Mao's Last Dancer

  “You promise?” he asked excitedly.

  “Yes, I promise,” I replied.

  “You dare to spit on it?” he asked again.

  Annoyed, I spat on the ground and stamped my foot on it so that if the promise wasn’t kept it would bring me unthinkable bad luck.

  We went back home and started our journey again. Just as I thought things were going smoothly, we saw Sien Yu coming toward us, excitedly shouting, “What’s taken you so long? I was on my way to your house to get you.”

  Just as I put my finger to my mouth to tell him to keep quiet, Jing Tring shouted happily, “My sixth brother promised me that I can play with you after our secret mission!” We had failed on our second try, and the old Wuho man had said that we were only allowed to try this journey three times in a single day. It was just like Jing Tring to ruin everything, I thought.

  This time my little brother adamantly refused to walk. Even my promise of taking him to Sien Yu’s house didn’t work. “I want to stay home, I want to stay home!” he screamed.

  “You children, the only thing you know how to do well is eat!” our niang said to us when we arrived back home for the second time. “Don’t tell me you can’t even keep your mouths shut for a few minutes.”

  This time, out of desperation, I carried my little brother on my back. “Shut your eyes. Close your mouth. If I hear a single sound from you, I will throw you into the well and you can spend the rest of your life with the frogs!” That scared him so much that he did as he was told. This time we completed our task, and a month later our warts had completely disappeared.

  Despite our hardships, however, there were occasional joys too in our childhood. The one time of the year that we all looked forward to, the one time when we would be guaranteed wonderful food, was the Chinese New Year.

  Our niang had to make and steam many bread rolls for the Chinese New Year, as gifts for our relatives. She made them in the shape of fish and peaches, representing peace and prosperity, and gold bars representing wealth. Making the bread was time-consuming. The bread rolls would split if the dough had not been kneaded perfectly. She would be too embarrassed to take the split ones to our relatives, so we would keep those for ourselves. I always wished for more split ones, but she was such a perfectionist there would be very few of those and she rarely had sufficient flour to make enough bread for the gifts, let alone for us. During the holiday season we often had corn bread, second best to wheat bread, and it was such a treat.

  Before dark on New Year’s Eve, my dia and my fourth uncle would take me and my brothers to my ancestors’ graveyard. We took bottles of water, representing food and wine, and stacks of yellowish rice paper stamped with the shape of old gold coins, which symbolized spending money. We took many bunches of incense, representing gold bars, and carried paper lanterns. All the children had pocketsful of firecrackers. We spread the rice papers and stuck the incense on top of each grave. After we lit the paper money and the incense, we would kneel in front of each tomb and kowtow three times, calling out each ancestor’s name, following a strict order, starting with the eldest of us and ending with the youngest.

  “Dia, how can the dead people hear us if they are dead?” I asked.

  “They know,” he replied with his usual brevity.

  Just before we left the graveyard to go home for our special dinner, we asked each of our ancestors to follow us home for the New Year’s holiday. Our dia and our fourth uncle poured the bottles of water in front of each grave. On the way home we made sure our lanterns were brightly lit, so our ancestors’ spirits could see clearly the road ahead. The children lit the firecrackers to wake the ancestors up. “Xing gan wo men hui jia. Lu bu ping. Man man zou.” Our dia and our uncle would ask our ancestors to walk slowly and not trip on the uneven road. They talked to our ancestors as though they were still alive. My brothers and I thought this was funny, but we had to take this occasion very seriously. Our ancestors’ spirits lived on, like gods in a better world, because they had been kind people before they died. They had the power to help us, influence our well-being and our fate.

