CRI听力: Toys over the Past 60 Years for the National Holiday

Toys are more than what they seem. They are memories from our childhoods and tell us a great deal about the larger society to which they belong. Beijinger Chen Yulan is a grandmother of a one-year-old girl. She and her family are going to tell us how toys in China have changed over the past 60 years.

Reporter:

Sandbags, kites, colorful cards, bones, paper windmills, clay dolls. For thousands of years, children in China have always had toys. But some of these toys did not change much up to the 1950s and '60s. Most were handmade by parents with materials that were easy to find such as paper, cloth and wood.

Fifty-six year-old Chen Yulan recalls her favorite toy — a peg-top.(www.hXen.com)

"This is the sound when the peg-top spins. To keep it spinning, we must whip the peg-top constantly. But we called the peg-top "traitor," so that we could name the game "whip the traitor." In the 1950s, China was just freed from the wars, and people still had strong resentment for the betrayers."

In fact, everything back then could be a toy for children. For instance, girls usually wrapped wet sand with handkerchiefs to pretend they were making bread, and boys played with tree branches as if they were swords.

In the early 1950s, China started to build toy factories in Beijing and Shanghai. The Shanghai Kangyuan Toy Factory is one of the oldest. Although it produced its first pullback metal toy car inspired by China's first real car in 1960s, most parents at that time were not rich enough to buy it or other toys until the 1970s.

Liu Li, Chen Yulan's nephew, got his first toy car in 1976 when he was four. It was made of tin which was the most common material for making toys in the 1970s.

"That was a fancy little blue car. My dad bought it at the airport when he returned from a foreign country. It cost him 15 yuan, about one-third of his salary. I loved it so much. But it soon broke because the material was too fragile."

Zhou Xin is a tin toy fan. He now runs a tin toy shop named Clockwork Monkey in downtown Beijing.

"Early tin toys featured simple physical motions like this windup jumping frog. Then some could do more complicated actions by using levers such as this windup drumming bear. And then many toys used electric power and other technology. For instance, this submachine gun produced by Kangyuan can generate four different sirens and flash red lights."

In the 1970s, Chinese companies produced and exported more than one thousand kinds of tin toys. The country's toy exports reached nearly 6 million US dollars in 1972.

But plastic toys soon replaced tin toys around the early 1980s.

Chen Jia, Chen Yulan's daughter, says:

"Every birthday, my mom took me to the toy shop and let me choose my birthday gift. I remembered I chose a set of plastic kitchen dishware, including little pots and bowls. Another favorite birthday gift was from my grandma. She bought me my first Barbie doll."

With China's economy opening up in the early 1980s, foreign animated TV series started to enter the country. Toys inspired by these cartoons became more popular among children. Transformer-themed toys were no doubt the best example.

Chen Shou, Chen Jia's cousin, says:

"After watching the animated series, I was eager to have a Transformer of my own. I think every boy had at least one Transformer toy at that time. And then there were Japanese series like Doraemon and American ones like She-ra. I used to have Doraemon dolls and She-ra's sword."

As of 1985, China had 520 toy factories and its toy exports totaled 96 million US dollars, 16 times the amount in 1972. Many foreign toy manufacturers did not pass by a good opportunity and started to invest in this industry.

In the mid-1990s, Japan's home video game console Famicom became the most popular high-tech toy in China.

Chen Shuo says:

"I never thought that we could play games on a television. It was so different from those traditional toys. My cousin and I used to spend day and night playing Super Mario, Contra and Battle City during summer holidays. That was amazing."

Since the mid-1990s, more toys have been based on characters from popular culture. With the fast development of foreign toys in China, many local companies busied themselves with inventing and producing their own toys.

The popular animated TV series "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" is produced by Guangdong Creative Power Entertainment. Since its debut in 2005, economists estimate that its cartoon goat is now worth 1 billion yuan.

Toy shop owner Zhou Xin says:

"There are many related toys on the market. You can see the images of the goat on children's bags and clothes. This is China's first successful cooperation between popular culture and the toy industry. Before that I seldom saw toys inspired by Chinese animated TV series."

As of 2008, China had more than 8,000 toy manufacturers producing over 30 thousand kinds of toys. Seventy-five percent of the world's toys are made in China.

Chen Jia had a daughter last year. She says she spends at least 300 yuan a month on buying toys.

"Now there are too many choices. They design toys for different ages of children. The problem is no toy can hold my girl's interest for long. I keep buying new toys for her. Nowadays, kids are very smart. They can solve the tricks very quickly. I used to play Rubic's Cube for years, but I believe it will not take my girl that long."

Before 2016, China will have 16 to 20 million new babies each year. It indicates China's toy industry will have a bright future.

Meanwhile, many people hope the industry continues to make and improve the traditional toys since they are the legacies of Chinese culture and treasured childhood memories.