"Mohe Ballroom" Past Events
"One squat, two kicks, three swings..."
On the evening of November 6, 55-year-old Li Jinbao, the northernmost town of Mohe in China, demonstrated a dance technique. He hugged his partner, turned, tilted, swung... and rotated in the huge empty ballroom.
"Father's Prairie and Mother's River" is a slow three dance music, the dance lights are bright and dark, swaying.
In late October, a song "Mohe Ballroom" became popular, pushing the ballroom in this small northeast border town into the spotlight.
The creator Liu Shuang introduced that the song is based on the story of an old solo dancer "Zhang Dequan" (pseudonym) in the ballroom and his wife who was lost in the fire as the background.
The loyal love story in the song evokes people's painful memories of the "May 6" huge forest fire in Daxinganling in 1987.
After the fire, Mohe was rebuilt, and the first truly private mass dance hall appeared in the local area, which became the most popular leisure and entertainment venue for locals besides movie theaters. It also witnessed the long self-healing and life recovery of Mohe people.
As a popular product of the 1980s and 1990s, the dance hall was given another special significance in Mohe.
However, for more than 30 years thereafter, the ballroom went from its peak to decline, and was suspended for a while, until the opening of Li Jinbao's ballroom in 2018.
The dancers are getting old.
In the 1970s and 1980s, young "Zhang Dequan" came to this small border town from all over the country to deliver half of their youth.
Now that the old age has come, some people have moved out of Mohe, and some people have chosen to stay.
Due to the pressure of the epidemic and other pressures, the operation of the dance hall was bleak, and Li Jinbao once wanted to close the dance hall.
With the popularity of "Mohe Ballroom", he changed his mind, "Open the ballroom so that the old dancing people can continue to dance."
Looking for "Zhang Dequan"
This is a humble semi-basement, located in the business district of Mohe.
After the winter, the days in Mohe are getting shorter and shorter.
At about 4 pm, the small city was in twilight, and the neon light of the word "Dance Hall" on the plaque of the basement door lit up.
On the left side of the door plaque, the words "Mohe" are typeset vertically, and the light strip has not been installed in time.
This is the name Li Jinbao replaced only a few days ago. Before that, his ballroom was called "Mengzhi Ai".
Going down the steps and entering the room is a rectangular space of about 400 square meters. The indoor light is dim, and the pink lights are falling down.
There is a neat row of seats against the wall on the left side of the ballroom, which is a general seating area, and the usual charge is 5 yuan per person; a few tables and chairs on the right side of the ballroom form a "deck" area, and the table is covered with a green billiard table cloth. A plate of sweets costs 10 yuan per person.
The epidemic situation in Heilongjiang continued to tighten. Li Jinbao's ballroom was closed for a while, and the whole hall was empty.
At around five o'clock in the afternoon, Feng Guangqing, director of the Mohe Cultural Tourism Bureau, came to the ballroom.
Since "Mohe Ballroom" became popular, he often came to the ballroom to look for Li Jinbao.
Less than a few minutes after he arrived, a tightly wrapped young man in a black down jacket went into the ballroom with a probe.
He asked in Cantonese Mandarin, "Is this the Mohe Ballroom?" He is a fan of Liu Shuang, a young man born in 1996. He flew from Shenzhen to Harbin and took more than ten hours to transfer to a green train. I came to Mohe just to "see the real Mohe Ballroom."
Feng Guangqing embraced him a little excitedly, "You are the first fan to check in. We must take a photo together."
Feng Guangqing is 53 years old and likes to play short videos.
Because of his work habits in the cultural and travel industry, he often searches for Mohe elements on the entire network.
He heard the song "Mohe Ballroom" last year, but he didn't pay much attention to it.
In March of this year, the video account of the Cultural Tourism Bureau posted "Mohe Dance Hall", but it did not cause any splashes.
Until mid-October, the young man extracted the love story behind the song and posted it on a short video in the form of a narration with a song. Suddenly, it became "a mess."
Li Jinbao, who is at the center of the storm of public opinion, clearly lags behind the news.
