Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  “Where are you from?”

  “Henan province.”

  “Why didn’t you go with the others to the Summer Palace?”

  “I felt sick. What about you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t feel well either,” I replied. “What musical instrument do you play?”

  “I’m not playing anything yet.”

  “Why?” I became curious.

  “No one has been assigned one yet. We were told our teachers will test us and then they will decide what instrument we’ll learn,” he said.

  “Did you play anything before you came?”

  He shook his head. “They only chose me because of my long fingers—and my parents are peasants. What about you? Did you dance before?” he asked.

  “No, I’ve never danced before. I didn’t even know what ballet was. I still don’t. I just had long toes and a bit of flexibility. And my parents are peasants too.”

  “Do you play badminton?” he said all of a sudden.

  “What’s that?”

  “I will show you, just follow me!”

  So after lunch I followed him to his dormitory, where he took out two racquets and a feathery flyer from under his bed. We ran outside and played badminton in the space between the two dormitory buildings for hours. We drew a line in the dirt with a stick in lieu of a net. We didn’t keep any score, the flying feathery thing just bounced back and forth, up and down, back and forth, and those were the happiest few hours I’d spent since leaving my family. For once we weren’t being judged or criticized. We just enjoyed each other’s company. Zhang and I became good friends, and that more than anything helped ease the intense loneliness and homesickness we both experienced. I only wished he was in my class.

  Before the students left for the Summer Palace that day, the political head of our group had asked me to wash his white shirt while he was out and I happily accepted this job. I wanted to do it well for him—I wanted him to like me. “Use your toothpaste to wash it,” he’d said. “Make sure you wash the armpits thoroughly.” But the armpits were badly stained by sweat. I used so much of my toothpaste and washed the shirt so many times, but the stains still remained.

  When the political head returned I proudly handed him the pressed and folded shirt. But he was not impressed. “I told you to use toothpaste! Just look at the stains!” He shook his head as he walked away.

  I was angry. I had used nearly half my tube of toothpaste, which I could hardly afford to buy. I ended up having to cut the toothpaste tube and turn it inside out, so I could use every last bit of toothpaste—all because he’d wanted a clean shirt.

  From the minute we arrived at the academy, we were expected to wash and sew our own clothes. At home, my niang had done all our sewing and washing. Having to do this myself only compounded my loneliness. I missed my niang terribly. I so dearly wanted to hear her voice, but I never telephoned the village to speak to my parents. I didn’t have the money. Instead I wrote letters, but not too often because that cost money too. My parents wouldn’t be able to read my letters themselves, but I knew one of my brothers would do that for them.

  The first letter I sent home was so hard to write. I desperately wanted to tell them how much I missed them and how homesick I was, but I knew this would only make my niang sad. Instead I told them about the train trip to Beijing and how exciting everything was. I wrote about seeing Chairman Mao’s compound, about Tiananmen Square and the Ming Tombs, about the beautiful jewelery I’d seen and how I wished I could take just one piece home to give to my niang. I told them I had plenty of good food: I could find oil and meat in every dish! How I wished I could share it with them. I told them I had to wash and sew my own clothes, and that I’d left my corduroy jacket in one of the papier-mâché clothes boxes for Jing Tring to have instead.

  I didn’t think this letter would cause my niang sadness, but I was wrong. My second brother Cunyuan replied soon after and said that when he’d read the letter, my niang had sobbed.

  One of my favorite places I’d discovered in the academy was the library. It was only a small room, with just a few shelves of books. There were no foreign books and almost all of the books were picture books—stories about foreign children written by Chinese authors, and the stories were always sad and tragic. Most of them were about struggling colored children in America and how the whites mistreated them, or they were about the struggle between good and evil. The good characters were always beautiful and handsome. The evil characters always had big crooked noses and fat ugly faces. They were Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang officers and spies, or the foreign enemies. I hated the evil guys and felt so sad for these impoverished colored children. I often shed sympathetic tears and I felt even more grateful for the heavenly life that Chairman Mao had given us. If our life was heavenly, then these poor children’s lives in America must be hell indeed.

