The viewing position had been moved to the living room; the focus was that 20-inch Hitachi color TV.
These days most color TVs were fourteen inches.
Japanese sets had already come in and were a byword for high-end, fashionable goods.
Domestic brands were usually Haiyan, Panda, Mudan, Changhong and the like, each one over a thousand kuai.
Chen Qi’s set had been bought from Hong Kong.
It was exactly eight o’clock — the Spring Festival Gala was starting.
The broadcast opened with a wide shot of the stadium interior: seats on all four sides, a stage set up in the center with steps and bridges and other props.
That wasn’t the problem — the problem was the brightness.
Yu Xiuli glanced at the screen and said, “Why is it so dark?”
“Pitch black. Didn’t they turn on the lights at the venue?” Chen Jianjun asked.
“They’re on. Look — there are lights.”
Chen Qi looked more closely and identified, “This has to be borrowed from a film studio — those two- or three-thousand-watt can lights. The stage is too big; they can’t light it properly, and they can’t swivel.”
“What if they have to swivel?”
“You just prod them with a bamboo pole.”
“You saying that makes me not even want to watch,” Yu Xiuli said.