One day in mid-to-late October, a reporter from the local TV station in Mohe came to shoot the ballroom with a camera, and said to him, "Do you know that your ballroom is on fire?" Li Jinbao was confused, "I don't know whoa." The reporter turned out. The short video on the phone, "Is this your dance hall?"
This is the first time that Li Jinbao has listened to the song "Mohe Ballroom" and he knows the reason why the ballroom is so popular: An old man named Zhang Dequan lost his wife Kang in the Daxinganling fire accident in 1987. Since then, he has not lived for more than 30 years. To marry, to commemorate his wife who loves to dance, the elderly often come to dance solo in the ballroom. The ballroom where the elderly dance is Li Jinbao's ballroom.
Looking at the old man dancing in the animated picture, a person appeared in Li Jinbao's mind.
He told the Beijing News reporter that in 2019, there is indeed an old man who often dances in the ballroom, and everyone else dances in pairs and dances, and he is the only one to dance solo.
"He still chooses songs. He likes rhythmic, lyrical ones, and he doesn't dance yet."
However, Li Jinbao has not spoken to "Zhang Dequan" and is not clear about his story.
The ballroom is only open for half a year, from October 1st to May 1st of the year.
Since last year, due to the epidemic, the dance hall has been opened and closed. Li Jinbao has not seen "Zhang Dequan" for a long time.
Ma Jingchun, the deputy curator of the May 6th Fire Memorial Hall in Daxinganling, also noticed "Zhang Dequan", and a flood of media calls reached the memorial hall. Ma Jingchun looked through the list of victims within Mohe County and did not find a victim named Kang.
"Mohe Dance Hall" producer Liu Shuang told the Beijing News that "Zhang Dequan" is a pseudonym, and a certain degree of literary imagination and details have been added to the story.
Although the story of "Zhang Dequan" cannot be verified for the time being, Ma Jingchun feels that "Zhang Dequan" is the epitome of Lao Mohe people. When the fire broke out in 1987, the men went to the mountains to fight the fire. Most of the victims were left behind in the county. Women, children and the elderly.
Ma Jingchun remembers that when the new building of the Great Hinggan Mountains May 6th Fire Memorial Hall was expanded in 2008, a man driving a taxi rushed into the memorial hall aggressively and said, “I want to see if there are any photos of my family in this museum. I want to tear it off and take it away!"
At that time, Ma Jingchun was still an instructor, and she took the man through the exhibition photos.
Finding that he did not have his own family, the man sat down sadly. His wife and two children were killed in the fire.
"I understand his pain too much." Ma Jingchun said. The fire left her with psychological trauma for decades. She would repeatedly dream of catching fire and avoiding fire every night. Memories."
Painful memories
The cause of the fire was recorded in the official documents of the May 6th Fire Memorial Hall of Daxinganling: From the morning of May 6 to the morning of May 7, 1987, forestry operators threw unextinguished cigarette butts on the grass and used illegally because of smoking. The brush cutter and other actions led to fires in five places. The fire protection department actively organized forces to put out the five wildfires. The open fire at the fire site was extinguished at noon on May 7, and the fire was under control.
However, at noon that day, the weather in Mohe suddenly changed, and a northwest wind of level 8 or more blew, causing the resurrection of the two fire sites in Hewan and Gulian.
At the ancient lotus fire site, the tornado rolled the tongue of fire from the ground to the treetops, with the fire head reaching tens of meters or hundreds of meters. The fire formed an unstoppable force and forced the fire fighting team back to the county seat.
That year, the 21-year-old Li Jinbao came to Mohe from his hometown in Jilin for two months. He didn't like farming, so he came to Mohe as a bricklayer.
That year, Ma Jingchun was still a first-year student in junior high school.
In the afternoon, she and her two friends were playing badminton near home. The wind was so strong that Ma Jingchun had to put the racket on the tripod and bid farewell to the friends.
According to their memories, the people in the county seat were vaguely disturbed.
The sky was shrouded in smoke, it was gray, and there was no fire, but people coughed.
Ma Jingchun, who returned home, asked his mother anxiously, "How do you feel that the fire is coming?" The mother said, "I can't." In Mohe, forest fires occur every year. People have long been commonplace, but they have never spread to the county. .