  There were several different newspapers delivered to our academy too, for the political heads and teachers to read. The People’s Daily was the official paper of the government, but there were also the Workers’ Daily, the Soldiers’ Daily and some other industry papers. All were full of propaganda and all were controlled by the Gang of Four. We could only read them after the adults had finished with them, and by then they were a day or two old, sometimes up to a week old. But still we read the editorial comments—the Cultural Revolutionary ideas and themes, pages upon pages of domestic news, unbelievable human achievement stories that denounced the old filthy ideas of the rightists and antirevolutionaries. There would perhaps be a couple of pages of sports and less than a page of international news—the information pitifully thin. There was also the Reference Paper, but this was only available to a certain level of Communist Party member, and it included slightly more international news and slightly less propaganda. Occasionally, though, someone would find an old copy and pass it around.

  We’d only been at the academy about two weeks when one day all of us were called out into the grounds, just before lunch. We waited in our usual four lines. All three political heads were looking very stern indeed as they stood on the stairs in front of us.

  Director Wang began. “We have discovered a serious misconduct by one of our students,” he said. “According to this student, there were others involved in the same misconduct. I want this matter thoroughly investigated!” We all looked at each other. No one knew what he could possibly be talking about.

  Director Wang continued. “We have told you before that no one is to touch the Reference Paper. Today, we have discovered a student reading it! I want to know who took the paper from our offices, who read it, and how long this has been going on. This is a most serious matter. The first class this afternoon has been canceled. You will instead discuss why this is a serious matter and how you should prevent it from happening again. I want the students who have read the Reference Paper to write a self-criticism and to search deep into their souls!”

  During lunch, the guilty students went to the three political heads and confessed. I was one of them. I spent my entire nap time trying to work out what crime I had committed just by reading a newspaper. There was nothing in it that could shake my faith in Chairman Mao.

  When the bell rang to signal the end of nap time, I was still scratching my head for answers. At least I hadn’t actually stolen the paper, I thought. Someone had passed it to me. Thankfully he’d also confessed so at least I didn’t have to tell on him. That was something I never wanted to do.

  Our afternoon discussions about the matter went by very quickly. Under the guidance of our political heads we discovered several major issues we hadn’t even thought of before: we were too young to digest the contents of this newspaper so we could get the wrong impression and our communist faith could be affected; stealing was a serious crime; reading something that was restricted only to Communist Party members and knowingly passing it around to others was dishonest; and finally, we had broken the academy rules.

  I wrote my self-criticism based on these four findings, and it pa
ssed the first time. But deep down I didn’t feel good about it at all. I still couldn’t think of anything that would affect my belief in communism. Certainly not a newspaper. After all, I’d only read some sports and international news.

  10

  THAT FIRST LONELY YEAR

  Those first few weeks at the Beijing Dance Academy were an agony of loneliness. Nights were the worst. I couldn’t wait to get to bed so I could clutch onto my niang’s quilt, my only security. I hated myself for it, but the quilt was like morphine, soothing my pain, and in those first months at the academy I became introverted and spoke very little.

  I knew I had no choice but to stay in Beijing. My parents, my brothers, my relatives, my friends, my old schoolteachers and classmates, my village and commune, all of their wishes and expectations made it impossible for me to go back. The loss of face would be unbearable. It would damage my family’s reputation forever. My success was my parents’ only hope of breaking that vicious cycle of poverty. I couldn’t let my parents down, even if I did feel trapped in a cage of rules, routines and frustration. Every day I couldn’t wait for classes to end. Every day I couldn’t wait for the year to end so I could return home to see my family and roam the streets and fields once more.

  I wasn’t alone in missing home. I witnessed many teary eyes among my fellow classmates. The girls sobbed more than the boys. Our political heads and teachers showed more tenderness toward the girls, though. The boys would be laughed at if they were discovered sobbing. The boys were told, time after time, that crying was a sign of weakness.

  The city kids seemed to cope better than the country ones. They were more confident and adjusted to the routine faster. The Shanghai kids coped well—they were generally fairer skinned too, but us country kids were darker. I was probably one of the darkest, but fair skin was considered beautiful in China so even there I felt inadequate compared to the others, and I stuck with the students from the countryside.

