Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  “I’m sorry about our misbehaving children,” our niang apologized. “They are tired tonight.”

  After a few quiet seconds, Cunsang whispered in our ears. “She let out a loud fart the other day and pretended it wasn’t her! It was the worst smelling bomb!” We laughed uncontrollably. “Farter, farter, smelly farter!” we shrieked.

  The teacher pretended she didn’t hear, but our parents were so embarrassed. As usual, our dia left all the talking to our niang. “You will be in trouble if you make any more noise!” she threatened. She turned to the teacher. “I’m very sorry. I can’t wait to send these boys to school, so you can teach them proper manners, but they are too young right now.”

  “Not only yours,” the teacher replied. “All boys are wild. I don’t know how you’re coping with so many of them.”

  A few minutes later I knocked the teacher’s cup over and spilled some tea onto her clothes. We were like three wild animals. We even broke one of the supporting mud bricks on the kang because we were jumping up and down like monkeys. My parents kept warning us, and apologizing to the teacher.

  Eventually the teacher had had enough humiliation. “I have to go now. I have other families to visit tonight,” she said, giving us a disgusted look. By now we were completely out of control and sensed victory. My parents continued apologizing to the angry teacher on her way out and begged her to come back another day.

  As soon as the teacher was gone, my niang turned to my dia. “Lock the door!” she screeched. “Kill these wicked boys! I can’t believe how bad they are!”

  Jing Tring started to cry, so she removed him from the kang. “The little one is too young to understand. It’s not his fault. Just kill the big ones! See if they dare do it again!”

  My dia stormed into the room with a broomstick in his hand and closed the door. I had never seen him so angry. He was tall by Chinese standards, and a scary sight. His face was frightening enough, let alone the flailing broomstick, and he shouted as he swung it at us. “See if you dare to behave like this again!” He hit us with that broomstick so hard that I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide.

  My niang kept urging him on from the other side of the door. “Hit them harder, hit them harder!”

  We kept screaming, “Wouldn’t dare do it again! Wouldn’t dare do it again! We promise!” We screamed so loud that some of our neighbors came and knocked on our door, begging for leniency, but my niang explained what had happened and our neighbors finally left the matter to our parents.

  Our niang’s head popped in and out of the room like a yo-yo. “Hit them harder! Teach them a lesson! See if they will ever dare to do it again!” I thought it was strange that her head came in and out like that. We didn’t know then that she thought we looked so comical she was laughing her head off outside, but she had to at least pretend she was angry with us and was on our dia’s side. What a lesson that was: we never misbehaved like that again.

  I can only remember my parents fighting once, and it turned our family upside down. Our dia was invited to a relative’s wedding and after a drink or two of highly alcoholic rice wine, he would open up and become a chatterbox. He stayed longer than usual that afternoon, which worried my niang. She was afraid he would lose dignity from overdrinking. She sent us to collect him several times, and he kept assuring us that he would be home soon. Finally, she sent her three youngest sons to get him. He’d clearly had too much to drink by that time and was angry when he got home. He was embarrassed by her sending us so many times and felt that he had lost face in front of his friends and neighbors. They argued quietly at first, trying to keep it to themselves. But neither of them would back down, and it soon became a shouting match.

  I was so scared by their raging at the tops of their voices that I ran to our na-na’s house next door. She followed me back, hobbling quickly on her bound feet, and shouted at my dia, calling him by his nickname. “Jin Zhi! Jin Zhi, what do you think you are doing? Stop that! You’ll bring shame to Li’s name.” Our na-na adored both her youngest son and daughter-in-law. My parents had enormous respect for her, and in her presence they temporarily stopped their argument. But the bickering continued all week.

  That week, even though the house was small and they had to sleep on the same bed, they refused even to look at each other. I could see both of them were miserable, but nobody knew what to do. My dia got up even earlier than usual and left the house without breakfast on those days. The atmosphere was tense and all of us behaved extremely well, with the older boys looking after the younger ones. Our kindhearted na-na was concerned about us. She came to help out. She tried to be the mediator, but to no avail. “I can’t believe I have such a stubborn son and daughter-in-law!” she’d utter to herself. “It’s hopeless, it’s hopeless!”

