In the eyes of the beholders

People crowd around the counter, those standing in the first row resting their elbows on the counter, their eyes fixed on the shop assistant as they listen intently to his sales pitch. However, few of them could seriously consider buying one of these technological marvels.

Each of the television sets cost 200 yuan ($29), Wang says, well beyond the means of most people in the 1980s, and at a time when his salary was just 30 yuan a month. In fact, novelty value apart, there were few good reasons to buy one of these things because the on-screen fare was so thin on the ground anyway.

The other color photo of the pair shows a little girl sitting in a shopping cart staring at an LCD television in a supermarket in Beijing many years later with no one else around. A Peking Opera character appears on several television sets of different brands and types for comparison, with price tags below, ranging from about 10,000 yuan to more than 30,000 yuan.

By 2017, with mobile internet service widely accessible, television seemed a lot less appealing than it did 30 years earlier.