Mao's Last Dancer

by Li Cunxin

  So here we were in January 2009, all ready to go, plane tickets purchased months before, visas obtained, clothes and gifts packed. My life was surrounded with the busy routine of family life.

  Then, just weeks before our departure, I received an urgent call from my fifth brother. “Our dia is gravely ill,” Cunfar said. I could hear despair in his voice.

  “How ill?” I asked anxiously.

  “The doctor is not sure, but he’s in intensive care, at Qingdao Hospital. You’d better come home, quickly,” he replied.

  I asked many more questions, desperately wanting to know what happened. Did Dia collapse? Where did it happen? Was he resting comfortably now? But all Cunfar would say was that he would tell me more when he saw me. He urged me to come home, and quickly.

  “How is our niang taking it?” I tried imagining my poor niang trying to cope in her apartment on her own.

  Cunfar paused. “She’s had a stroke, a few days ago ...”

  At that moment I felt like some enormous force had struck me. I felt numb. A couple of days earlier, Jing Tring had called and told me that Niang had gone to hospital, but he hadn’t said anything about a stroke, just that she was all right and not to worry. She’d been in and out of hospital quite frequently in the last couple of years, so it didn’t cause undue alarm, just made me more anxious to get home.

  “The doctor said she is out of immediate danger,” Cunfar added, trying to reassure me.

  I told Mary about Dia’s precarious situation and Niang’s stroke, and she urged me to leave at once. “I wish we could come with you, but tell your brothers and sisters-in-law that you are bringing our love and thoughts with you. And we’ll be there very soon,” she said.

  Barely twenty-four hours later I was on my way to China. My mind was like a rough sea on that flight. Nine hours until I would even get to Hong Kong! So many memories of my parents flooded in: their sweet voices, their larger-than-life personalities, childhood moments that were deeply imprinted in my heart. The thought of both of them fighting for their lives was simply terrible, and immensely frightening. What if Niang also lost her ability to speak? What if it was much more serious than I’d first thought? I didn’t understand. They’d always been so strong, dependable, like solid unshakeable rocks. And when my sadness threatened to swallow me up, I could only think: death is inevitable. They’ve been on a great journey. They’re good people, and they will rest in peace.

  These thoughts gave me some comfort until I arrived in Hong Kong, where I immediately called Jing Tring while I waited for my connecting flight to Qingdao.

  “How is Dia?” I asked, almost too terrified to hear the answer.

  “He has slipped into a coma.”

  My heart sunk. It was as I had feared.

  “And Niang?”

  “We haven’t told her yet. We’re not sure if we should. What do you think, Liu Ge?”

  I understood their concerns about not telling Niang about Dia’s condition, but I felt the alternative was worse. “We need to tell Niang. She deserves to know. She should see him before anything happens.”

  “Yes, I will tell our brothers what you say,” Jing Tring replied.

  Third brother Cunmao, fifth brother Cunfar and Jing Tring met me at Qingdao Airport.

  We shook hands. “Good trip?” Cunmao asked as he grabbed my hand tightly.

  What could I say? It was the worst trip home I’d ever had, filled with dread. I was about to say so, but I thought it would be inappropriate, disrespectful to Dia. So I simply shook my head and got into Cunmao’s black Honda sedan.

  On the way to the hospital, my brothers’ faces were grim and sad: none of the cheery happiness I’d pictured a week before.

  “How is Dia?” I asked hopefully, as Cunmao drove through the smog and heavy traffic.

  “Slipping away,” Cunfar replied from the back seat.

  “Did you tell Niang?” I asked Jing Tring after a moment’s silence.

  “Yes, soon after our phone conversation. She was still in her hospital bed.”

  “How did she react?”

  “Just closed her eyes . . . and silently sobbed.” I could hear Jing Tring’s choking voice behind me. Then my brothers began to tell me what had happened. Since that first stroke of Dia’s over four years ago, they’d all rotated on a weekly basis to take care of our parents. Last week was Cunmao’s turn. One morning, his wife had come to help prepare breakfast and asked, “Where is our niang?”