  During the day, little things would trigger my niang’s tears, and her eyes became swollen from crying. Life was hard enough for my niang, I thought, but this only added more sadness. I kept asking her what I could do for her, but she would just look at me and shake her head. “If only you could help,” she said.

  Once she suddenly slumped down to the ground and sobbed, and I rushed to her and hugged her as tightly as I could, and tried to wipe her tears away with my small dirty fingers. She gently brushed my hands away from her face and sat me on her lap. She hugged me, and I felt her warmth seep through my whole body. For a while there were no words spoken, just her sad sighs. I wished that our hug alone would give her enough comfort to get her through the day. “My fate was meant to be unlucky from the day I was born,” she said eventually. “I was born poor and will die poorer. My life will be as short as my niang’s. Promise me that you’ll burn enough incense and money for me when I’m in my grave.”

  “Niang, stop! Please stop saying that!” I cried, and quickly put my little hand over her mouth. I cried, not only with tears, but also with my heart. I was soaked with sadness. I didn’t want my niang to leave me, ever. The thought of losing her made me feel utterly wretched. The only thing I wanted was her happiness. I wished I had magical powers to grant her that happy life. But if my parents couldn’t solve their differences, what could I do? I was just a little boy.

  But I did think of something. Later that day, I waited at the entrance to our village for my dia’s return. I waited until it was pitch black. He’d finished work late and was surprised to see me standing there by myself. Before he could ask me why, I said to him, “Niang is worried about you and she sent me here to wait for you.” Of course this was not true, but I wanted him to know that she loved and cared for him. Without a word he lifted me onto the backseat of his bike and pedaled home.

  My niang was already waiting anxiously by the gate. She was relieved to see us both. “Thank you for sending Jing Hao to meet me,” my dia said.

  My niang was surprised. She looked at him, then at me, and suddenly understood what I had done. She lifted me off the bike and hugged me so tight that I felt my bones crack. She burst into tears and laughter. “You little smart devil! You little smart devil!” she kept saying.

  My dia was puzzled. “What’s all this about?”

  “I didn’t send him to meet you!” my niang said, laughing her contagious laugh. “Who cares about you? It’s all his doing!”

  “I thought it was strange that you didn’t send one of the older boys,” my dia said with a rare smile. “I’m starving, what’s for dinner?”

  “Northwest wind!” my niang joked.

  My parents were speaking to each other again, the first time in over a week. The next morning Niang was looking for her hairpins on my dia’s side of the bed again.

  3

  A COMMUNE CHILDHOOD

  By 1969, when I was about eight years old, the poverty around Laoshan and our commune had worsened. I remember going with several of my friends to the beach one day, an hour’s journey away by foot, to find clams and oysters or, if we were lucky, a dead fish that was washed up on the shore. We each carried our own bamboo basket in our arms and a small spade ove
r our shoulders. My parents always warned us never to go into the water because of the rips.

  Many people were already there, also searching, by the time we arrived. After about half an hour, we’d found nothing except empty seashells. The beach was so clean and bare it was as if even the sea creatures had abandoned us.

  Halfway home I suggested to my friends that we should make a slight detour and sneak into the nearby airport to try and find some half-burned coal. During the Second World War the Japanese had built this airport as one of their main cargo facilities. Now there were only a few People’s Liberation Army guards and some old cargo planes left. The Japanese used coal and half-burned coal as part of the filler under the runway, and the outer part of the runway had already been dug away by desperate people. Since then the guards had tightened security.

  I had only been there once before, with one of my older brothers. There was a line of big trees along the edge of the airport and a small ditch for water drainage. The ditch was dry at that time of the year and we crept along it for about fifteen minutes, bending our bodies down into the ditch so the guards couldn’t see us.