Soon, people noticed something was wrong.
At about 6 o'clock in the evening, Ma Jingchun and his family rushed out of the house.
Smoke obscured the sky, and the streets were full of fleeing people.
Ma Jingchun originally held hands with his younger brother, but was dispersed by the crowd.
The wind rolled up the sky full of small stones, and it hurt her face. Ma Jingchun couldn't take care of that much, so she picked up a car driving to the army compound.
There is a large open space to the east of the Military Club. When Ma Jingchun arrived, more than two thousand people had taken shelter there.
At that time, Li Jinbao had brought his cousin and cousin at home. After the fire approached, they fled under the Dalin River Bridge, which is a hundred meters away, with the flow of people.
There were no combustibles by the river and it was considered the safest place to escape danger. Li Jinbao jumped into the knee-deep water and escaped.
At 8 o'clock in the evening on May 7th, fires rushing from the three directions of true north, southwest and northwest gathered at Xilinji Town, Mohe County at the same time. The large trees in the town were uprooted by the wind, and the copper high-voltage wire with a diameter of 1 cm was blown by the strong wind. Ripped off, the slabs, sticks, and the iron tiles on the roof were all rolled up in the air. Flames tens of meters high rose up from the houses. The smoke covered the sky, and the fire lighted the city red, and the entire county was a sea of flames.
According to official information, the total area of the May 6th forest fire was 17,000 square kilometers (including the overseas part), and 1.01 million hectares of forest land were burned. There were 636,500 square meters of various houses burned in the country, and the victims 5 More than 10,000 people, more than 10,000 households were homeless, 211 people were killed in the fire, 266 people suffered burns to varying degrees, and some caused lifelong disabilities...
The fire that lasted for 28 days razed the town of Mohe County to the ground, leaving only abruptly standing chimneys on the charred ground.
Past life of "Mohe Ballroom"
Mohe is a small border town in the northernmost part of China. It is located in the Greater Xing'an Mountains and has abundant forest resources.
In the 1980s, the Daxinganling area was economically prosperous. Every spring and autumn, a large number of outsiders flooded into the Daxinganling and were hired by the forest farm as temporary and seasonal workers.
According to many Mohe residents, before the fire, many families already had televisions, tape recorders, and washing machines.
Forest farm workers are "sweet and sweet" jobs, earning 60 to 70 yuan a month.
There are two movie theaters in the county town, which are very lively during the festivals.
After the fire, in addition to the houses where they lived, the lives of Mohe people were also burned down.
"Mohe County Chronicles" records the process of Mohe reconstruction.
In more than a year after the disaster, a construction army of more than 35,000 people fought 250 days and nights to build 950,000 square meters of houses, and more than 10,000 victims moved into permanent new homes.
Various production facilities destroyed by the fire: including large-scale wood storage yards, special railway lines, highways and bridges, power transmission and transformation lines, and communication lines have all been restored.
On October 20, 1988, the Heilongjiang Provincial Disaster Area Reconstruction Headquarters held a summary and commendation meeting, announcing that "the work of'restoring production and rebuilding homes' in the disaster area of Daxinganling has achieved a complete victory."
The recovery of people's soul and mental trauma is more secretive and long.
For a long time, some people couldn't hear the alarm, some quit smoking, and some people saw the stumbling block and subconsciously wanted to stay away.
In this context, the first privately contracted dance hall in Mohe, the "Bai Le Dance Hall", was born in 1989.
The 59-year-old Gu Zhaofa is Li Jinbao's buddy and the person who knows the ballroom best in Mohe. In the early 1990s, he worked as a keyboard player in several ballrooms, and later ran a ballroom for 10 years.
Gu Zhaofa remembered that the original "Baile Dance Hall" was opened on the second floor of the Mohe Federation of Trade Unions. The ballroom was equipped with simple and simple cassette recorders and only a stage light.
The simple ballroom was unexpectedly popular among locals. A general seat ticket costs 3 yuan and a card seat ticket costs 5 yuan, while the most expensive movie ticket that year only cost 2 cents and a box of matches 2 cents.
Market competition soon started in Mohe.
