Xinghuo Cinema: house number 1, 959 seats
Basic facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Xinghuo Cinema-Theatre (habitually "Xinghuo Cinema") |
| Built | October 1959 |
| Address | No. 1 Zhijiang West Road (at the Xizang North Road corner) |
| Scale | a site of 4,000 square metres, a floor area of 1,420 square metres, 959 seats |
| Standing | the first purpose-built cinema put up in the former Zhabei District after liberation; one of the four big cinemas of northern Shanghai |
| Origin of the name | Zhabei was the birthplace of Shanghai's workers' movement and the place where the third armed workers' uprising triumphed — hence "a single spark can start a prairie fire" |
| Fate | demolished in 2013 for housing expropriation (Block 238), after one last screening |
This section is about a place that is no longer there. It stood from 1959 to 2013, fifty-four years.
The house number is 1
Xinghuo Cinema stood at No. 1 Zhijiang West Road — the corner of Xizang North Road and Zhijiang West Road.
The house number 1 is a kind of emblem: the starting point of this road was this cinema.
When it was completed in October 1959 it was the first purpose-built cinema put up in the former Zhabei District after liberation. Before that, Zhabei people went to the old cinemas — the Shanxi Cinema (renamed from the Shanxi Grand Theatre in 1945), the Taishan Cinema (built 1940), the Zhongxing Theatre (built 1960). Xinghuo was the first one the district built itself after liberation.
Why "Xinghuo"?
Zhabei was the birthplace of Shanghai's workers' movement in the period of the First Revolutionary Civil War, and the place where the third armed uprising of Shanghai workers won. Hence "Xinghuo" as the name of the house.
"A single spark can start a prairie fire" — those words were the name this district gave to a stretch of its own history.
One more detail: the five big red characters "Xinghuo Cinema" over the entrance were characters assembled from Mao Zedong's calligraphy.
4,000 square metres, 959 seats
By the standards of 1959 Xinghuo was a "big cinema":
| Number | What it meant |
|---|---|
| a site of 4,000 square metres | there was a forecourt, so the crowd at the end of a show did not jam the doorway |
| a building of 1,420 square metres | one auditorium + foyer + projection room + offices |
| 959 seats | nearly a thousand when full |
959 is an odd figure — not 1,000, not 950. Old cinemas were often like this: the seat count was worked out row by row from row spacing, aisle width and fire regulations, and came out at a number that would not sit round.
It was "one of the four big cinemas of northern Shanghai". Which the other three were the material does not list in full, but to be named among "the big four" shows that in the cinema landscape of Zhabei, Hongkou and Yangpu in those years Xinghuo counted for something.
Not only films
Xinghuo's full name was "Cinema-Theatre", not "cinema". The word "theatre" had real content behind it:
| Function | Note |
|---|---|
| Films | the main business |
| Stage drama | there was a stage, and plays could be put on |
| Meetings | being close to the Zhijiang West Road Sub-district Office, it served for years as an important meeting venue |
A hall that could show films, stage plays and hold big meetings — this was the typical form of the Chinese city cinema in the 1950s to the 1970s. It was not only a place of entertainment but the public assembly hall of the neighbourhood.
In 1970 Xinghuo was designated a municipal pilot unit for technical innovation in xenon-lamp projection, and the conversion succeeded that September. ("Xenon lamp" was the new light source of the day: brighter, steadier and safer than the carbon-arc lamp.)
Between 1977 and 1989 it was extended or rebuilt five times, moving step by step from a single hall with an ordinary screen to a multi-purpose cinema able to show widescreen, 3-D and stereo films, and in the end with two auditoriums.
"The Three Star Brothers"
Xinghuo Cinema, the Hetian Hotel across the road, and a six-storey residential estate built at the same time, were jokingly called by the neighbours "the Three Star Brothers".
The nickname is neat: the three (cinema, hotel, estate) were built in the same period, stood side by side, and together made up the first stretch of "decent city life" in this area.
The cinema looked after "watching", the hotel "eating", the estate "living".
In that era a neighbourhood block needed these three before it counted as "complete".
Later people compared them with the "three-piece set" of Lujiazui in Pudong — of course they did not bear comparison, but "for those years they led the field".
It staged other things too
Xinghuo's life was longer than an ordinary cinema's, because it was always "taking on other work":
- in December 1991 it was named a two-star cinema by the municipal film bureau;
- between 1989 and 1992 it was judged a municipal civilised unit by the municipal government;
- later it was for a time the performance venue of the well-known Shanghai stand-up comedian Cai Galiang.
