Mao's Last Dancer

  “How are you?” Cunyuan asked as he pedaled.

  “Fine, I’m happy to be home!” I replied.

  “Tell me, what is Beijing like?” he asked anxiously.

  I told him about the wide, paved streets and the grand buildings. I told him of the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City and of course glorious Tiananmen Square.

  Cunyuan was utterly enthralled. He would occasionally interrupt with a question and ask for more details, so I told him about the polluted air, the vast number of vehicles, bikes and people, hundreds of thousands of people. When I told him about the food we had, he said, “You’re making my mouth water! You are truly fortunate!” Then he was silent for a few minutes as though he needed time to imagine what eating such good food would be like.

  “Did you meet Chairman and Madame Mao?” he asked eventually.

  “Not Chairman Mao, but Madame Mao came to our school and spoke to us!” I replied.

  “Oh, you are lucky, indeed, indeed!” he murmured.

  I knew he was envious of the lifestyle I had in Beijing and would have loved to have had the same opportunities. So, trying to make him feel better, I told him about the blocked toilets, my dislike of some of the teachers and my dreadful homesickness.

  He laughed at me for making such an issue about the toilets. “Surely they are better than our hole in the ground at home. That doesn’t even have a roof over it!”

  “I like our hole in the ground much better,” I argued. “At least the foul smell can escape. Remember our grandfather’s toilets in the city?” I asked.

  “Not that bad?” he asked.

  “Worse, much worse! More people pooing!” I replied, and he laughed. Then he asked, more seriously, “Why do you hate your teachers?”

  “They are mean, and some shout at us all the time,” I replied.

  “Have you ever heard of a saying that says bitter medicine isn’t necessarily bad and sweet medicine isn’t always good for you? Surely if you were good, they would have no reason to shout at you,” he said.

  “But I’m no good at dancing. I can’t concentrate when they shout at me. I just want to come home,” I confessed.

  He was shocked by this. “Cunxin, just look at the color of my skin and then look at yours. Within a year your skin has become whiter and mine darker. You don’t want my life and my destiny. A peasant’s job is the lowest job one can have. This is my first year working in the fields, and I hate it already. It is brainless work. My whole body is always covered with mud and sweat, and what is my reward? Not enough money to feed myself for a single day! Is this the kind of life you desire? Please, don’t tell our parents about your homesickness. Especially our niang—she already misses you so much. She cried every time I read your letter. This last week, she hasn’t stopped smiling and laughing, and she hasn’t slept a single night. Please, only tell her the good things about Beijing.”

  By this time I could just see our village in the distance.

  “Niang started cooking early this morning,” Cunyuan continued. “So you could have a bowl of dumplings waiting when you arrived home!”

  I knew Cunyuan was right about what I should say to my parents. I made up my mind to keep my sadness to myself.

  As we turned into our street, we passed some neighbors. “Welcome home!” they called. Down the street I could see my fifth brother, Cunfar, and my little brother, Jing Tring, waving and jumping up and down by our house. They rushed in to tell our niang I was back, and within minutes a small crowd had gathered by our gate. As we came closer, I saw my niang come out and my heart pounded with excitement. She wore the same dark blue cotton jacket with patches on the elbows, an apron, and the same patched trousers as always, but she looked older than I remembered. The past year had taken its toll.

  I jumped off the bike, and tears filled my eyes as we rushed to each other and she hugged me tightly in her arms. “How I missed you!” she cried. “How I missed you! I nearly died missing you!” she kept repeating.

  I was in ninth heaven again. This was what I had been dreaming of ever since I left her a year ago.

  My fourth aunt rushed out of her house then, hobbling on her tiny bound feet as fast as she could. “Where is my sixth son?”

  “Si niang. How are you?” I asked.

  “You are whiter and a little fatter than when you left us!” she said proudly.

