Film Screening

The next day, the entire family went to the Overseas Chinese Store together and ended up blowing right through their budget. First, they bought an imported twelve-inch black-and-white television for 420 yuan. Chen Qi then picked out an imported Swiss watch, which also ran several hundred bucks, followed by a pair of sneakers. He wasn't about to wear cloth shoes anymore—not even the ones with red rubber soles. His parents wanted everything, yet couldn't bear to spend money on anything. Only after their son insisted did each of them pick out a pair of leather shoes, a dress shirt, and a pair of trousers, saved strictly for formal occasions. They had little interest in food and drinks, mostly just curious for the novelty, so Chen Qi bought a case of tiger penis liquor and two cases of tiger bone liquor to show his filial piety to his dad. Yu Xiuli rolled her eyes all the way to the heavens, yet surprisingly didn't object. He had wanted to buy more, but unfortunately that was all the store had in stock. Tiger bone liquor was fine, but this tiger penis liquor would become completely unobtainable in future generations. He even found himself wondering about the production: there was no way one penis yielded only a single bottle of liquor—even driving tigers to extinction wouldn't supply enough. Who knew how many bottles one penis was stretched into, just like those tonics made of turtle essence. As they were about to leave, Chen Qi remembered he still needed to buy a camera. Only then did he run short on cash and had to withdraw more on the spot. Yu Xiuli's heart ached terribly over the spending. In truth, combined with his previous savings, Chen Qi had around fifteen thousand yuan. Spending this much was a mere drop in the bucket. Moreover, those overseas remittance certificates came with expiration dates—usually a year, though some lasted three or six months. Families who couldn't use them up often transferred them to others. The certificates had another major use: purchasing building materials. People looking to build a house to take a wife often moved heaven and earth to acquire some certificates, as timber, cement, and the like were all tightly rationed goods. *** "Oh my goodness, are you three trying to spend yourselves into bankruptcy? Good heavens, look at all that stuff!" "Don't even get me started! The boy earned a little writing fee from an article for Hong Kong, and didn't they issue some overseas remittance certificates with it? He insisted on dragging us both out shopping, absolutely refused to take no for an answer! We figured, fine, let's go—can't let the child's good intentions go to waste!" "Oho, a television! You folks bought one too?" "Looks wonderful! What size is it?" "Not big, not big at all, just twelve inches! Come over and watch tonight, everybody—don't be polite!" When the family of three returned to the residential courtyard, they instantly became the center of attention. Radiating sheer prestige, Yu Xiuli reached the absolute pinnacle of her life—though ever since Chen Qi transmigrated here, pinnacles in her life had been happening rather frequently. The neighbors swarmed around the twelve-inch television, clicking their tongues in marvel. Uncle Zhang stood among them, wearing a face of hollow congratulations while his heart cramped with envy: *We're finished! Ours is only nine inches!* And what did twelve inches really mean? An iPad Pro was thirteen inches, and a Xiaomi phone was already over six... After carrying on for a while, the crowd drifted outside. Once out the door, however, their expressions shifted entirely. "Writing articles for Hong Kong, huh? If this were a few years back, he'd have been dragged right out to the stage!" "Did you hear that? Those leather shoes of hers cost twenty yuan! Good grief, just how tough does your fate have to be to wear twenty-yuan shoes? Mark my words, no good will come of it!" Nothing hurt more than seeing your neighbor struggle, except seeing your neighbor drive a Land Rover. Yu Xiuli naturally understood that mindset, but she thought to herself: *I'm the one who gave birth to this son, I'm the one wearing these leather shoes, and I'm the one enjoying good fortune. All you lot can do is turn into red-eyed rabbits with envy.* Feeling ever more delighted, she asked, "Son, what do you want to eat? I'll fry up a few hearty dishes tonight." "I won't stay to eat. I have to head back in a bit; there's a huge pile of work waiting." "Don't rush off! Leave after eating!" "No, really, I can't..." Chen Qi shook his head repeatedly to avoid the fuss, then added, "Keep the remittance certificates at home. Buy whatever you need, and don't scrimp on them—they expire in a year. Oh, right, any leads on a house?" "That matter is rather complicated!" Chen Jianjun spoke up, taking his time. "A while back, the central leadership floated an initiative and circulated a document approving private construction and private purchases of houses. But after asking around carefully, the actual situation is a mess. "I went to see a property—front and back courtyards, eighteen rooms in all. Ah, what a great compound, right over by Gulou Street. "It used to be privately owned, then got confiscated, and the government moved a bunch of families in. "Under the current restitution policy, it ought to be returned to the original owner. But here's the catch: the owner can't evict those tenants. They have to keep living there unless they find new housing on their own. Those people just become