I have spoken before about the seductive profusion of pirated DVDs available here in Beijing. For a diehard film nut such as myself it is just too much of a temptation to turn down.
But life is not easy. In my early days here, there was a multiplicity of DVD shops in my neighbourbood, and I would spend half an hour or so every weekend - or any other time I happened to be free - flipping through their bins, seeking out the more esoteric stuff.... trying to limit my spending..... but usually failing to come away with fewer than 20 or 30 purchases at a time.
But........ most of the time these shops would have a pretty limited selection; a high unreliability factor (I got into the time-consuming, but money-saving, habit of reviewing new purchases on the skip-to-next-chapter facility [not a 100% reliable method, but good enough] and marching back to the store the next day to replace duff ones; and I formed a policy of ditching vendors with a more than 25% failure rate...... which was the majority back then); arsey or changeable management (most guys were pretty good about exchanging defective disks, no questions asked; but sometimes there'd be a sudden change of ownership or staff and problems would arise; or sometimes a guy would suddenly start getting awkward with you about exchanges, even though you'd been his best customer for the last month; sometimes they'd just give you that whole "You didn't buy it here" shtick, or insist on playing it in the shop to verify if your complaint is justified [I once took back a copy of Titanic that was perfect in every way {leaving aside the historical inaccuracies and general script crappiness that you have to endure in a real copy, that is}..... except that they hadn't managed to download the original voicetrack and so had got foreign language students to dub for Kate and Leo etc. - this was not a 'fault' the staff in the shop were ever going to spot or have sympathy with], or...... well, just a lot of hassle.....); you'd often have to suffer aggressive touting of porn or manga or boxed sets of mind-numbing Chinese TV dramas; and the best shops would almost invariably disappear after a few months, with no notice at all.
These bog-standard, easy-come-easy-go shops, that we'd only bother with because they were LOCAL, were a source of occasional ecstasy but more frequent vexation. However, we film-lovers have always been tormented by the thought that there would somewhere OUT THERE be a really reliable DVD shop: one that wouldn't disappear without a trace after only a few months, one that wouldn't aggressively promote the latest Hollywood blockbuster shit, one that wouldn't pretend never to have seen us before if we came back with non-functioning disks...... one that would carry some of the decent old stuff as well. It is a Grail Quest. We hear rumours all the time. 4 or 5 years ago everyone had a story about this "great DVD shop down that hutong, you know, behind that, oh what's it called....". I suspect that most of them were only ever bar talk. The ones that weren't were impossible to find, not as good as they were cracked up to be, or soon closed down.
Occasionally, just occasionally, I have found a DVD shop that seems to meet the standards; but then..... before long it falls into one of the common vices.
There was one just around the corner from me a few years ago. I fondly recall going in there for the first time, with my (not terribly cinemaphile) girlfriend, promising that I would only be a few minutes, lingering half an hour, sighing, gasping (orgasmically, I fear) as I slowly worked through the scores of bins, turning up one after another the likes of such previously unheard-of treasures as THX 1138, BladeRunner, Paths Of Glory, and Harold and Maude. Two or three visits later, the elderly laoban, having noticed my non-mainstream tastes, summoned me over to his counter with a wizened finger and produced from somewhere down below a stash of 'special customer only' titles in a large brown paper bag; the pale finger beckoned me even closer and then he croaked confidentially, in faltering English, "You like Bergman? You like Fellini? I got a lot of good old stuff." "Well, I don't know," I replied hesitantly. "I don't usually like to do black-and-white with my girlfriend. It's kind of embarrassing, you know. You don't have La Strada, do you?"
I loved that man (although he didn't have La Strada - I'm still looking for that one). Two months later his nephew took the place over, and he was a complete arsehole. So it goes.
I probably have quite a few more posts in me on this topic. It is a passion of mine. The reason I bring it up now is that on our recent trip to Harbin my buddy The Chairman stumbled upon The Best DVD Shop In The World. No, really. We're out of town for 3 or 4 days and we spend 6 hours in this shop. Amazing selection. Great prices. Amazing selection. Friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, English-speaking owner. Amazing selection. I was seriously strapped for cash - but I couldn't resist The Red Shoes, The Hustler, The Naked Prey, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, Hell In The Pacific..... and a few others.
I think from now on I might just e-mail my film-watching requirements to this charming lady and pay the postage.
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