1951 Emeishan, China

Kaigui Deng

1939

Emeishan, China

Interviewed on February 13, 2021

by Emily Ji

This interview was conducted in Mandarin and translated into English.

The first movie that I ever watched was The Sun Shines on Gaodi Village (太阳照到高地村). I was probably 12 years old at the time. I watched it in my hometown, which was a village in rural China. Back then, there was no electricity in the countryside. We had never watched a movie before. I’m not talking about 12-year-olds like myself. What I mean is, in my village, anyone who was older also had never watched a movie before. None of us even knew what the word “electricity” meant! What was “electricity”? We didn’t have any electricity!

In 1951, although there was no electricity, a county-level organization that held movie screenings came to my village to screen one. A film projection team arrived with all of the necessary equipment, and there were experts who knew how to set up the film projector, insert the film reel, etc. In those days, the countryside didn’t have any movie theaters. My elementary school had a sports field—had a basketball court—so they stuck two poles into the ground and hung up a curtain there. Now, if you’re watching a movie, and there’s no electricity, what do you do? A movie needs electricity, right? You go get a hand-cranked generator; you probably don’t even know what a hand-cranked generator is! There were two young lads—it was like they were riding a bicycle, pedaling and pedaling—one on each side of the generator, turning the crank with their feet. As they turned the crank, the generator produced electricity. This was how we watched the movie [laughs]. The countryside was very technologically backward in those days, wouldn’t you agree? Also, back then, there were no color films like the ones today. There were only black-and-white films.

An example of an outdoor movie screening in 1950s China

Now, this movie, what was it about? It was about Northeast China—the Communists had recently defeated the Nationalists—and how land was redistributed among the peasants. Before this, many peasants rented land instead of owning it. They also had to use a large portion of their harvest to pay the rent, so they could only keep a small portion for themselves. In the movie, after the land was confiscated from landlords and redistributed among the peasantry, the peasants were so happy. They then had to figure out how to divide the land, how to measure the farmland. Peasants were in the fields measuring with rulers. What is the length and width of this section? What is the area? And then they divided it up. The peasants were so happy. Now that they have their land, how do they cultivate it? There was no agricultural machinery. At the time, China was very, very underdeveloped. Horses and cows were rarely used for farming, and we mostly relied on human labor to plant crops. The movie primarily depicted the following: peasants are allocated land, everyone is engaged in agricultural production, and the enthusiasm for manual labor is very strong. Everyone is warm and energetic, and everyone helps each other with harvesting crops. There is a lot of cooperation and collaboration.

Because this is something that happened several decades ago, maybe more than 60 years ago, I think my memories of the film itself end here. I’ve forgotten a lot over the past decades, so if you ask me who were the characters depicted in the movie, right now it’s all really…all I remember is feeling extremely happy about watching a movie for the first time. The children in the audience didn’t even understand the concept of a movie character, a male protagonist, or a female protagonist! We had never seen anything like this before! I remember wondering, how is possible that the people on the screen are moving?! [laughs] It was such a bizarre sight! I watched it for fun rather than solely focusing on what was the story or what was the plot. Everything struck me as strange, intriguing, and exciting! I was so amazed! There were definitely protagonists in the movie though. For example, the village had a village head, and there were relationships among various households. Also, when the peasants were dividing up the land, some people received good quality land, and others received bad quality land. Therefore, there were various conflicts in the movie, and the movie showed how these conflicts were resolved.

It was a truly joyful event. Every household, adults, children—all were full of excitement and curiosity. As soon as the news about the movie screening spread, everyone thought, what’s going on? They then ran over to find out—young people, old people, anyone who could walk. Some mothers even carried infants on their backs to go watch the movie! [laughs] It was very fun. There were probably 600 or 700 people in that basketball court—quite a lot. It was an outdoor movie, so there was no roof. There weren’t even any chairs. Some people arrived carrying small stools while others didn’t bring anything and just stood there and watched. There were no buses, cars, or even bicycles at the time, so many people walked a long way to see the film—for half an hour or more. The movie was free, of course. If the movie cost money, I don’t think anyone would have come. This was rural China, so everyone was poor.

After the movie ended, everyone started discussing it. On the walk home, you heard, “Goodness gracious! Were the people on the screen actually moving?” No one truly understood the concept of a movie, even though they had just watched one. They didn’t understand how the characters were able to walk and talk. “Why were people appearing on a curtain? Where did these people come from? Where did they go?” Everyone was so bewildered and amazed. No one had ever seen anything like this before. Back then, peasants in the countryside didn’t even have flashlights because they were so poor. Some people lit torches by bundling together dry branches before walking home from the movie screening. Some people just groped around in the dark—there was no electric light—and relied on the faint moonlight and starlight to get home. This was the moviegoing experience.

[Note: Despite searching through China’s version of Google and IMDb, I could not find The Sun Shines on Gaodi Village. Therefore, for the feature image, I chose a screenshot from People Moving Up (人往高处走)—a black-and-white film produced in 1954, which is around the same time as this moviegoing memory. People Moving Up also took place in China’s countryside after the Chinese Communist Party’s victory and focused on the benefits of agricultural producers’ cooperatives. Therefore, this movie is probably very similar to the one mentioned in this interview.]