  We all went into our house then. Nothing had changed. I could smell the ginger, garlic and green onion dumplings. I was so happy. All my brothers sat around, and everyone talked and talked. It was as though we were trying to tell all our stories of the past year, all at once.

  Niang didn’t say much, but from the way she looked at me I knew she had missed me terribly. Throughout the day I simply hung around her—I felt safe. I felt loved. I was a little child of hers once again.

  “Can I help you wash those shirts?” I asked as my niang was preparing her laundry.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t you want to see your friends?”

  “I’ll go later,” I replied.

  “Did you miss home?”

  I hesitated, remembering what my second brother had said. “No, not too much, only a little!”

  “That’s good. There isn’t much to miss back here. Only a hard life!” She sighed.

  Just then a couple of my niang’s friends walked in. “Aya! Look at him, he has grown!” one said.

  “He has become so white,” said the other. “Look at his beautiful skin! This would only come from nutritious food. What a lucky boy you are!”

  I dutifully answered their questions about Beijing and life at the academy and then escaped to pay my respects to my relatives, neighbors and friends, and to spend the rest of the morning roaming the streets, playing some of the old games with my brothers and friends. I had missed them so much and I felt so relieved to be back.

  After lunch, my fifth brother, Cunfar, suddenly dragged me outside into our front courtyard. “I nearly forgot!” he said excitedly. “I have a present for you. Just wait.” He went into our little shed and pulled out a small glass jar. “I’ve kept my prized cricket champion for you since summer! He has beaten all the crickets in our village and now he is yours!” Proudly he handed me the jar.

  “Really?” I held the jar as though it was a priceless treasure. “What did you name him?” I asked.

  “The King,” Cunfar replied. “He is so handsome, just wait until you see the size of his teeth!”

  I carefully opened the lid. “Come on, King,” I called and tilted the jar sideways. Nothing happened.

  “He won’t recognize your voice. Let me try,” he said. “Come on, King! You can come out now!”

  Still no cricket came out. “I’ll kill you if you don’t come out!” he shouted impatiently.

  “Let me see.” I gave the jar a gentle shake and tipped it upside down. The cricket dropped out, dead.

  “Oh, my King!” My brother was devastated.

  “Don’t worry, Fifth Brother. I’m sure you’ll find another champion next summer.”

  “You would have been so proud of him. He fought like a true warrior. His teeth were as sharp as knives. I’m sorry you didn’t get to play with him.”

  I too was sad that the King was dead. From the look of him he’d been a strong cricket.

  Later that afternoon, my second brother, Cunyuan, rode on the bike again to collect our dia from work. Jing Tring and I ran to the intersection at the edge of our village. I was excited to see my dia again, but I was anxious about my grades too and worried about his reaction. I saw them ride up, and my dia hopped off in front of us. “You’re back!” He smiled one of his rare smiles.

  I nodded. That was all he said to me and all I had to reply. I loved my dia dearly, and I knew he loved me as well.

  My niang had already prepared a special dinner as a welcome treat by the time we arrived home. There was so much excitement! We all sat around the kang and again I explained what my life was like in Beijing and I tried hard to me
ntion only the positive elements of the experience. “We can’t match the food you had in Beijing, but I hope you still like my dumplings,” my niang said as she set a bowl of steaming hot dumplings in front of me.

  “This was all I’d dream about, but we did have dumplings all the time at the academy,” I lied. I pushed the bowl in front of my dia, because I knew there wouldn’t be enough for everyone.

  “Liuga, can you count how many times you ate meat there?” Jing Tring asked.

  “Nearly every day!” I replied.

  Cunsang was wide-eyed with disbelief.

  I nodded. There was silence.

  “Madame Mao wouldn’t let her students starve, would she?” Niang said finally.

  A few weeks before I arrived home Cunsang had been accepted by the Chinese navy, and he was going to be a sailor on one of the battleships stationed in the Shandong Province area, so we talked about this as well. After dinner I took out the sweets that I had bought in Beijing, and everyone tasted a piece. Our dia would keep the rest as gifts. Then I suggested playing our word-finding game, looking for words from the newspapers that covered our walls, and my brothers happily agreed. We had so much fun. It was just like old times.