  The meal that night was Niang’s favorite to cook, because this was the only time she had enough good ingredients. She had saved all year long for this. Cold dishes came first: marinated jellyfish with soy sauce and a touch of sesame oil; seaweed jelly with smashed up garlic and soy sauce; marinated salty peanuts and pig-trotter jelly. Then hot dishes: fried whole flounder, and we always pushed the head to our dia’s side of the plate. It was the most precious part of the fish to have. But our dia didn’t touch it until our niang came to sit down, and then he would push it to her side of the plate. Then there was a steaming egg dish with green chives and rice noodles. There would have been at least ten eggs in it! It was so delicious that it just melted in my mouth. There were several vegetable dishes too and they all had small pieces of meat in them. The aroma of all this delicious food, mixed with the Chinese rice wine, the incense and the pipe smoke, was unforgettable. It was so distinctively the Li family smell. And it only occurred once a year, on that special Chinese New Year’s Eve.

  I always volunteered to help Niang push the wind box on those nights. I dearly wanted to stay on the kang to feast on her delicious food with the rest of the family, but even more I wanted to be with my niang on this special night. I didn’t want her to be cooking alone. She would bubble with happiness while she cooked. “Da kai huo tao. Rang ta tiao wu.” Let the flame dance now, she would say. Or, “Rang huo tao man xia lai.” Slow down the fire, let it simmer. Even pushing the wind box was fun. That night we would use black coal, not half-burned coal, and the flame would flare immediately with each push and pull of the wind box. I often wondered if the god of fire, if there was one, was happy that particular night. I wished he would be happy all the time.

  Everything was special and magical that night. Each dish tasted better than the previous one served. Everyone chatted enthusiastically, but the one who talked the most that night was our dia. Happiness filled up everyone’s hearts. We would forget hardship. We felt privileged. There were always too many dishes to fit on the wooden tray and many would end up on the kang. I wondered why we didn’t spread these delicious dishes throughout the year. How much could we eat in one night?

  The meal always ended with steaming pork-and-cabbage dumplings, all handmade by our niang. They looked precious and smelled exquisite! I always saved plenty of room for them. They truly were a labor of love. Our niang would put a one-fen coin into a dumpling, and whoever found it was destined to have luck throughout the year. One year nobody found that fen, even though our niang swore she’d put it in. Did someone eat it without even noticing? we asked. Nobody was surprised. We swallowed those dumplings as if we were wolves.

  The very first bowl of dumplings to be served was lucky food, for the gods of the kitchen, of harvest, prosperity, long life and happiness. The second bowl of dumplings was for our ancestors. Before our niang placed each bowl of dumplings at the center of the table, with incense on either side, she would pour some broth onto the ground in four directions. “Gods, my kind gods,” she would murmur, “please eat our humble food. We are blessed by your generosity.” The square table was always placed in the middle of the room, against the northern wall. Before Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution we would have displayed a family tree and a picture of the god of fortune too, on the wall just above the table. But this was an old tradition now, a threat to communist beliefs. Any family doing this would be regarded as counterrevolutionary and there were heavy penalties, including jail.

  Nobody was to touch those dumplings my niang left at the center of the table, but they always mysteriously disappeared overnight. “The gods and our ancestors have eaten them,” our niang would say. I thought this was incredible, and believed her wholeheartedly.

  After the meal we would go from house to house to pay our respects and wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year. Every gate in the village was wide open. Nobody was supposed to sleep. We wou
ld play tricks on our friends if we caught any of them sleeping. Once we tied a firecracker to a friend’s ankles and when he moved his legs in his sleep the firecracker went off and gave him a dreadful fright.

  After midnight, firecrackers could be heard everywhere and would last throughout the night. Thousands of small red-and-white pieces of firecracker paper splattered around the streets. Many of the firecrackers we made ourselves. My favorite was the “double kicker.” It was as long as an adult’s finger, and once we lit it the first explosion happened in our hand and it would shoot off for about ten or fifteen yards, when the second explosion would go off.

  On New Year’s Day we would sleep until midmorning. Everyone was exhausted, but nobody cared. The holiday spirit lived on.

