Ever since I came to the U.S., watching movies have become a major hobby of mine. During the 15 years of my staying here in this country, I might have watched more than one thousand movies. I seldom go to movie theaters however. I mainly watch old movies that I check out from all kinds of libraries: public and school libraries.,as well as those I got from yard sales and roadside give-aways.

I believe my addiction is not so much to movies as to VHS tapes and DVDs. There is nothing new about watching movies. In China I watched movies all the time by going to movie theaters and I watched videos all the time by going to video theaters. In those days before I came to the States, movies and videos were separate concepts in China's popular culture arena. Movies were played in government controlled theaters while videos in privately owned video theaters ( actually rooms, with stools). Videos featured a wider variety of subjects but mainly concentrated on kungfu stuff from outside mainland China. Some places had some videos with some erotic contents. Movies were for education as well as entertainment and romance. Education in that schools organized the watching of movies, at the cost of school pupils' own wallets thought. Entertainment in that work units' union would pay for movie tickets to let employees to watch a movie during work time. Romance in that watching movies is a necesary part of dating. Videos, on the otherhand, were for peeping and killing time.

This was the situation in the city. I was in Beijing and there was no lack of cinemas to go to. Often when I was tired of browsing second hand book stores in Dongsi, I would go to a cinema at Lantern Market and watch whatever was available. After being away from the real world for one hour and a half in the dark cinema, I often had a feeling of being dropped into strange land when I stepped out into broad daylight.

It was not so easy to watch movies when I was away from Beijing, when I was in the countryside from 1975 to late 1976, and when I was in the military school from 1978 to 1985. In the countryside, a movie show was a big event, a festival of some sort, and so was it in the military school. The theater was in the open. A huge white movie screen was attached to two poles or trees and people sat on small stools on both sides of the screen. In the countryside, when there was a movie show in a village, people from nearby villages would also come, often covering a distance of a few miles by walking or riding the bicycle. Going back home in the cool rural night, under a sky densely coverd with stars, was quite some refreshing experience. Sometimes an exciting event could happen that made the dull life of the countryside interesting and exciting. This thing invariably involves sex or violence. Young men of my village once told me a story about a guy masturbating himself to a blow job behind a young village woman and got beaten up. Violence however involved in most cases the city students who were sent down to the countryside because there were no jobs for them in the city.

There was a type of movie the obtaining of which meant connection: foreign movies in foreign languages. They came of course in the form of VHS tapes in those years. In the military school where I learned English, movies in English language was part of the curriculum but they were not readily available from the library. They had to be checked out from the school's audio-video room. In short, their numbers were limited and they were controlled stuff. Naturally, watching such movies was no less a big event than the movies shown on open air screens.

Later when I left the military and worked as a teacher in a civilian foreign language school, I could have access to more movies in English from the audio-video room, but they were controlled stuff nevertheless and they were mainly for classroom use. I seldom borrown from that place, because I did not know the people working there.

In Beijing I often go to the cultural center of the British Embassy. There I could watch English movies. Once they gave away some VHS tapes of Shakespeare plays. Although I did not have a player, I was excited to have come in possession of these tapes. For me it is a rare gift.

I guess that was why I became so excited at getting lots of movie tapes when I came to the States. There were many of them at garage sales and even by the roadside. Once I bought more than 50 VHS tapes, each recorded with three movies, recorded from TV, at the cost of 50 cents each. Since I never buy cable TV or dish network, I was happy to have so many movies. Now I have a small collection of movies on VHS tapes and a few DVDs.

Despite this collection, I constantly check out movies from libraries, especially foreign movies from the foreign language school in my town. Being able to select a movie and play at home seems to mean great freedom for me. I also become addicted to obtaining VHS recorder-player machines and DVD players. I did not buy them. I found them. Some can still play tapes and some are only good as a remote-operated TV channel scanners for old mode TV sets.

Sometimes people tell me about a new movie and suggest I go watching. I say no, I will wait for the DVD. As I say earlier, my addiction is not so much as to movies but to playing movies. Since I do not have a gang of hupeng gouyou (fox friends and dog pals) to go to cinemas with or a hongyan zhiji (a female bosom friend) to hold hands with in the cinema, I would rather not to spend the money sitting among strangers watching a movie about which I cannot share my views with others.

Yet watching movie is better to be a collective activity. This is in the bones of human beings, I guess. So often I cannot help telling about a good movie with people to people I am faintly associated by way of work or internet. There is no problem of doing so online but at work, I have heard people wondering how I could have been able to watch so many movies. They must be suspecting I do nothing but reviewing movies all 7-24. It is not so of course, since I create almost as much supplementary teaching material as I browse movies. Movies are but a background thing to me in most cases. That is why I cannot remember who plays what and what movie is about what unless the movie is a very good one.

The military school's library's policy for checking out movies is that no more than six can be checked out at one time. Multiple CD set is considered one item, though. This policy has affected my way of checking out movies from public libraries that puts no limit whatsoever on how many one can borrow . I normally check out no more than 6 or 7 movies at one time. But I like to cuanfang libraries, meaning dashing through different libraries and as a result, I often end up with a large pile of dvds to watch.

I can not possibly finish so many movies in one week if I do nothing but watch them. I have other work to do. I have to watch them while doing other things--cooking, washing clothes, surfing the net, etc. As I am now used to this, I simply cannot understand people when they say they have no time for a good movie, for I enjoy recommending good movies and feel sad when no one wants to watch them. I feel even sadder when they say they do not watch movies in the English language. Being in this country, we can learn a lot about it by watching movies. For one thing at least, we can improve our English listening.

I watch all kinds of movies: drama, western, horror, documentary, thriller, mystery etc. Subject-wise, I like movies about American past and American south, road movies, movies about school life, movies about religion (both evangelical and heretical), about supernatural happenings, etc. One genre that I do not particularly like is sports movie, but I have seen some that go beyond a mere sports game to tell a human story.

(to be continued)