My Early Digital Memories
I was born in 1995, the same year Windows 95 was released on July 14.
Before September 2004, I lived in a village in Meizhou, Guangdong. We had a TV at home, but it didn’t have a signal, so I had to go to a neighbor’s house to watch TV shows. I remember watching shows like “The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber,” “The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” and “Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils” (the Hu Jun version).
I also remember playing the Little Tyrant Study Machine at the home of my eldest uncle. We played games like Contra and Battle City.
During one Spring Festival, I remember my father returning from Guangzhou with his Nokia phone, probably a 3310 1 . I remember entering too many incorrect attempts to unlock the SIM card, which caused it to lock. It required a PUK code to unlock, but my father didn’t have the PUK code details, which were printed on the original SIM card packaging. He had to wait to return to Guangzhou to unlock it or go to a store for help.
My mother brought me to Guangzhou in August 2004 to live with my father.
I don’t recall exactly when I first used a computer. I heard that someone in my village bought a computer to play games, but I don’t know if I went to see it.
However, by early 2005, I should have had access to a computer. My father worked in a monitoring house for a tunnel. In late 2004, that house was expanded to include a monitoring room with several computers running Windows NT and Windows XP.
I didn’t have that excitement when I first used a computer. It was probably because I had seen TVs and mobile phones before. I played the computer game StarCraft (standalone version) for the entire winter and summer of 2006, often playing for about 12 hours a day.
In our large monitor house, we bought a washer around 2006. The brand was Little Swan.
I remember registering my QQ number for the first time in primary school in 2006. It was probably my first time using the internet. I also went to cybercafes in 2007 or 2008, as the place where I lived (the monitoring house beside a tunnel) didn’t have internet access until 2009 or 2010.
I remember we used a mobile Wi-Fi device to access the internet in the monitoring house.
I got a mobile phone around 2009. Actually, it was given to me by a friend in middle school. The model was probably a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
I got my first laptop in 2013. My father gave me the money to buy it. It was an ASUS laptop. I got my Xiaomi Mi 2S in late 2013.
I first heard about the iPhone in high school around 2011. Someone in my high school showed me their iPhone 3G or iPhone 4. I got my iPhone 6 at the annual meeting just before the Spring Festival in 2015. I was lucky enough to win it in a lottery, being one of the two winners out of around 20 people.
In late 2015, I got my first Mac computer, a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014).
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Update: Confirmed with my father that it should be the Nokia 8310. ↩