  “I told her she was still asleep,” Cunmao said, “But we knew Niang never slept this late, so she went to check on Niang in her bedroom, and found Niang on the floor, all twisted, by the window. It was like she’d suffered great agony. So we rushed her to the hospital, and she was in a coma for two days. Then she recovered consciousness, but she’d lost all feeling on the right side of her body, and some of her speech ability as well. The doctors told us she’d had a severe stroke,” Cunmao said, and looked sadder than I’d ever seen him.

  Then Jing Tring told me what happened to Dia, only a few days later. Jing Tring had been cooking a lunch of bread and stir-fried vegetable dishes for Dia, at our parents’ apartment.

  “I was fixing Dia tea, and was just telling him about how well Niang was recovering, and that she’d soon be home. Dia just nodded, like he always does. Then I asked him if he’d like some tea, but he just shook his head, and pointed towards his bed. I thought he wanted a nap, so I took him into his bedroom, but just minutes later he rushed out again, and seemed to be in pain.” The emotion in Jing Tring’s voice was starting to distress me even more.

  “I didn’t know what was wrong!” Jing Tring’s voice quivered. “Dia just pointed at his stomach. But you know our dia never complains.” Jing Tring was right. We’d always marveled at Dia’s toughness.

  “So we drove him to the same hospital where Niang was,” Jing Tring continued. “The doctors did many tests, a CT scan too, I think, but they couldn’t find out what was wrong. They said they’d have to do exploratory surgery.”

  Jing Tring looked at me, and paused to get control of his emotions. “The surgeon came out after the operation—a couple of hours later. He said there was little hope. He said Dia’s organs were shutting down. He urged us to prepare for his funeral . . .” By now Jing Tring was sobbing.

  “And then we asked the surgeon how long they could keep Dia alive,” Cunfar added emotionally, “because one of our brothers lives in Australia, and he’d want to be here . . . before our father . . . He said we should tell you to hurry. That was when I phoned you in Australia—as soon as we knew . . .” Cunfar’s voice faded into silence.

  As our car sped along, nobody spoke. We were all lost in our own emotions.

  “Did Niang see Dia?” I asked eventually.

  “Yes,” Cunmao replied. “She called out Dia’s name, but she got no reaction. She tried touching his forehead. Then she said, ‘Go. Wait for me,’ and just sobbed.”

  At the hospital we were met by my three other brothers, their wives and some of their children. The hospital was one of Qingdao’s finest, less than three years old, with a large lobby, but still not big enough to accommodate the massive number of people going in and out. And we had to wait over five minutes for an elevator. Every time one arrived, impatient people would push their way on, and there were no queues. The over-the-weight-limit warning bell would go off constantly! So everyone would scream and curse, and the last person or two to squeeze in would have to get off again and wait for the next elevator.

  I saw many doctors and nurses hurrying by, all wearing white medical coats over Western-style clothes, and all with photo IDs around their necks. China has moved on from the days of Mao’s barefoot doctors, I thought.

  The head surgeon, a friend of Jing Tring’s, took me into Dia’s room, where he lay with tubes sticking out of his nose and wrists. His breath was short, and his face seemed swollen and green.

  “Dia, I’m back,” I said gently. His eyelids flickered very slightly.

  “U
ncle, uncle, your sixth son is back to see you!” the surgeon added in a much louder voice. His eyelids flickered again, but Dia just couldn’t open his eyes.

  “Your father heard you, and knows you’re here,” the doctor said kindly.

  “Dia, you rest. I’ll be back soon.”

  I asked the doctor to explain my dia’s illness and if there was any way at all we could revive him. But the doctor was definite. “No, he is too far gone. His entire system has shut down.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We can sustain him with medication, or pull the life support and relieve him of his agony.”

  These were not the words I wanted to hear. I wanted him to say there was still hope, that there was a magical cure for my dia, like there’d been for me when I’d burnt my arm as a baby, or when Jing Tring and I had been cured of our warts. I thought of the time, long ago now, when Dia had nursed Niang through her terrible illness, the day I’d found her collapsed on the Northern Hill, her pile of washing scattered all around her. If only my parents could recover again, just as miraculously.