A year later, near the "Bai Le Ballroom", the more luxurious and magnificent ballroom "Big World" turned out.
The boss hired keyboard and saxophone players, and the lighting and decoration were more luxurious.
Not to be outdone, "Baile" also abandoned the original cassette recorder and introduced a live band.
Later, the Cultural Affairs Bureau opened a state-owned dance hall and joined the looting battle.
During the day, Gu Zhaofa worked at the unit, and at night, he plunged into the "singing and dancing" ballroom.
It was the authentic "Mohe Ballroom". The ambiguous lights flowed through all corners of the ballroom. The keyboard player was familiar with all the popular songs nowadays, and at the same time controlled the light and shade and rhythm of the lights; the singer had to be a popular voice, "Walk the Quartet" "I wish you peace", "A soldier", "The moon represents my heart" and other songs can come; on the dance floor, fast 4, slow 4, fast 3, middle 3, slow 3... the dance moves forward and backward; midfield During the break, the young man shouted, "Here is a disco!" Gu Zhaofa unscrewed the recorder, played a tramp, tuned a dynamic light, and lay down on the back of the chair, drinking water, and smoking a cigarette.
In the early 1990s, Li Jinbao started buying and selling clothing.
It was dark early in winter, and the stall closed at four o'clock in the afternoon. The other shopkeepers led him into the colorful ballroom.
Li Jinbao sat on the deck and watched, stunned into the dance floor.
Gradually, from the beginning, he often stepped on the feet of his female partner, and later he knew almost all the dance steps and became a frequent visitor to the ballroom.
When he was 16 years old, Ma Jingchun was admitted to the local kindergarten teacher school in Mohe. All 42 students in the class were girls.
She described that every winter and summer vacation, she and her classmates are like "growing in a ballroom", and a large group of young and beautiful girls walk into the ballroom and become "a beautiful landscape."
According to a 2008 report by the Economic Observer, in the late 1990s, Daxinganling fell into a “dual danger” situation of resource crisis and enterprise distress. A large number of workers in the forest area were laid off. After the “buyout”, the forest farm workers left Mohe. .
With the loss of personnel, the ballroom is no longer at its peak, and the last ballroom "Big World" has also become "huang" after the spring of 2000.
Gu Zhaofa discussed with his wife, "Why don't we open one, I can make some money by watching the ballroom."
In August 2000, Gu Zhaofa took the "Big World" down and opened a "Man Ting Fang" ballroom. He was in charge of the stage and his wife was in charge of the bar.
As the only ballroom in Mohe, "Man Tingfang" has been in business for ten years and enjoyed the last glory.
In 2010, the old cadre bureau where the ballroom was located was demolished and the ballroom was finally closed.
"Best business opening"
After nearly ten years, Mohe no longer has a mass dance hall.
The dancers were divided into two groups, some of them embraced the square dance, and the other held the position of ballroom dancing.
The community opened an activity room, and the two groups of dancers rented it off-peak for a fee of 6 yuan per person. With bright incandescent lamps and a recorder that can play music, you can dance to a song.
Li Jinbao later contracted a construction team. During the break, he would go to the activity room to dance, but he always felt "almost".
One winter, the dancers raised funds to rent an event venue for dancing. Li Jinbao thought it was a business opportunity. He wanted to engage in a sideline dance hall to satisfy his "dancing addiction". Secondly, at least this group of dancers was stable. Customer source, "Can make some money."
Near the end of 2018, an underground roller skating rink in Mohe Commercial Street was closed for subletting, with a rectangular space and a concrete floor, with an annual rent of 20,000 yuan.
Li Jinbao took a fancy to this site and rented it immediately.
On December 28, 2018, he officially opened the Ballroom in the Moments of Friends, and the air arch of "good business" was erected at the door of the store with great fanfare.
Li Jinbao asked Gu Zhaofa to play the piano in the ballroom and hired a singer. After deducting the cost of paying the musicians and singers, there was almost no money left.
In order to cut expenses, he replaced live bands with stereos.
In 2019, I can barely make a little profit. In 2020, the new crown epidemic will break out, and the dance hall will have a bleak operation and make ends meet.
