Chapter 30
◎Movie Time◎
At five in the afternoon, the mung bean soup in the pot was bubbling. Yu Juanfang lifted the lid to take a look. The mung beans inside had all bloomed, and the whole room was filled with the fragrance of mung bean soup. She took out the sugar jar from the cupboard, added two large pieces of slab sugar, stirred until it dissolved, then ladled it out and placed it on top of a bucket filled with well water to cool down.
At seven in the evening, on the Su family’s mat-covered kang, Tangtang was concentrating on solving a word problem. Su Juesheng was sharpening a small wooden sword on the floor, and the whole main hall was filled with the scraping sound of him sharpening the sword. Su Huimin walked in and happened to see this scene, and couldn’t help but frown. “Juesheng, don’t disturb your sister’s homework.”
“Oh.” Su Juesheng glanced at his dad and guiltily put away the small wooden sword in his hand.
With the sound of sharpening the sword suddenly gone from the main hall, Tangtang looked up. “Dad, it’s okay. The sound doesn’t affect me, and I’m almost done anyway.”
In fact, Tangtang’s room also had a kerosene lamp, but to save lamp oil, she usually did her homework in the main hall more often.
“Look how your sister is letting you off. Don’t you know how to think from her perspective?”
“Aren’t you in the same class as your sister? How come I’ve never seen you do any homework? Every day after school, you’re either running wild all over the world or fiddling with these messy things?” Su Huimin frowned.
“I’ve finished it. I finished it at school.”
Fortunately, Su Huimin didn’t say he wanted to check it. Su Juesheng let out a long sigh of relief.
“Brother Shunian, what are you looking at? It’s even in color, with so many kinds of plants.” Su Juesheng saw Zhou Shunian looking at a booklet in his hand and his eyes widened, as if he had discovered a new continent. “The flowers and plants on it are so realistic!”
The textbooks and picture books they usually read were all in black and white. Color prints were rare. The booklet in Zhou Shunian’s hand was not only rich in color, but also beautifully printed, something they rarely had access to.
“This is a plant guide. It’s about some common plants in daily life.” Seeing his interest, Zhou Shunian simply handed him the plant guide to look at.
“A plant guide?” Tangtang also leaned her head over, her eyes sparkling. “Brother Shunian, is there a guide for crabapple blossoms in it?”
Tangtang remembered her dad, Su Huimin, saying that Su Xintang meant crabapple blossoms in spring.
She liked this name, so she naturally had a fondness for the crabapple blossom, but she had never seen one in her life.
“Crabapple blossom?” Hearing her words, Zhou Shunian flipped through the plant guide in his hand but couldn’t find it. He shook his head regretfully. “There’s no crabapple blossom in here.”
Hearing this, a trace of disappointment flashed across Tangtang’s face. She sighed. “That’s a pity. I’ve never seen a crabapple blossom before.”
Zhou Shunian patted her head, a comforting smile on his face. “You’ll definitely have the chance to see one in the future.”
“Time for mung bean soup.” Yu Juanfang came into the room with the mung bean soup, and Su Juesheng followed behind with the bowls and chopsticks.
Yu Juanfang served each of them a bowl.
“Thank you, Auntie Yu.”
Tangtang followed suit. “Thank you, Mom.”
Yu Juanfang smiled and ruffled her head.
The mung bean soup had been chilled in well water for three hours. It was cool and particularly sweet to drink. The mung beans were cooked until they were sandy, and after swallowing, one couldn’t help but take another big gulp.
“Brother Shunian, Tangtang, do you know that our brigade is going to show a movie tomorrow night!” Su Juesheng said, drinking the mung bean soup and sharing the news he had gathered.
“A movie?” Tangtang exclaimed. “Then we have a movie to watch tomorrow.”
Today was the last day of the agricultural learning activity. With the help of these students, the spring plowing had progressed much faster than in previous years. In addition, the village hadn’t shown a movie for a long time. The village party secretary made a grand gesture and allocated a sum of money from the brigade to hire professional movie projectionists to show a movie for everyone.
After school, Tangtang and the others went to the mountains to gather a basket of dry firewood. They heard the children in the village running and cheering, “Movie time, movie time! Our brigade is showing a movie tonight!”
In the open space at the village entrance, a white screen had already been set up. The two projectionists who had been hired were invited to the village chief’s house for dinner.
Hearing this, Su Juesheng was extremely excited. “Let’s go, let’s hurry home to help with the cooking so we can get a good spot early!”
After the brother and sister returned home, they poured the dry firewood in front of the stove. Yu Juanfang was cutting an old pumpkin. Tangtang helped wash the tomatoes. Su Juesheng cleaned out the ashes from the stove so that the fire would burn more vigorously and save firewood later.
The sorghum rice was already cooked.
After heating the stir-fry pot, Yu Juanfang scraped a small piece of lard, added minced garlic to stir-fry until fragrant, and then added the sliced old pumpkin to the pot to stir-fry. After a few stirs, she added a little water, covered the pot, and let it simmer for a while. Before serving, she sprinkled a handful of chopped scallions, and the pumpkin was ready.
Next was to make tomato soup. She stir-fried the diced tomatoes with a little salt to release their juices, then added a ladle of water. After the water boiled, she beat in an egg and stirred it, making a large pot of tomato and egg drop soup.