  After conversations with the surgeon, all seven of us sat together, and made the hardest decision we’d ever had to make: to allow our beloved father to die in peace. We did not want to prolong his agony. Pain and sadness were etched on everyone’s face, but we all knew it was just a matter of time, his time. We had to let him find his final resting place.

  That evening, only twenty-four hours after I’d left Australia, Jing Tring took me back to our parents’ apartment. “Why don’t you stay with us tonight?” he suggested.

  “No, thank you. I want to stay here.”

  “I will stay with you, then. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “That’s all right. I want to be alone,” I reassured him.

  I sat down on the L-shaped sofa, and felt numb. I began to think about how I’d wanted to be alone when I was a small boy at the Beijing Dance Academy, and of how I used to hide in the willow trees. But I could not hide in the willow trees now. I could not hide from what was happening to my parents.

  The apartment was cold. January is normally cold in Qingdao, but that night the temperature dropped to eighteen below zero. I didn’t care though. I felt only a vast emptiness in my heart.

  I called Mary, and woke her up. It was early morning back in Australia. “I’m so sorry, Li!” she said. “I wish I could be there. I know this is painful, but it’s a sensible decision, and it’s for the best.”

  I wished Mary was there too. Talking to her was comforting, but it made me miss her and the children even more. I wanted them to come as originally planned. But we’d decided that it would be better to wait. Everyone would be busy with funeral matters. “Without us there,” Mary said wisely, “you can give your full attention to Dia and Niang.”

  The only other person I called besides Mary was my blood brother the Bandit. I knew he’d want to know. Over the years he’d become part of the Li family. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” the Bandit had said, and he caught a flight to Qingdao the very next day.

  It had only been five days since Jing Tring had taken Dia to hospital. Now everything had changed. His life would end, I knew that. But I just couldn’t accept it. A miracle might still happen! A phone call from the hospital to say that Dia was awake. He’d nod and smile when he saw me like he always did. The man of few words! And I’d chat to him about Mary and our children. He liked to hear about Sophie. He’d always had a soft spot for Sophie. After all, Niang and Dia had taken care of her in Houston for the first two years of her life.

  I wished only that this dreadful nightmare might end.

  I walked around the apartment, first into Niang’s room where I tried to imagine exactly where she’d been when she’d suffered her stroke. I crouched near the window where my third sister-in-law had found her that morning. I sat on the bed and it was still warm. It was really a modern version of the old kang, with electric heating underneath it, and with all that had happened no one had noticed that the heating was still on. Then I went and sat on the edge of my dia’s wooden bed.

  There were pictures everywhere in the apartment: on the walls, under the glass tops of the chests of drawers, in picture frames: photos of all their seven sons, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s smiling faces. And photos from their foreign adventures with me—in America, Australia, Hong Kong and Mexico. These photos were my parents’ pride and joy. My brothers and their wives would tease Niang and Dia about having too many pictures of their sixth son and his family. They accused them of playing favorites, but my parents always laughed happily and said, “We will gladly take pictures with you in all those places, if you take us to those countries too . . . !”

  I went out onto the small patio, where they would often store food in winter. Except for the refrigerator, it was the coldest part of the apartment by far. Now it was stacked full, in preparation for the Chinese New Year. This year my brothers had stored extra food, foods my parents and I especially enjoyed. I noticed there were also a lot of sea cucumbers. But there were many other things, delicious things: roasted peanuts and sunflower seeds, Chinese cabbages the circumference of a grown man’s waist, smoked duck, marinated pheasant, dried shrimp, and eggs of several kinds—quail, chicken, duck. And of course, there were many of those big, round Chinese bread rolls called mantos. I thought of Niang kneading the dough to perfection as I’d watched her when I was a child, and of the unforgettable aroma of the food on Chinese New Year: the Li family smell.