  Before bed, when I was alone with my parents and Jing Tring, I handed my dia the three yuan that I had saved.

  “Why didn’t you buy something for yourself in Beijing?” my dia asked.

  “I thought this would help the family,” I replied.

  “Zhi zhi zhi!” My niang just sighed. She was sad that I’d felt the need to give back whatever I had to my family.

  With my second brother now working in the commune, I could tell that my family’s living conditions had improved, even if only slightly. They still ate the same kind of food, but now there was a little more for my niang to cook with: limited rations of meat, fish, oil, soy sauce and coal, plenty of dried yams and, once a week, corn bread. And besides the New Year’s special food, my niang had cooked me dumplings not once but a couple of times, because she knew they were my favorite. Even so, there was never enough for everyone, and the dumplings traveled from my bowl to my niang’s, my niang’s back to mine, and then I would pass one to my dia. But he’d move his bowl away and the dumpling would slip onto the wooden tray. Niang would sigh yet again. “Silly boy, just eat them! I know you have good food to eat in Beijing, but you won’t be able to have my dumplings again for a whole year!”

  I attracted attention wherever I went in my village now. I was a celebrity.

  “Did you really see Madame Mao?” one peasant man asked me.

  I nodded.

  He suddenly grabbed my hands and shook them violently. “It’s a privilege! Such a privilege!” he shouted ecstatically.

  Many people stopped me like that and asked me about Beijing and university life. I knew they were expecting to hear about glorious, heartwarming experiences, so I found myself telling everyone only the best aspects of Beijing. Everyone wanted to know about the food. I had to glorify everything. They longed to hear something that would give them hope. Hope was all they had, and I couldn’t let them down.

  One day, four of my old friends and I were playing our “hopping on one leg” game when one of them asked me to give them a dance lesson. “Teach us something we can perform in our school show!” he begged excitedly.

  I hesitated. What could I possibly teach them?

  “Please, please! Help your old friends!” they all persisted.

  I knew they would be disappointed if I said no, so after dinner that night we gathered together in the same room where my na-na’s dead body had once rested for three days. It was mid-February and still very cold. My friends wore their thick cotton jackets and pants and, under the low-wattage light, they looked just like four enormous cottonwool balls.

  “I want to teach you a Beijing Opera Movement exercise,” I began. “It will get your legs warmed up first. Otherwise you’ll injure yourselves. Let’s put your legs on the windowsills.” This was the only place I could think of that was roughly the height of a barre.

  My friends just looked at me with peculiar expressions.

  “All right, let me show you.” I put my right leg up on the windowsill.

  “See. It’s not too hard,” I encouraged, and I helped them to put their legs onto the sill as well. But as soon as I’d helped the last friend’s leg up the others had already lowered theirs.

  “It’s too high!” one of them complained.

  “Can’t we use the edge of the kang?” another suggested.

  So we moved to the bedroom and used the hip-high edge of the kang, which was much easier.

  “Okay, now straighten your legs and your hips,” I told them as I pushed one of their legs straight.

  “Ow!” they screamed.

  “Now, let’s change legs,” I instructed.

  They lifted their other legs up to the edge of the kang, but all they did was scream and groan. “Can’t you teach us something less painful and more fun?”

  I could see this was going to be a challenge. I couldn’t think of anything that was fun, exciting and painless as well. Out of desperation, I showed them some relatively easy ballet positions.

  “I don’t know whether you can use them in your show or not, but they’re not painful.” I demonstrated first, second and fifth foot positions. “You can hold on to the edge of the kang,” I told them. They all tried, but their feet caved in every time they straightened their knees.

  “Is this all you have learned in the past year?” one of my friends asked.

  I nodded.

