------Program code: DO-090113-01835 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
01-13-2009 09:07
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According to the Chinese lunar calendar Feb. 2nd would be Spring Festival, and before the festival arrived, it snowed heavily all over north China. In January, Beijing residents were allocated 2 boxes of matches; while workers whose families were heating their homes with coal fires were given an allowance of 16 RMB; for households with heaters, the heating was free of charge.
The most popular sport in Beijing at the time was skating in the fashionable “space suit”, but while the space suit was certainly warm, it was also rather awkward and inconvenient.
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On New Year’s Pictures images of newly-rich peasants appeared. After the 3rd Conference of the 11th National Congress, the family Contract System for land use had been gradually implemented all over China, and the result had been an improvement in the lives of farmers. In the previous year, the nation’s total grain output had been 380 billion kilograms with a gross agricultural output value of 270 billion RMB. Moreover, the average annual income per peasant had reached 310 RMB, an increase of 40 RMB compared with the 1982 figure.
At the time, the Chinese and British governments were negotiating the return of Hong Kong to the motherland. By the end of 1983, a communiqué would be signed by both sides stating that the process of the negotiation had been reviewed, meaning that negotiations had reached a new level.
The Hong Kong issue had come to the attention of CCTV director Huang Yihe, and so he decided to invite actors from Hong Kong to participate in CCTV’s 1984 Spring Festival Gala. HUANG had successfully directed CCTV’s 1st Spring Festival Gala the year before.
At the time, China was just beginning to open up, and people knew very little about Hong Kong. This being the case, in early January Huang Yihe decided to take a trip to Guangdong Province, adjacent to Hong Kong, to get to know more about Hong Kong’s entertainment industry. On the bus to Shenzhen, Huang Yihe learned a little by chance due to the fact that the Cantonese driver was playing Cantonese songs, which he could not understand at all. But then Huang heard a song in Mandarin Chinese which included in its lyrics the words “Yellow River” and “Yangtze River”. He was surprised. Was this a song written by a mainland Chinese? It seemed unlikely, as the melody was quite different. When Huang talked with the driver, he was shown the cassette tape. The song was the famous My Chinese Heart sung by Zhang Ming-min. Later, Huang Yihe invited Hong Kong singer Zhang Ming-min to Beijing through the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency. When Zhang Ming-min first arrived in Beijing, he was scared of walking in the streets, still feeling distance from and fearful toward the Mainland. In his first night in Beijing, he wanted to have some Coca-Cola, but no waiter or waitress could understand his Cantonese and at the time, Coca-Cola was not available in most hotels in Mainland China. In the end he had to try some other drink.
On the eve of Spring Festival, three Hong Kong singers - Zhang Ming-min, Xi Xiulan and Chen Sisi - stepped onto the stage of CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. As Zhang Ming-min sang, even though his Mandarin Chinese was not standard, his song My Chinese Heart had a resounding effect due to its passionate patriotism.
After that Spring Festival Gala all Chinese in Mainland China were familiar with Zhang Ming-min, and every year since then Hong Kong singers or actors would be invited to perform at CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala to celebrate the New Year with all Chinese.
In 1984 the city of Shenzhen drew everyone’s attention. In 1979, Shenzhen became a window on a China opening up to the outside world. Five years before the Chinese government had implemented Western capital, technology and management modes in Shenzhen as an experiment, and by 1984 the gross industrial income value had increased tenfold.
On Jan. 24th, 33-year-old Wang Shi was riding his bike in the street on his way to do some business when he passed the Shenzhen World Trade Center and saw many police cars and policemen. It turned out that Deng Xiaoping was going to the top floor of the World Trade Center to take in a view of the Shenzhen Special Zone, and the policemen were clearing the way. One week after his trip to Shenzhen, Deng Xiaoping wrote a few words about what was happening in the city. “Shenzhen’s development and experience has proved (we) (our police) can build a special economic zone correctly.” The news that Deng Xiaoping had come to inspect Shenzhen made Wang Shi aware that new opportunities were on the way. Later he would write in his memoirs, “I seemed to realize it was time to do some big things.” In May, Wang Shi, with his partners, set up the Shenzhen Exhibition Centre for Modern Scientific Education Equipment. According to police regulations in the Shenzhen Special Economy Zone, any imported foreign products in use in Shenzhen were not to be sold outside the city, but this regulation was not so limited that customers from elsewhere could not come to the special zone to purchase these products. / Around 1984, large quantities of office products had begun to be imported from overseas, and orders were placed with Hong Kong companies on behalf of mainland enterprises at Wang Shi’s exhibition center. The key to this business lay in the fact that the exhibition center accepted renminbi and paid the Hong Kong companies in Hong Kong dollars or U.S. dollars. The exhibition center earned profits according to its ability to acquire foreign currencies. Wang Shi’s company was quietly accumulating a solid financial basis on which to build. Four years later, Wang Shi’s company began to get involved in the real estate industry, and the company was renamed Vanke. Just 20 years later, Vanke was the biggest public company in rthe eal estate industry.
It was the last day in April and the main building of the Shenzhen World Trade Center had been completed, one month ahead of plan. The pace at which the Shenzhen World Trade Center had been built was to become representative of “Shenzhen Speed.”
At the construction site of the World Trade Center the workers were not paid according to the usual wage methods…they were paid according to daily production quotas: put simply, if they got more work done, they received more pay. As a result, the monthly salary of some workers was as high as 600 Yuan, twice the amount received by the average Chinese worker in a year. The speed at which the World Trade Center was built was so high that it set an astonishing new record: each storey had been built in just three day!.
The documentary Historical Choice recorded how the World Trade Center was built.
The second day after the World Trade Center was completed, CCTV started a new program Jiu Zhou Fang Yuan. In its first edition, it showed the audience a fast-growing Shenzhen in the form of singing and dancing.