  There was still evidence of half-burned coal there, about half a yard below the surface, and very hard to loosen. But digging half-burned coal was like digging gold for us. We had no sense of time and we eventually had our baskets full. Carrying heavy baskets with a bent body, though, proved too difficult for us eight-year-olds. About halfway out, one of the boys slowly straightened up and was spotted by the military guards. They immediately fired bullets into the air and started to chase us. We were scared witless. We dumped our baskets and spades, and ran for our lives.

  I rushed breathlessly home. It was half past one in the afternoon. “There is some food in the wok for you,” my fifth brother, Cunfar, said. Niang had left some dried yams and pickled turnips for me.

  “Where is Niang?” I asked him as I ate my lunch.

  “She went back to work in the fields,” he replied. Cunfar only had morning classes at school that day. There weren’t enough classrooms for everyone to go for a full day.

  “Where have you been?” he asked me.

  I told him what had happened at the airport. He frowned. “You dropped your basket and spade there?”

  “Yes, I had no choice! The soldiers would have killed us if they’d caught us!”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” he replied.

  “Yes, they would! They even fired bullets at us!”

  “You have to go back and get your basket and spade. We cannot buy new ones—our parents have no money,” he said.

  “I’ll never go anywhere near that airport again!”

  But he did eventually talk me into going back. At the edge of the ditch I refused to go any further and pointed to where we’d dropped our baskets and spades. He went to look, but the guards had confiscated them. Only some half-burned coals were left scattered around the ditch.

  Our winters in those days were bitterly cold in Qingdao, but as well as having to cope with the lack of coal, we also had to deal with lice. They lived with us in our cotton quilts, coats and pants. Unlike our summer clothes, which our niang washed regularly, our quilted winter coats and pants couldn’t be washed because they were painstakingly made with loose cottonwool pieces that would have shriveled into balls in the water. The only proper way to wash our winter clothes was to take them apart and restart the whole messy, tiring, time-consuming process of making them all over again. Our niang would spread the cottonwool on our kang and the fibers would fly everywhere, like white dust. She’d have white fibers all over her black hair and clothes. She’d look like a white cotton ball herself. But once they were made, our winter clothes would last the entire season.

  The only real way to combat lice was to keep clean. Every weekend our niang would heat up huge woks of water for us and tip the water into an old wooden washing basin. Each of us had a piece of thin washing cloth, and we’d soap our bodies and help to wash each other’s backs. If one family member had lice, the rest of the family would too: they bred and multiplied so quickly. It wasn’t just our family—lice were everywhere in China. Everyone scratched constantly. In the evenings after we took off our clothes and got under the quilts, our niang always flipped our clothes inside out, trying to kill the lice with her thumbnails. By the end of the evening her thumbnails would be covered in blood. She was such an expert at killing those little bloodsuckers: she had the most incredible eyesight, despite the dim light. We had a single twenty-watt bulb hanging down from the ceiling in each room (electricity had come to our village the year before I was born). Generally, the commune would cut off power at eight every night. Then Niang would light a small kerosene lamp and patiently continue her work. But she could never get rid of the lice completely because they lived inside the seams of the fabric. They only came out to suck our blood during the day when we wore our clothes.

  I have so many vivid childhood memories like these, but I do not ever remember going to a doctor or hospital as a child: not that I didn’t get sick, but we could never afford it. The only time I got close to a medical person was waiting in line for a barefoot nurse to give us smallpox shots. We had to wait in long lines in our commune square with our sleeves rolled up. The nurse used the same needle to inject everybody, and small pieces of alcohol-soaked cottonwool to clean the needle heads and skin. Mothers held screaming babies in their arms, but children aged five or over were expected to be brave enough to go up the line by themselves. Crying wasn’t an option, no matter how much it scared us or how much it hurt. When I cut myself I was told by my parents to swipe my fingers on the windowsill to gather some dust to put on the cut and stop the bleeding. This was our Band-Aid and antiseptic all in one.

