"I loved to see the expressions on their faces when they saw the 'electric shadows' moving on the screen for the first time in their lives," he recalls. "Once I set up a screening exclusively for a grandma who was 104 years old but had never seen a movie before."

A native of Qingjian County, in Shannxi Province, Gao volunteered to work in Tibet in 1975 when the call went out for educated young people to go there to do technical work.

Gao chose to show films to Tibetan herdsmen as part of a mobile team with a Tibetan colleague. "I simply loved doing that," he says. "I enjoyed riding a horse or a yak, carrying my screening equipment to wherever herdsmen stayed and then showing films to them."

The two-man team worked in Nagqu Prefecture, in the northern part of Tibet, for three years before Gao became a film technician in the same area fixing screening equipment for the mobile team. He had by then been to most areas in the region. Afterwards, in 1997, he was appointed manager of the Lhasa Cinema.

In today's Tibet there are a total of 9,300 screening stations where 448 mobile teams can show films to herdsmen.

By contrast, there were only six such screening teams throughout the whole of Tibet's rural areas back in the 1970s. Tibetan herdsmen have traditionally enjoyed movies free of charge.

But as the market-economy has established itself, screenings are starting to cost more and more. "The screening teams' survival partly relies on subsidies from the profits made at the 83 movie houses in Lhasa and other cities and townships in Tibet," Gao says.

Financial support also comes from the regional government, according to Pagba Qoizin, general manager of the Tibet Autonomous Region Film Company.

"As our movie houses are losing money, we can hardly support ourselves, let alone the mobile screening teams," Gao says.

Having been involved in the business in Tibet for 24 years, Gao, now 46, is witnessing a decline of the film screening industry, especially in cities like Lhasa.

With six or seven cinemas in the 1970s, Lhasa now has only two, including Gao's Lhasa Cinema.

And audiences have been decreasing as well, which is reflected in the reduction of box office receipts over the last three years since Gao became the manager of the cinema.

The cinema earned 200,000 yuan (US$24,100) in 1998, Gao says. But box-office earnings fell sharply in 1999 to just 90,000 yuan (about US$10,800).

This year he predicts a further reduction to a pitiful 40,000 yuan (about US$4,820), which would be about 100,000 yuan (about US$11,080) short of the cinema's target income.

Movie houses are losing the battle with TVs and the thriving pirate VCD market.

Television has taken away many potential movie-goers. People would rather stay at home watching programs in either Tibetan or Mandarin.

Only in remote mountainous areas where electricity remains a luxury can 16-mm domestic films fill the vacuum in herdsmen's lives because there is no threat from TV, says Pagba Qoizin.

Every year, 25 domestic films are dubbed into Tibetan, mainly for distribution to mobile screening teams in pasture areas rather than for movie fans in Lhasa.

As Gao reveals, Tibetan youngsters are keen to keep abreast with new trends. This means films like "Titanic" do well. That particular movie took a box-office record of 130,000 yuan (about US$15,660) at the Lhasa Cinema.

However, the National Film Import and Export Company that deals with imported blockbusters is now reluctant to supply the Tibet Autonomous Region with all its films as it has yet to reach a profit-sharing agreement with regional distributors.

The national distribution company complains the money it sometimes receives does not even cover the expense of mailing the film to Tibet. Therefore, Lhasa Cinema is always the last in the country to run new imports.

In 1999 it got only two blockbusters in total, one being "Saving Private Ryan." Such a situation produces an even bigger market for pirated VCDs.

Within walking distance of Gao's cinema are a number of VCD rental stores, which rent out VCDs at an average price of 2 yuan (less than a quarter) per night.

Drawn by action movies from Hong Kong, as well as by those from the United States and India, local Tibetan youngsters and migrant workers from Sichuan Province are these shops' main customers. Ten years ago they would have been attracted by films shown at Lhasa Cinema, a time when VCDs had not been heard of.

Whenever Lhasa Cinema now puts up a poster advertising upcoming foreign blockbusters, VCD dealers are able to get pirates on the shelves in three days, before they are shown at the cinema.

All this has combined to jeopardize the shrinking film industry in urban areas in Tibet, said Qoizin, who once harbored an ambition to revitalize movie theaters.

Nevertheless, Gao is currently pleased by swelling audiences who want to see the Shanghai Film Studio production "Fatal Decision," an anti-corruption movie.

In a cinema of 960 seats, where since 1999 the average attendance has been less than 10 percent, recent attendances of 80 percent have been usual for "Fatal Decision." This is really encouraging.

Recent daily income has been as high as 8,000 yuan (about US$960) and has come as something like a miracle for Gao and his colleagues.

(China Daily 11/06/2000)