  On alternate years, we went to one of our aunties’ houses on New Year’s Day. I loved my aunts, but my youngest auntie’s house had more action, and the meals in her house would sometimes last for three or four hours. She was a beautiful lady and a good cook, with three girls and a boy, and a husband who would sing and tell us stories. He was one of the best furniture painters in Qingdao. Often he would tell us about the knowledge and tradition behind painting a piece of wood. He was very funny. He loved drinking rice wine and once he’d had one small glass his voice would rise an octave and he would begin to sing tunes from some of the old Beijing Operas. He also had many photos of himself taken in different cities around China. I loved looking at them. It was unusual for a person to travel so much in China then. Most people never left the city they were born in, but because of my uncle’s painting skills he was invited to attend painting seminars throughout China. I was fascinated by these beautiful photos, by the places he’d been to. We only had a few photos in our house, and I asked my parents why. “You will lose a layer of skin with each photo taken,” our dia replied, “and you only have so many layers of skin to lose before you die.”

  “Then why did my uncle have so many pictures taken? He is still alive and well,” I asked.

  “Just wait,” our dia would say ominously.

  Our niang always sighed upon hearing our dia’s explanation. She knew we were simply too poor to afford them.

  The second day of the New Year was the day we farewelled our ancestors. We would light lanterns and incense and show our ancestors the way back to their graves. We would shower them with more symbolic food, drink and money, and wish them a year of good fortune and peace.

  On the third day of the New Year, married daughters would visit their families. Our niang would take two or three sons with her, dressed up in our best clothes, and she would make a huge fuss about how we should behave. She took two basketfuls of bread rolls for her father and eldest brother. This was an important day for her. It was as though she had to show her family how well she’d done being married to the Li family.

  We left our house before half past seven in the morning to catch the eight o’clock bus to the city. The rickety old bus was always crowded with people squeezed tightly in. We often sat on each other’s laps for the one-hour trip because the elderly always had first preference for seats, and the old bus clucked and chuckled along so slowly that it seemed as if the wheels would fall off or the engine would stop any minute. The bus door had to be pulled hard to open and shut it. At each stop, people pushed their way on or off, but many people couldn’t get on at all because there was no room and many missed their stops altogether. One time we all had to walk because the bus really did break down halfway there. When the next bus arrived an hour later, it was as full as the bus we’d just been on.

  After our niang’s mother passed away, her father married a country girl the same age as our niang and moved his family to Qingdao City. Better times had come for him. He was a carpenter. The city people could afford to pay more than the country peasants for his carpentry work.

  My grandfather’s place was on the top floor of a very old three-story concrete building that looked as though it would crumble any time. The stairs were badly chipped, and it probably hadn’t been painted since the day it was built. His apartment had two small rooms. My grandparents’ room was the slightly larger room, and our niang’s stepbrother and stepsister slept in another room on a tiny double bed made by my grandfather. There was no storage space. Clothes and other things had to go under their beds or hang from the ceiling or be kept under a piece of plastic outside.

  About twenty families on their floor shared one bathroom for men and one for women. Both bathrooms had two toilets—concrete holes in the ground—and they always smelled dreadful, even from my grandparents’ apartment, and theirs was the farthest away! I couldn’t imagine how much worse the smell would be in summer. We only visited during the Chinese New Year when the weather was cold. One of the toilet holes at least, sometimes both, was blocked and occasionally all the overflowing shitty stuff even froze to the footsteps. I would always find an excuse to disappear onto the streets when I was desperate for a wee.

  But the toilet smell wasn’t the only smell we had to contend with at their place. My grandparents both chain-smoked pipes, and their two tiny rooms were constantly filled with smoke. Luckily we never stayed inside long. In fact we always made sure we didn’t by making lots of noise while the adults were talking. Sometimes our grandfather would tell our niang to control her “undisciplined brats.” But we never really got into trouble. Niang was just as relieved as we were to leave that stinking, miserable place.