Li Jinbao once wanted to close the ballroom.
"If the song of "Mohe Ballroom" hadn't become popular this time, I could hold on for a year at most."
Li Jinbao reopened afterwards. From a profit point of view, operating this ballroom was a failed investment.
He built a group of dancers called the "House of Ballroom Dance", a total of 46 people, aged from 45 to 70, and a monthly pass of 50 yuan is charged for everyone.
Dancers bring their own water bottles and thermos cups, and it is difficult to consume alcoholic beverages.
The coldest winter in Mohe can reach minus 50 degrees Celsius. Older dancers are inconvenient to travel. Li Jinbao drove his 7-seater private car to pick him up.
He was considerate of them, "The monthly ticket is only 50 yuan, and it costs 20 yuan to take a taxi back and forth. The elderly are economical and reluctant."
One night last winter, Li Jinbao had an accident while driving and lost more than 20,000 yuan.
But he didn't plan to increase the price. "It's all in the same place. Feelings are happening. This year, my son got married and they came to join him. The courtesy and courtesy are all my heart. I can't let them down."
"Keep the ballroom open"
In November, blizzards occurred in many places in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, but the temperature in China's northernmost town was rarely warmer than the same period in previous years. It was not until November 5 that there was a "standable snow".
Locals said that Mohe has caught up with the warm winter this year.
For local cultural tourism, Mohe is experiencing a cold winter this year.
Feng Guangqing said that the number of tourists in Mohe in 2019 was 2.34 million, a sharp drop of two-thirds after the epidemic.
Since March of this year, Mohe Airport has been suspended for one year due to reconstruction and expansion, and the tourism industry has been directly affected.
In the first half of this year, the Mohe Cultural Tourism Bureau conducted seven offline tourism promotion conferences in several southern cities. In the second half of the year, due to the epidemic, the offline promotion conferences were cancelled.
The popularity of "Mohe Dance Hall" has made netizens pay attention to this small city in the northeast border.
Feng Guangqing knew that this was an opportunity given to Mohe from the sky, and it was more useful than how many offline promotion meetings.
When the topic reached 100 million page views, Feng Guangqing began to pay close attention to public opinion and report to the higher authorities.
He had an impression of Li Jinbao’s dance hall. He had been to several times during the epidemic inspection. Feng Guangqing immediately searched the ballroom contact information on the Internet and asked Li Jinbao for the details of "Zhang Dequan".
Li Jinbao was still in his hometown in Jilin at the time. Feng Guangqing had a preliminary idea: to seize this enthusiasm and turn the ballroom into an IP, "The lounge can sell coffee and catering, and the ballroom monthly pass is designed to collect commemorative cultural and creative products. "
Feng Guangqing personally wrote the copy for the cultural and creative products of the ballroom monthly pass. He revealed that the cultural and creative product projects are currently in the planning stage and are ready to operate. "In the future, this ballroom will be the birthplace of the'Mohe Ballroom', and every ballroom in Mohe will be a Mohe Ballroom. "
Li Jinbao doesn't understand communication, and he doesn't know what cultural and creative and IP are. He decided to keep the dance hall open. The most important thing is to reserve a dance floor for the elderly so that dancers can dance here in the future.
Perhaps the card seat and monthly pass will become a carrier for foreign tourists to recall a love story. Perhaps, there will be young people walking into the ballroom, like Liu Shuang in December 2019, entering the ballroom, joining the old people who are dancing and listening to them. The story of that fire.
On the afternoon of November 9, Li Jinbao sent a notice to the group of dancers: "The ballroom will open tonight."
This was the first time the ballroom opened after being closed for about half a month, and the long-silent WeChat group became active.
At around 7 o'clock in the evening, more than 20 dancers arrived with their dress shoes and bags and rushed to the long-lost dance party.
The outdoor temperature was minus 20 degrees Celsius. They sat on the deck and exchanged their thick cotton shoes and put on leather shoes. Several women also wore long skirts solemnly. Everyone wore masks on their faces. Clear expression.
Together with light and music, they swirled into the dance floor.
Beijing News reporter Li Zhao