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Since 2000, many people installed dish-shaped satellite TV antennas at home, because they were tired of the party's political propaganda on state-run TV channels.

If you lived on the top floor of an apartment building, you could install a large dish (大锅) on the roof, otherwise, you could install a small dish (小锅) on the balcony.

I installed a small dish to receive unencrypted English channels, including BBC and CNN. Of course, most people received Mandarin channels of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

After 2010, due to various reasons, such as channel closure or encryption, online TV channels (in YouTube), government's ban, etc, most dishes disappeared gradually.