1962 Beijing, China

Ma Lehsin
Born 1938
Beijing, China
Interviewed on 09/23/19
by Ryan Chiao

Beijing in the 60s was nothing like how Beijing is today. We had no foreign films, no Western blockbusters, and only a handful of theatres scattered around the city. But nevertheless, I loved watching movies.

I was 24 at the time and recently began teaching at the local high school. My husband worked as an electrical engineer, and was fascinated with the latest technology. He would always look to bring our daughter and I to the cinema whenever we had pooled enough extra change. Tickets were cheap by today’s standards, but we were living on a very tight budget. This meant that going to the movies was a big event—we planned it out well in advance and looked forward to it for days.

The journey wasn’t an easy one either. Back then, the buses didn’t have air conditioning. During the summer, they could get really stuffy and claustrophobic. Luckily, the ride was only half an hour long—any longer and I would probably have suffocated!

These theatres were very different to the ones that we have now. They were plain and made of concrete, had no snack stand—or at least I don’t remember ever buying anything—and the walls were covered in propaganda. Portraits of Mao Zedong were stencilled onto the walls, and giant murals demonised Western countries. At the time, this was all ordinary to us. I didn’t know any better.

Once we stepped into the cinema, it was really dark. I distinctly remember our daughter being fascinated by the seats. Her body was too small for the big wooden chairs and she loved to flip them up and down—so much so that our neighbours had to ask her to stop.

There wasn’t much choice in the movies that we went to see—usually we would find out what we were watching when we got there. The movie that I remember the clearest today was 地雷戰 (Minefield Battle), a war film that depicted an attempted Japanese invasion of a rural Chinese town.

I absolutely loved it. It was about a group of villagers that came up with unorthodox solutions to detonate bombs buried beneath the ground to ward off their invaders. I remember being very impressed with a strategy that they used at the beginning of the film: the shepherd, tending to his sheep, sees the incoming invaders and pulls down a fake tree to alert the rest of the village, allowing them ample time to lay traps. I thought it was a genius-yet-primitive early warning system, and was astounded by the villagers’ show of ingenuity.

But most fascinating to me were the different types of mines that the villagers used. One in particular was a bomb that they covered with human faeces, such that when detonated it completely covered the Japanese soldier. Another had the detonator tied to a girl’s long hair, and would detonate when she pulled on it while hiding in safety behind a bush. I remember it coming up in conversation at the dinner table for days!

My daughter was especially fond of movies like this one. Whenever she found out that the movie we were about to see was a war drama, she would jump up and down with excitement. I was initially worried about a girl being so into movies with graphic violent scenes, but was later convinced by my husband that stories like this could help to toughen her up and teach her about the harsh realities of life. After all, China during the 60s was an incredibly rough time.

Nowadays, films have become more and more complex, with deeper (and often hidden) messages for the audience to decipher. Looking back, I didn’t care for any of this. Going to the movies was our form of entertainment, our event that we looked forward to for weeks.