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墨書 Inktalez
Since the land reform, many changes have quietly taken place across the vast China Continent. It was at Garden Middle School, nestled deep within Xuefeng Mountain, that I encountered my very first television.
The purchase of this television was not made by the school itself, which embodied the authority of socialist public ownership, nor by any leaders holding positions within the school. Instead, it was a young couple of teachers, Li Gaoshan and Deng Baoju, who made this acquisition.
At that time, the school was still facing tight administrative and educational budgets, and expenditures were strictly regulated. No one dared to take the initiative to buy a television; the leadership—from the director of the Education Office to the principal and then to the head of teaching—were all "half-holders" with families living in rural areas. Accustomed to hardship, they had developed a habit of frugality and would certainly not invest in such a "luxurious item."
Li and Deng were one of the few couples at the school who shared their lives both personally and professionally. They lived on campus, were both under thirty years old, and had a small child. Seeking some entertainment in their spare time and wanting their child to experience new cultural influences, they decided that a television would be a great addition.
As an observing student, I had no idea what discussions or preparations took place before they bought the television, nor did I know how much they spent on this new gadget. However, I still vividly remember the moment when the television arrived at school:
It was a bright afternoon, and most students had already gone home. I was playing on the playground in front of the school as usual when I noticed two teachers pushing their bicycles with a large cardboard box between them. At first, it didn’t catch my attention.
Not long after they entered the front building of the school, cheers erupted from inside, piquing my curiosity. When I stepped inside to take a look, I saw an unfamiliar machine set up on Teacher Li's desk in his dormitory-office. Teacher Deng happily informed me that it was a television.
Outside, several young teachers were digging holes in the space between two rows of classrooms. A five or six-meter-long wooden pole lay nearby as Teacher Duan Banli connected four silver metal rods into an X shape using a small component. He carefully secured this "X" to the top of the wooden pole with iron wire and then cut open a long green plastic strip to expose copper wires at both ends before connecting them to the component in the middle of the "X."
Once Teacher Duan finished his work and the holes were nearly dug out, both teachers lifted the wooden pole together and carefully placed it into one of the holes. The others quickly filled in dirt around it with shovels and hoes until it stood steadily, compacting the soil with their feet.
With the pole upright, Teacher Duan began his next task. He gently pulled on the plastic strip and walked over the dirt slope toward the corridor in front of the classrooms. He propped a wooden ladder against a pillar outside Teacher Li's door and slowly climbed up to wrap the plastic strip around a beam before moving the ladder to a window. With a knife and saw, he carefully made a hole in the wooden frame of the window to pull the plastic strip into Teacher Li's room.
At this point, two shiny white antennas had sprouted from the top of the television. Teacher Deng was joyfully adjusting these antennas up and down while Teacher Duan entered the room again to expose more of the plastic strip's end. He measured it against the distance between both antennas on the television and cut about two feet off from its middle before tightly wrapping copper wires around both antennas.
"Alright! We can test it now," Teacher Duan announced loudly.
Teacher Deng stepped back slightly and gestured for Teacher Li to approach: "You go ahead."
Typically quiet and reserved, Teacher Li smiled faintly as he gently pressed down on the television's button.
With a crackling sound, black-and-white waves appeared on screen followed by intermittent fuzzy sounds. Gradually, half of a person's body became visible on the upper part of the screen while stripes continued to flicker below; however, at least the sound became clearer.
"Teacher Li, try moving those antennas slowly," Teacher Duan reminded from beside him.
Teacher Li adjusted each antenna in turn but still saw an incomplete image.
"It seems we need to adjust the outdoor antenna," Teacher Duan muttered as he stepped outside with Teacher Li following him.
Climbing up to the top of the wooden pole as if he had planned this all along, Teacher Duan used an iron ring wrapped around it while slowly pushing it with pliers. He called back into the house: "Keep an eye on it; let me know when it's clear."
"Got it!" came several voices from inside in unison.
From that day forward, after school hours, we not only played outside but also had another place to go—Teacher Li's room.
However, programming during Television's First Year was quite monotonous; it seemed there was only one channel available that aired for just three or four hours each day.
Teacher Li's house is right next to the classroom. During class and the Evening Study Session, he usually doesn't turn on the television, fearing it might disturb the students. As a result, we would often spend one or two hours in front of that treasured television, greedily absorbing everything it had to offer.
Gradually, I began to understand the patterns of television programming and started to selectively enter Teacher Li's house. The only two shows that piqued my interest were a martial arts series that was all the rage on the mainland at the time, particularly the drama "Huo Yuanjia," which I watched without missing a single episode; and a news program that opened a window for me to understand the outside world.
The era of Television's First Year had begun, but the 1.0 age of televisions and their programs lasted for over a decade. Although I was quite satisfied with my fourteen-inch black-and-white television, it eventually became outdated and was replaced:
By the late 1980s, color televisions began to enter our lives, and my family bought our first TV, which was still black-and-white but already nineteen inches;
In the early 1990s, shortly after starting my job, I purchased a color television—a famous Panasonic brand—twenty-nine inches in size, costing nearly a year's salary. At that time, colleagues with better financial conditions had already started buying larger screens;
By the mid-1990s, I sent the Panasonic television back to my hometown and bought myself an even bigger one;
At the turn of the century, televisions had become thin enough to be mounted on walls. I almost joined the ranks of the famous entertainment channels in Hunan Television and spent several months alongside many stars who frequently appeared on screen;
Now, we have entered the 3.0 era of televisions with plasma and cloud technology, and programs have become so diverse that it's overwhelming. Yet, it seems I've returned to the 1.0 era, rarely watching television more than twice a year.
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