renters, paying a few yuan a month in rent. "And do you know what the crux of the problem is?" Chen Jianjun had a keen interest in policy and held forth effortlessly. "Those are all old houses, dilapidated and long neglected. The owner has to cover all the maintenance costs! Just think about what a mess that is: you can't collect more than a few bucks, you can't kick them out, and you still have to pay to repair their housing. "The way I see it, even if the property is returned, the owner will end up selling it right back to the state. Nobody can afford to keep it..." "Whoa, whoa, easy on the armchair politics!" Chen Qi blurted out, startled. Yet this truly was a lingering issue from history. Extending from the 1980s well into the 2000s, the state continued to hold countless single-story courtyard properties, where residents lived for decades and passed them down to their children without ever holding property rights. "Then can we still buy anything?" Yu Xiuli asked. "We just have to keep looking," Chen Jianjun replied. "Look for smaller courtyards with fewer rooms—run-down places where nobody wants to live. We can buy one, fix it up, and commission a set of furniture; that'd be quite nice too. Or we could build a house ourselves, but that requires land. Where on earth would we get a plot of land?" "No rush. We can take our time looking. How old am I anyway?" After chatting with his parents about the housing matter, Chen Qi headed back to the Beijing Film Studio with his newly bought camera. Now he could snap photos to his heart's content. *** All reforms originated from some underlying contradiction. Just as opening up collective enterprises and individual businesses had fundamentally been about finding employment for the massive population of youths awaiting employment. Housing followed the same logic. In the past, housing possessed no commodity attributes; everything belonged to the state and was allocated for individuals to live in. While meant as a welfare policy, as the population grew, there were never enough homes to go around, and the nation was too poor to pour massive capital into housing. Commercializing housing was an inevitable choice. The leadership had proposed the concept early on, but the reform proved immensely arduous, taking nearly twenty years to complete—a story for another time. Whether Chen Qi bought an existing home or built one from scratch didn't matter to him. His priority was location; as long as the location was right, everything was fine. *** China Film Corporation. The second-quarter film screening conference was currently underway. Representatives from provincial film distribution companies across the country had gathered in the capital. This year's national quota was set at eighty films—averaging twenty per quarter. Over the course of a few days, they had to watch them all and rely on their own judgment to decide how many prints to purchase. Once they bought the prints, they would return to arrange exhibition schedules for municipal and county-level film companies. Even in this era, release windows were a consideration; strong pictures were slotted for holidays, though the system was far less sophisticated than in later years. Prints came in three formats: 35mm, 16mm, and 8.75mm. The first was screened in large movie theaters—namely, in cities. The latter two were used in small cinemas or mobile screenings, suited for township and rural projection teams. Whenever people in later years recalled the glory days—such as *The Shaolin Temple* selling over four hundred prints and setting all sorts of records—they were referring solely to the first format. If the latter two were included, total print counts reached into the thousands. "..." At that moment, inside the screening room, *Romance on Mount Lu*—which had already been screened countless times prior to its official release—was showing yet again. Hong Kong and Macau had not yet returned, Chongqing was still part of Sichuan, and Hainan fell under Guangdong's jurisdiction, which left twenty-nine provincial company representatives watching the sensational *Romance on Mount Lu* for the very first time. It was truly extraordinary. If one were looking for deep philosophical thought, there was none to be found. But it was thoroughly entertaining. A handsome young man and a beautiful woman falling in love against a backdrop of breathtaking scenery—who wouldn't love that? By custom, the representatives had to fill out requisition forms. The densely populated Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region had numerous theaters and was traditionally a major buyer of prints. The Jiangsu representative thought of his province's fiercely independent, disjointed sibling cities and felt a massive headache. *The movie is fantastic, so let's buy big!* After some thought, he filled in a figure he considered enormous, then glanced around, looking down on the rest of the room. Buying more prints demonstrated sheer financial clout. As the representatives handed in their forms, the staff from China Film tallied the numbers on the spot. Their brows furrowed deeper and deeper, and their eyes grew wider and wider. Someone couldn't resist calling out, "Well, what's the total?" "Have you tallied it up yet? Give us a number!" "Quiet, quiet down!" Holding a sheet of paper, the China Film staff member announced the results: "*Romance on Mount Lu*: 35mm prints: 360! 16mm prints: 2,200! 8.75mm prints: 1,600!" *Hiss!* Everyone in the room sucked in a breath of Chen Qi.