your great aunt, 三舅爺爺 your great uncle, and a bunch of my other siblings. Mom didn’t come because she had a lot of things to do at home. She had really small feet *motions a length of about 4 inches* because back then women’s feet were bound. It would have been really hard to walk over to the other village… We had to cross a small river on the stones that protruded from the water. Then, we hiked upward along a small, beautiful trail to reach a large, clear opening: the neighboring village’s threshing floor. It was here that they played the movie.

In my memory, there was a massive group of people. Little kids at the front with their little stools, older people behind them with slightly higher benches. At the back, some would stand to watch, and then down to come to it, the teenagers would climb trees for a better view. There were probably 400-500 people.