  Everything was familiar in this apartment, except for my parents’ absence. Without them it was empty, lonely. I sat for a long time, just staring into the darkness. The wind outside pelted a few leafless branches against the building. My emotions swept me everywhere, through all my memories of my parents. Time after time, I wiped away tears.

  I must have finally fallen asleep. I had no idea what time I’d dozed off, but it was now about five in the morning, and I’d woken to a world of brilliant white. Snow had fallen overnight, and was still coming down furiously. The world outside looked pristine and majestic. I’d danced in thick snow like this, thick fake snow, as the Nutcracker Prince. I remembered dancing that ballet in front of my parents, when they’d first come to Houston to see me perform. I could still hear my dia say, astonished, at the end of the show, “Why didn’t you wear any pants?” That moment seemed like yesterday, a moment that belonged to Dia and me, always occupying a special place in my heart. I thought of the Nutcracker snow that accompanied Clara and me to the Land of Sweets. Now the real Qingdao snow outside would accompany my dia to the Land of Paradise.

  That morning, we arrived early at the hospital. No one said much. We all understood that Dia’s life would slowly slip away, but we went in and talked to him as though he were going to live on regardless. We would not say anything sad or unlucky.

  That whole day we waited in the hospital. I visited Niang a couple of times, and she asked me how her husband was. I said he was doing fine. It pained me to lie, but this time I thought it best. There was no need to alarm her further. But Niang simply shook her head. She knew.

  Hour after hour we waited, dreading that the doctor would come with the news. With so many members, the Li family occupied a very large section of the waiting room, which was also used as an overnight sleeping room for patients’ families and relatives. There were foldable chairs and stretchers, rolled-up mats, blankets and quilts crowding the tiny twelve-foot-square room. There was a peculiar smell, too, which reminded me of the Beijing railway station back in 1972. I could smell fruits, sweets, fish and dried shrimps, body odor and unwashed clothes, and the modern familiar smells of McDonald’s and KFC. People ate their meals on their knees, and hovered around so they wouldn’t miss being called to see their loved ones.

  My dia’s breath became shallower each time I visited him that day. At the beginning I loathed the thought of him going, but on my last visit, before I went home that evening, to my horror, I found myself wishing him gone.
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br />   I felt immensely guilty, but that was my honest feeling. Why should Dia suffer at the end of his life like this? Later, I found that my brothers shared the same feeling; they too, had wished for my dia’s agony to end.

  Just before midnight, on January 9, 2009, the phone rang back at my parents’ apartment. It was Jing Tring. I was just about to go back to the hospital for my turn to sit in the waiting room.

  “Liu Ge, our dia is gone.”

  The entire Li family, and friends as well, over thirty people, converged on the hospital. Everyone was wide-eyed and white-faced.

  The seven of us very quickly crammed into Dia’s ward. Only the sons were permitted in with Dia when his body was dressed. No tears were allowed to be shed, so we all tried hard to hold back our emotions. By tradition, the daughter of the deceased would prepare the funeral dress, but since our parents had seven sons and not one daughter, we had to hire a professional dresser to help. To my surprise, Niang had already hand-sewn all of Dia’s, and her own, funeral clothes, years ago, when her eyesight had still been good, in preparation for this very day.

  We washed Dia’s body with a brand-new towel, shaved him and combed his hair, and the hired dresser gently put on Dia’s beautiful clothes. All were made of pure cotton or silk. The inner shirt and pants were beige, the outer mandarin gown was dark blue silk, his favorite color. In his hand we placed a small bag containing some dried bread. Chinese legend has it that a magical dog will guard the divide between the human world and the new world our dia was about to enter, but it would not let him in unless he gave it some food. Finally a small piece of silver, called ya kou yu, was inserted into Dia’s mouth. He looked serene and peaceful.

  We were allowed to cry only after Dia was properly dressed. Still, we had to be careful not to shed tears onto his body, as this would take undesirable things to his pure new world.

  The seven of us quietly discussed whether we should tell Niang of this dreadful news. After everyone had expressed his opinion it was decided that we had no choice but to tell her the truth, no matter how devastating for her it might be.