  Our second stop on that trip was at our niang’s eldest brother’s house, Big Uncle’s. He was three years younger than she and they were very close. Big Uncle was the most educated man in our niang’s family. He was politically astute, and the head of the propaganda department for the Building Materials Bureau in Qingdao. He had a son and two daughters. Their living standard was much higher than ours: we considered their three-room apartment very luxurious.

  Big Uncle loved card games and also enjoyed playing a word-guessing game between the adults. The loser had to keep drinking rice wine, and the more they drank the more likely they were to lose. All the children would form a circle, cheering the adult they wanted to succeed.

  “I won! Drink! Drink!” Big Uncle would declare.

  “Shui shuo ni ying le? Zailai, zailai!” The opponent wouldn’t agree with Big Uncle’s declaration, and they would get into heated arguments. Often they were shouting so loud the women had to ask them to quiet down. Afterwards I would ask Big Uncle what story each word represented, and sometimes he would tell me a famous fable. He was an animated storyteller, humorous and witty. I thought maybe that was why he was head of the propaganda department.

  The fifteenth day of the New Year was always dreaded. It marked the end of the Chinese New Year and the beginning of our harsh life once again. We were told this night was traditionally enjoyed by the emperor’s family as the “Night of Lights.” Beijing and other big cities would display magical lights and set off many fireworks. But the best we could do was to make torches from candlewax. We would walk around the house and shine the torches into every corner to keep the evil spirits away. Our fourth uncle always took huge pleasure in making the torches for us. We gathered wooden sticks and he would wrap pieces of white cotton tightly around the tip and dip them into a big pot of melted candlewax. Sometimes he even let us do some dipping if we behaved ourselves. I loved watching the wax harden on the tip of the sticks, and even more I enjoyed running and twisting the torch around, making different shapes in the dark. My favorite shape to make was a dragon, and I pretended my torch was a magical Kung Fu weapon as I twirled it around.

  Our parents always warned us to keep the torches away from the piles of dried grass or hay that were used to ignite the coal and that every family stored in their front yard. Once I remember a neighbor’s house nearly caught fire because a five-year-old boy hid in their haystack with a lit incense in his hand. The boy barely escaped from the burning haystack alive.

  Chinese New Year was our dia’s only holiday. Since the weather was normally very cold and the
fields frozen at that time of the year, there was not much work to do on our little piece of land. Our main outdoor activity during these days was kite flying. I often sat myself apart from the other kite-flying boys. For them this was just another game, but for me this time was special. My kite wasn’t ordinary. It was my messenger to the gods, my secret communication channel.

  Our dia was an expert kite maker. He made very simply shaped kites: a square, a six-pointed star and a butterfly. He used an ancient Chinese cutting knife, the size of a Swiss army knife, to thinly slice the bamboo sticks. Then he’d tie the corners with thread and glue rice paper over the frame. To counter the weight we would hang long strips of cloth on the tail. The kite string was pieced together from anything we could find.

  I adored making kites with our dia. This was one of the few playful times I could have with him. He would take us up to the fields on the Northern Hill and he’d sit next to me and tell me stories from his childhood. I never wanted these special moments to end.

  At this time of the year there was always thick snow in the fields. The freezing, howling wind felt like small sharp knives cutting into my skin. The fields smelled, as always, of human manure. My dia would help my kite into the sky, then stand up, ready to leave. “Are you all right now? I’m going home. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Dia, can you tell me a story before you go?”

  “I’ve told you all the stories I have.”

  “Please tell me ‘The Frog in the Well’ story again,” I begged. He sat next to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and began:There was a frog that lived in a small, deep well. He knew nothing but the world he lived in. His well and the sky he could see above it were his entire universe.

  One day he met a frog who lived in the world above. “Why don’t you come down and play with me? It’s fun down here,” the frog in the deep well asked.

  “What’s down there?” the frog above asked.