phone story

Press: I wrote an article on my personal account in 2017. The account was blocked not long ago. A friend mentioned my article, and I posted the original here for a file.

The independent director Tiger Temple published an oral history some time ago, telling a story about installing a telephone when he opened a bookstore in Xi'an in the early 1980s, which evoked many people's memories. Now that mobile phones are becoming more and more popular than ever, and landlines are being withdrawn from households, recalling the scene when telephones entered Chinese households at the end of the last century, it seems like a lifetime away.

Yang Haipeng is a famous investigative reporter, and his old father is a retired military officer. He himself worked first in court and later in the media, but even for a family like theirs, telephones were still a luxury at the time. He recalled: "At the end of the 1980s, it cost about 3,000 yuan to install a telephone in Shanghai. My father gave a 30% discount internally, but he couldn't bear the telephone fee, so he didn't install it. Later, I went to the newspaper office and pretended that I had the telephone fee reimbursement, that is, I installed it. Since then, seeing him make a long-distance call to an old comrade-in-arms in Xi'an with his phone in hand, my flesh aches."

From the memories of netizens, about 3,000 is not too expensive for telephone installation in those years. According to one netizen, "In the early 1990s in Xi'an, it cost 4,500 yuan to install a fixed-line phone, and take it out to the installation master Hongtashan. One, expedited trustee gifts are counted separately.” And the data provided by a netizen in Yueqing, Fujian “Yellow Leaf West Wind 2015”: In Fuqing City, Fujian Province, in 1994, a phone cost nearly 8,000 yuan. International calls are 21 yuan per minute. At that time, a month's salary was not enough to play 20 minutes. Fuqing has a developed economy and is also a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. The demand for telephones may be stronger and the price may rise accordingly. Opening an international long distance at home is probably something that most Chinese families have not thought about until now.

My middle school history teacher is an expert in collecting and is especially fond of ancient coins. On Teachers' Day in 1994, the local telecommunications bureau launched a telephone with a special price for teachers. He sold 30 Oceans (Yuan Datou) in his collection for a total of 1,900 yuan, so he could barely collect the installation fee. He calculated that these 30 oceans are about 20,000 yuan today. In this way, his phone, which has long been eliminated, is really worth the sky-high price.

And some telephone stories are a bit like dark humor: in the early 1990s, when I was still working in a newspaper office, a colleague was transferred to a post and telecommunications office as the editor-in-chief of the post and telecommunications office. At that time, the initial installation fee for the local telephone was as high as 4,000 yuan. There is a half-price discount on the telephones of the internal staff of the post and telecommunications office, and there is no need to wait in line, so there are many discounts. The colleague installed two sets for the home in one breath, and proudly said that the telephone will definitely preserve its value in the future. Another colleague said enviously that the phone will definitely appreciate in value.

Chinese people also like to ask for a lot of money and good luck in their work. They have such a precious phone at home. Of course, the number should not be ambiguous. In many places, it was also important to choose a phone number at that time. A netizen named ZHENGYIZHI_82980 in Handan, Hebei said. , In their local area, if the sea had to choose auspicious numbers for the phone, there were rules: one 8, set a table; two 8s, eat king ba (the price of turtles was extremely high at that time); three 8s, go to the White Pagoda (there are One-stop service); four 8, with sauna.

How many of these phone numbers with 8 can be dialed?

From the history of media development, the invention of the telephone is almost 40 years earlier than the invention of broadcasting. The invention of the telephone was in 1876, and the successful experiment of wireless broadcasting was already around 1916. In 1900, the household penetration rate of telephones in American cities had reached 1%. After World War II, the telephone penetration rate in American cities rapidly increased to more than 70%. From the perspective of social development, especially the impact on economic and trade, the role of telephone is more direct than that of radio. However, after 1949, the Chinese government basically took political propaganda as its main purpose in the development of the communication industry. Therefore, the development of broadcasting is far more important than the telephone, although "upstairs and downstairs, electric lights and telephones" are the communist life depicted by the government. However, until the early 1980s, there were very few privileged families who were qualified to install telephones, and telephones had basically nothing to do with ordinary people. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, market-oriented reforms gradually deepened. , the telephone has become an urgent need for economic and social development, so it is a high initial installation fee for the telephone. The relevant department explained: "In order to make up for the lack of telecommunications construction funds, the state has started to collect local telephone initial installation fees since the second half of 1980 as a special fund for telecommunications construction. The policy of increasing local telephone installation fees is crucial to the development of communications. One-third of the telephone construction funds come from the initial installation fee, and the initial installation fee has become an important source of funds to support the sustained and rapid development of my country's communication network."

The rapid expansion of telecommunication infrastructure through the collection of high initial telephone installation fees has objectively promoted the development of China's telecommunication industry. However, from 1980 to 2000, the telecommunications sector levied the initial installation fee for telephones for 20 years, which was a huge amount of money. How much of it was actually used for telecommunications construction? The use of this fund may not be as transparent as it should be. In addition, when funds were urgently needed for the construction of national telecommunications facilities, a large number of families supported the construction of national telecommunications in the past 20 years by deferred payment of high initial installation fees. With the same shareholding, telecommunications companies have already established deep roots. They should give some returns to these users who paid a high initial installation fee. Isn't it more in line with the principle of fairness?