Walk/Gem Theater

As the last of the "nostalgic" theaters to be handed a seat, the Jewel Theater's equipment is sleeker and neater than many of the theaters in action - even cleaner than a chain of theaters in Yuen Long that I often go to. There are thousands of factors, but I imagine that the ground is often broken in old theaters, but there is no such thing here.

Looking through Wikipedia, I found out that the Gem Theater was renovated in 2012. It is no wonder that the lobby and seats do not have many traces of years of torture. The seats and layout of the theater still retain the appearance of the 1970s, with nearly 1,000 seats, and the lively scene when the whole theater was full at that time can be imagined.

I have heard senior filmmakers describe those years when the film industry was booming and the whole hospital was full of thousands of people. The audience's emotions often shake the theater, and all the reactions and feelings are so direct. Ah... this paragraph seems to have been written a few years ago when I was writing about luxury theaters.

The Gem Theatre opened in 1970, the most prosperous year of the film industry, and is located in the heart of the old district of Hung Hom. The surrounding area was originally a pier area, and there are landmarks such as the Guanyin Temple, and commercial activities are developed. In 1985, Whampoa Garden was completed one after another, which also promoted the development of Whampoa District. Today, Gem Cinema is still located in the triangle of Whampoa Station, Ho Man Tin Station and Hung Hom Station, and the traffic is very convenient.

For nearly 20 years, Gem Theatre has no rivals in the Huangpu District. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1990s, when the film industry declined, that admissions to major theaters declined. The completion of new theaters in the district makes it difficult to operate the gem theater, which is relatively backward in equipment.

A lot of theaters have closed because of this! Repurpose, or simply wait for a rebuild. Jewel Theater is operated by a Korean group and has survived by virtue of its backbone.

Urgent urination before buying tickets. When I asked the theater staff if there was a bathroom nearby, he politely asked, "Are you in a hurry? Open the women's toilet in a hurry. It will take 15 minutes to finish the show." That's it.

Maybe it's because it's sparsely populated and they take pictures with me. The seating chart with hand-drawn seats has only a few blanks. At first, I wanted to say that there is something strange and exciting about hand-drawn seats. If there are only 23 seats in the whole hospital, it is probably not difficult. For a large theater like the Gem Theater, which has an increased number of seats, it is easy to make mistakes if the staff is a little careless. After the pen is written, it cannot be modified, and skilled staff are extremely needed.

Sometimes people think that in the old days people could work a job for decades because it was so hard. It may take one to two years to train an employee, and it will take another one or two years to learn a new job after being proficient. At least four years after graduation. People's work and respect are worthy of respect.

In the digital age, all jobs are just a click of a mouse in the eyes of outsiders! Who can't use a mouse? However, the details of the work still require accumulation of experience. Unfortunately, these accumulations are no longer valued by people.

The more people the better is the design philosophy of old-fashioned theaters, which feel like a stage play or an orchestra hall every time you step in. The arc-shaped seats overlook the screen, and the sound and picture are at the same level as the novel theater, which may be related to the renovation. There are only one male and one male toilet, one is at the entrance of the first row, and the men's toilet is outside the last row. People can only endure for a while.

The theater experience is very good, probably because there are not many people, and the sound and picture of the equipment just relieves the suffering caused by the bad movie. If it was able to show at least two different films a week, admissions should increase, but... who knows? It is not necessary for every theater to seek a full house. Receive three or five bosom friends quietly, enjoy the wide space, and try your best to keep the original appearance. In a city like Hong Kong, where "full capacity" and "popular number" are indicators of success, Buddhist management is an attitude.

Suddenly, I had a whimsy, if we let the Gemstone Theater show nostalgic movies, such as the special screenings of the Hong Kong Film Archive, black and white Cantonese films, kung fu films and other programs in a certain season. International film festivals can also consider Gem Theater! After all, many film festivals are hard to get a ticket, and most theaters have to accommodate commercial types, squeezing the number of film festivals. The number of seats in the new type of theater is small. If the gem theater is broadcast, the number of people in the theater can be increased a little.

Purely imagining things that we think are easy or reasonable, at the operational level, will always encounter unexpected difficulties. Those difficulties may not be overcome by hard work. Sometimes no wonder the old industry, the old theater, would rather give up. The times urge us to move forward, emotionally, we all know to keep and cherish, but who has the spare power to pull the backward partners?

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