  Our niang’s remedy for severe coughs, however, involved a snakeskin collected in the fields during autumn when snakes shed their skin. She would wrap the snakeskin around a piece of green onion and make me eat it in front of her. All of it. The snakeskin was like tasteless plastic and it looked disgusting. It always made me want to vomit, but it was the most effective treatment for sore throats and coughs we had.

  One day my face and neck swelled up for several days because of infected glands. Niang took me to a neighbor and he brought out a calligraphy set. He ground the black ink stick in an ink plate and mixed in some water. He dipped in his paintbrush. I thought he was going to write a secret recipe to cure my infection, but instead he asked me to close my eyes and he started to draw on my face. As he drew, he uttered some strange words to the god of healing. I didn’t understand the words, but I enjoyed the cool sensation of the ink on my skin. I felt as though someone other than my niang was pampering me for the first time in my life. Eventually my entire face and neck were black. I looked scary, comical—like an evil Beijing Opera character.

  I had to keep the ink on my face and neck for two whole days. I refused to go outside. My brothers just kept laughing at me. Luckily I hadn’t started going to school yet, so I didn’t have to face teachers and classmates as well. My swelling disappeared within two days, but still I wonder if the swelling would have gone away anyway, without the embarrassing made-up face.

  Another childhood ordeal for us was warts, which we called “monkeys.” An elderly man in our village, whom we called the “Wuho man,” told my niang that the best way to eradicate monkeys was to wet them on the grain grinder on the day of rain. The Wuho man was in his late seventies. He was a funny old man with a good sense of humor. He had poor eyesight, rotten teeth and a long silver beard. He always had a palm-leaf fan in his hand and smoked an ancient pipe. His walk was rather stylish, with his hands folded behind his back, and he coughed and spat a lot.

  He told our niang that for this treatment to work we had to keep our mouths shut on the way to and from the grinder.

  So, just after rain one day, my niang said to me, “Take Jing Tring to the grinder and wet your monkeys with the water from it.”

  “But you promised me that I could play with Sien Yu after the rain st
opped!” I replied. I didn’t want to go. I thought it would be a waste of time. And I hated always having to look after Jing Tring.

  “You can’t go and play with Sien Yu unless you take Jing Tring to the grinder first,” she threatened.

  I so eagerly wanted to play with my friend that reluctantly I agreed.

  Before we left for our five-minute walk to the grain grinder, our niang reminded us, “Remember, don’t talk to anyone! This treatment won’t work if you utter a single word on the way there and back.”

  I was very annoyed. I felt it would be an easy task for me not to speak, but it would be hard for Jing Tring. He was still so little. “I’ll kill you if you open your mouth, do you understand?” I said to him just before we stepped out our gate. He just nodded. I took his hand and embarked on this special mission.

  The first couple of minutes we managed to keep our mouths shut because we didn’t meet anyone. But once we’d gone about halfway, we saw Sien Yu’s mother coming toward us. “Ni hao, liu su. Ni hao, qi su,” she said politely, acknowledging us as sixth and seventh uncles. “Sien Yu is waiting for you at home. Are you on your way there?” she asked.

  “Ni hao, zhi xi fu.” I returned her acknowledgement, greeting her as my nephew’s wife. “I’ll be coming soon!”

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I was the stupid one, not Jing Tring. We had to go back and start our journey all over again.

  Jing Tring was very unhappy and didn’t want to cooperate. He kept saying, “I’m tired! I’m tired! I’m too tired to walk!”

  “If you don’t go,” I threatened him, “your monkeys will spread all over your arms, your body, your face and maybe even in your eyes!”

  “I don’t want to go again! I can’t!” he said.

  I was desperate by this time. I didn’t want to miss out on playing with Sien Yu. “Tell you what, I’ll take you with me to Sien Yu’s house if you finish this task with me.” Jing Tring always wanted to do exactly what I did.