At six in the afternoon, Tangtang’s family of four began to eat. The old pumpkin was particularly fragrant, sweet, and soft, and the mouth was full of the mellow aroma of pumpkin. The tomato and egg drop soup was sour and refreshing to drink. Su Juesheng and Zhou Shunian were at their last activity dinner at Yuhuai Village Primary School and wouldn’t be back for dinner. While eating, Su Juesheng kept craning his neck to look outside, afraid of missing anything.
Seeing his poor posture, Yu Juanfang couldn’t help but tap the rim of his bowl with her chopsticks. “Eat properly. I asked when I came back. The movie they’re showing is From Victory to Victory. You’ve all seen this movie so many times.”
Hearing From Victory to Victory, Su Juesheng was briefly disappointed for a second, but he quickly regained his excitement. “I love watching From Victory to Victory too. As long as it’s a movie, I love watching it!”
Yu Juanfang was helpless against him. After rolling her eyes, she simply lowered her head and shoveled rice into her mouth. Out of sight, out of mind.
In the rural areas of the 1960s, a time when entertainment was extremely scarce, open-air movies were a simple and magical form of entertainment for the villagers. After the sun set, the villagers would rush home from work, hastily eat a little food, and then take their families to the place where the movie was being shown to get the best viewing spot, afraid of missing even a little bit of the movie.
By the time Tangtang and Su Juesheng arrived at the open space where the movie was being shown, it was already full of people. Su Juesheng waved at them from a distance. “Tangtang, Juesheng, I’ve saved you a spot.”
The spot Su Juesheng had saved for them was in the front row, next to the students from Yuanlin Middle School. Compared to the chattering villagers behind them, this group of students seemed much more well-behaved. After the brother and sister sat down on the small stools, they watched as the projectionist began to adjust the projection equipment.
“Why hasn’t it started yet? Didn’t they say the movie would start at seven? It’s already 7:20!” Some of the villagers had been waiting here since just after six. After being bitten by mosquitoes for an hour and watching the projectionist dawdle for a long time, they grumbled with dissatisfaction.
“This is so slow, slower than the old yellow ox in the production team’s breeding room plowing the fields. If I had known, I would have stayed at home and made a couple more pairs of shoe soles!”
“Are they going to show it or not? We’re about to be eaten alive by mosquitoes.” As the woman spoke, she slapped a mosquito with her hand, and bright red blood stuck to her palm.
A child also spoke up. “Uncle, hurry up. If you’re any slower, we won’t be able to count all the mosquitoes we’ve killed!”
The projectionist frequently wiped the sweat from his forehead. He adjusted it twice more, but the screen was still a blank white. “How could this be? It was working fine this afternoon.”
“It’s all your fault. I told you this afternoon to test it again, but you didn’t listen and insisted that it would be fine. Now look, how are we going to explain this to everyone?” The accompanying projectionist paced back and forth anxiously.
“This has never happened before. How would I know it would be so unlucky? Instead of complaining here, you should think about how to deal with this tricky situation! We might both get a public criticism, and maybe even lose our jobs!”
“I should think of a way? What way could I have?”
The problem with the movie projection was not solved, but the two projectionists started to have an internal conflict first.
“Let me try.” Zhou Shunian stood up.
“Can you do it?” The projectionist’s gaze fell on the teenage boy before him, his eyes full of doubt. Could such a young man fix such a complicated piece of equipment?
Zhou Shunian scratched his mosquito-bitten arm. “Not necessarily, but I can try. It’s better than blindly fiddling with it and making it worse.”
“Let him try.” The projectionist moved aside.
Although Zhou Shunian had repaired small items like flashlights and tape recorders at home, he had never touched a large machine like a movie projector before. He desperately tried to recall the physics knowledge he had learned. After lifting the cover, he found that a piece of film was stuck in the crack of a gear, its edges already frayed and curled. “The film is tangled in the gear.”
He used a pair of tweezers to pull out the tangled film from the gear bit by bit, cleaned the grease from the gear, reinstalled the film, and then checked the generator and the speaker. “Try turning on the power again.”
A beam of light from the projector shot over their heads, revealing countless fine dust particles dancing in the air. The beam of light landed steadily on the screen, and a black and white image began to appear.
A cheer erupted from the crowd.
“The movie is on! The movie is on!” The villagers were no longer chattering. Their eyes were all attracted to the movie on the screen.
The movie being shown tonight was From Victory to Victory.
The film was adapted from the play The Front Line. It mainly told the story of how, in early 1947, after the seven victories of the East China Field Army in northern Jiangsu, they made a strategic transfer. Facing a pincer attack from twenty-five enemy divisions from the north and south, our army, under the command of the commander, formulated a correct combat strategy, defeated the enemy from south to north, and finally achieved victory.
Zhou Shunian’s original spot had been taken by someone else. He had seen this movie many times and was no longer interested. He simply stood to the side of the crowd.
“Brother Shunian, here you go.” Tangtang handed him a bottle of cooling oil.
Zhou Shunian was wearing a short-sleeved shirt today, and his arms were covered in mosquito bites. This was truly a pillow for a sleepy head. He opened the lid of the cooling oil, and a refreshing scent filled the air.
“These mosquitoes only know how to bite outsiders.”
Tangtang retorted in a low voice, “Actually, that’s not true. These mosquitoes also bite the locals.”