  “Surely it was more fun than this! Come on, teach us something easy so we can impress everyone at the show.”

  I didn’t know how to answer him. Fun? I thought of Gao Dakun pushing our bodies onto our legs, putting the full force of his weight on us.

  My friends didn’t ask me to teach them any dance movements after that.

  My month at home went by as fast as the blink of an eye. I dreaded going back to the rigid routine of the university.

  On my last night home, after dinner, when everyone except me and my parents had gone to bed, my dia handed me eight yuan.

  “It’s too much,” I protested.

  “Take it. Things are more expensive now. Our lives are looking up with your second brother working.” Then, completely unexpectedly, he handed me a sealed envelope. “I was going to get you some sorghum sweets, but I bought you this instead. I’m sorry I didn’t have enough money to have it wrapped.”

  Inside the envelope I found the most beautiful fountain pen. It was deep royal blue, my favorite color. I could tell it was an expensive one. It would have cost my dia at least two yuan.

  “I hope you will use it every day,” my dia said, “and every time you use it, you will remember your parents and our expectations of you. I don’t know what grades your classmates have received, but I hope you will come home with better grades next year. Don’t let us down. Let us be proud.”

  I had expected my parents to talk to me about my poor grades. I had expected harsher words. But that pen, and the few words my dia said then, caused bigger waves inside me than any accusations could ever bring. He didn’t blame me. He didn’t accuse me, but I felt I had let him and my whole family down. I couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, I looked at my niang, but she had buried her head in her sewing. I knew that every time I used my dia’s pen, his words would echo in my mind.

  12

  MY OWN VOICE

  The train trip back to Beijing this time was a happier experience. Even the settling-in period at the academy was easier because by now all of us could communicate with each other in Mandarin. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dia’s pen, though, and his pride-provoking words. I knew that every time I used that pen, I would feel guilty, because my attitude toward my dancing hadn’t changed. I still hated it.

  In May that year, Madame Mao visited our university for the second time. This time I did get to perform for her, and afterward we all gathered at the sp
orts ground where, with indomitable authority, she told us to study hard and be good students of Chairman Mao’s. Her entourage of cultural officials stood beside her with expressions of the utmost admiration and respect. She told the university officials that the dance students were technically weak. So additional classes were added, including martial arts.

  Madame Mao also ordered two young champions from the Beijing Martial Arts School and the Beijing Acrobatics School to join us as model students. They were awesome. I was especially impressed with Wang Lujun. He could master ten back flips in a row with ease. He could do “double flying legs” with incredible height, but his “butterfly” was the most difficult and exciting step to watch. You had to swing your body from right to left, with head and body at chest height, at the same time pushing both legs up in the air in a fanning motion. When the movement was done properly it looked just like a butterfly flying in the air. Wang Lujun could do thirty-two of them in a row! He was legendary.

  Although Lujun was good at acrobatics, martial arts and Beijing Opera Movement, he struggled hard at ballet. Because he had come in the middle of that second year, he’d missed learning the basics, and the way the muscles were used in ballet was so different from the way they were used in martial arts. He told me many times that he wished he could go back to martial arts again but, for the same reason as me, he felt trapped. He had a duty to perform and there was no way back.

  Lujun was honest, and he had a strong sense of fairness. Later he was nicknamed the Bandit, and he liked it so much that the name stuck.

  One day, later in that same term, I remember the Bandit bought ten fen worth of sweets: his father often sent him spending money, and he would occasionally slip a sweet or two into my hand. But this time his class captain found out and told the head teacher. The Bandit was ordered to write three self-criticisms. He dug deep, but he genuinely couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t buy sweets. So I gave him some ideas—the ten fen he’d spent on sweets could have saved someone from starvation. Or his selfish action could corrupt his mind. I didn’t really believe this, but I had to convince him that it was the only way to get him out of trouble. He had to learn how to survive this psychological brainwashing too. Fortunately, it worked and his self-criticism passed the test.