A cinema of 1959 still able to serve as a comedy venue in the 2000s — that says its hall was still usable, and that it was trying hard to stay alive.
28 October 2013
Xinghuo's end has a very specific date.
On 28 October 2013 the Weibo account of the Zhijiang West Road Sub-district posted: the signing rate for the housing expropriation project of the Xinghuo Cinema-Theatre (Block 238) had reached 90 per cent.
To mark the moment, many of the households being relocated set off firecrackers outside the cinema of their own accord.
Before demolition the cinema deliberately put on one last screening. Many residents came specially to have their photograph taken with it.
Then it was pulled down. As land reserve for the former Zhabei District, together with the other buildings on the plot.
It left no building behind, only photographs and memory.
What disappeared along with the old cinemas
This section is written because a cinema like Xinghuo is a kind of urban facility that has already disappeared.
It was not the same kind of thing as today's multiplex:
| Xinghuo (1959–2013) | Today's multiplex | |
|---|---|---|
| Position | on the street, its front on the road | inside a mall, on the fourth or fifth floor |
| Number | a few to a district | a dozen halls to a mall |
| Tickets | a queue at the window, the clerk tearing the stub | a seat chosen on a phone |
| Leaving | out of the main door onto the road, the street itself | out of the hall to the lift, then to the car park |
| Side functions | meetings, plays, children's matinees in the summer holidays | films and nothing else |
The biggest difference is the words "on the street".
An old cinema was part of the street: you passed and saw the posters, the audience spilled out into the street, and the cigarette-and-paper shop, the snack shop and the hot-water stove next door all lived off the crowd from that showing.
A new multiplex is part of a mall: it does not face the street, it faces the lift.
After Xinghuo was demolished, the corner at No. 1 Zhijiang West Road was just a corner.
One more thing
The Zhijiang West Road Sub-district, to which Xinghuo Cinema belonged, produced a very famous man — Ma Renjun.
He was the household-registration policeman of the Zhijiangmiao Road police station of the former Zhabei public security branch (today the Zhijiang West Road police station); in 1955 he went to Beijing for the national conference commending activists in construction, and was received by Chairman Mao; in 1956 he was given the title "first-class hero of the national public security system", the only policeman in Shanghai to win it that year, and he was once a guest in Premier Zhou's home.
He was the original of "Ma Tianmin", the hero of the film Today I Rest.
A sub-district produced the "original" for a film, and on that same street stood a cinema. Put the two together and there is something of coincidence about it.
Connections
- Sub-district：Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict
- See also：Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict, Xinxin Department Store, Zhabei Gymnasium, Zhabei District Children's Palace, Zhabei No. 8 Middle School
Sources: that the Xinghuo Cinema-Theatre stood at No. 1 Zhijiang West Road (at the Xizang North Road corner) and was completed in October 1959, with a site of 4,000 square metres, a floor area of 1,420 square metres and 959 seats, as the first purpose-built cinema put up in the former Zhabei District after liberation and one of the four big cinemas of northern Shanghai; that its name came from Zhabei having been the birthplace of Shanghai's workers' movement in the period of the First Revolutionary Civil War and the place where the third armed uprising of Shanghai workers won; that in 1970 it was designated a municipal pilot unit for technical innovation in xenon-lamp projection, the conversion succeeding that September; that between 1977 and 1989, through five extensions and rebuildings, it developed into a multi-purpose cinema able to screen ordinary, widescreen, 3-D and stereo films, with two auditoriums; that between 1989 and 1992 it was judged a municipal civilised unit by the municipal government and in December 1991 named a two-star cinema by the municipal film bureau; that together with the Hetian Hotel and the six-storey residential estate built at the same time it was jokingly called "the Three Star Brothers" by residents; and that on 28 October 2013 the signing rate for the housing expropriation of Block 238 reached 90 per cent and a last screening was held before demolition, are based on the official Shanghai Jing'an WeChat account's This Treasure of a Cinema, Loaded with Shanghai People's Memories (reporter Yu Tingli; material: Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict), The Paper's A Chat about the Old Zhabei Film Trade, the Baidu Baike entry "Shanghai Xinghuo Cinema-Theatre", the Community Morning Post's This Weighty Road of Resistance, Loaded with Shanghai People's Hopes (which records that "the five big characters were assembled from Mao Zedong's calligraphy") and The Past and Present of the Northern Gate (Grade B); the deeds of Ma Renjun and his being the original of the hero of Today I Rest are based on reports in Shanghai Jing'an and the Community Morning Post (Grade B); the passage on the differences between the old cinemas and today's multiplexes is the author's own synthesis, with no single source, and is marked Grade C. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.