Zhao Jishan was the movie man. It was a job he didn’t even want. In 1974, Zhao was a hard-working, well-spoken, well-read worker with a penchant for drawing. He worked at the Communications Office of the Transportation Bureau writing news about the progress of road works. He knew nothing about mobile cinemas, but that was what the Bureau asked him to work on.

It was a temporary job, not at all a step toward the promotion that he had been waiting for—a promotion to “permanent worker” status. But that year, the government had ordered films to be shown in all rural areas of China. Zhao was picked to lead a team that would travel to different villages playing movies for farmers on a mobile screen and projector.

He refused.

The next year, they approached him again to lead a mobile cinema unit. He resisted again, but he no longer really had a choice. He had the skills for the job, so, unwillingly, Zhao took command of the Pangjia Town Movie Unit.

For three years, he and two other men pulled a cart stacked high with reels, slides, a screen, a 30-kilogram projector, generator, record player, loudspeaker, microphone and poles. They brought news, entertainment, and patriotic values to 49 villages in the local township. Their biggest enemies were rain and equipment failure. A drizzle required pitching umbrellas over the projector; a downpour meant a delayed screening. If the projector broke, they would stay in a village for as long as it took to get the equipment running again.

Villages in the township were, at most, an hour apart by foot. In the morning, the unit pulled its gear across the fields. Arriving before noon, they stayed as guests in farmers’ homes and would sweep their hosts’ yards in good faith. In the late afternoon, with lunch digesting in their bellies, the movie men woke from their naps and began pulling the film reels out of their bags.