  Our first weeks at the academy weren’t made any easier when a vicious virus swept through the school. I was among those who had the severe cough, the sore throat and high fever. Naturally I did what my niang would have done—I took out a few pieces of my precious dried snakeskin and wrapped a green onion in them. I tried to be polite and offered to share it with some of my classmates, but it was as though I’d offered them poison. They thought I was evil. So to prove my sincerity I ate one in front of them, but my teachers and classmates were so repulsed they moved quickly away. I lost a few friends over that, but I did notice that their symptoms lasted much longer than mine, despite their expensive pills.

  The academy’s toilets were another challenge. I appreciated the idea of being able to flush away the poos to who knows where, but the reality that always confronted us was blocked toilets. We had no choice but to poo on top of a hole that was already full of shit, and the smell was revolting. It penetrated through the walls. It lingered in the building. Often I had to run to other floors to use the toilets there and most of the time other students would already be waiting. Toilet rush hours were the worst—in the mornings after waking up, after breakfast, after lunch, after nap time, and the worst time of all was after dinner before the “go to sleep” bell. I would wait until I was absolutely desperate. I would close my eyes, hold my breath and charge into the toilet, trying to breathe as few times as possible.

  One day as I joined the queue for the toilet, I saw a classmate of mine standing outside meditating. A dreadful smell pushed through my nose and I knew immediately that at least one or possibly both toilets were blocked.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Both of them!” he replied desperately. I backed out of the bathroom, took a deep breath from the open window by the stairs, and charged onto the wee stand.

  On my way out, my classmate was still outside taking deep breaths. “Still working up your courage?” I asked.

  “I’m sure the smell will damage my health!” He shook his head in disgust, but he too took a deep breath and charged in.

  The toilet might have been one of the worst things about the Beijing Dance Academy, but the showers were one of the best. We were assigned to take showers on different days, usually three times a week. We had to get in early, though, because the hot water would run out and latecomers were always left with cold showers.

  My very first shower was like magic. One of our teachers led ten of us to the changing room, which had wooden benches along the walls for us to put our clothes on. It was very damp, with a pleasant soapy smell. We had to bring along a facecloth, a washing basin and soap. We had no shampoo. Massive amounts of steam pushed out into the changing room as the class of students before us came out. I hesitantly followed the other boys into the shower. I was a little afraid, but I’d heard some adults in our village talking about this thing called a shower, so I tentatively popped my head under the jets of water. It was wonderful! Warm water streamed down my hair and over every part of my body. I opened my mouth to breathe. Warm water filled it up and it felt so good that I kept my mouth open and let the water glide over me.

  I was surprised to see my classmates show no particular reaction one way or another to the shower. Maybe they’d had one before, I thought. But all I wanted to do was stay under all day. Compared with the filthy, cold water in the washing-basin back home, this was a thrilling experience. I wished my family could have the same privilege. I had never felt cleaner. But we didn’t know, then, that in winter we would be encouraged to take cold showers, to make our hearts and minds grow stronger.

  The food at the academy was also good. Beyond good. We had rice nearly every day and it tasted so glorious because I rarely had it at home at all. And, luxury of luxuries, we had fresh fruit twice a week! Apples, pears and occasionally even bananas. We would get one piece each, or if we were lucky, sometimes even two. I savoured every bite. With enough food to eat for the first time in my life, I was in ninth heaven. I wished I could share the food with my family too: my niang and my dia deserved to have this.

  One of the treats we soon experienced at the academy was, once a month, watching documentaries and occasionally a movie. All of the foreign films were from other communist countries. A North Korean movie that I remember particularly well was about a young man who had lost his ambitions for the communist cause, and a beautiful girl, a Communist Youth Party member, who helped him and fell in love with him. What I enjoyed most about this movie was not the politics but the love story. For the next couple of weeks I started to behave differently toward the captain of the girls’ class. She was a pretty Qingdao girl with big, bright eyes. I imagined that if I performed badly enough in class, the political head might send this girl to help me, or more excitingly, perhaps she might even volunteer. But all I got was criticism and dirty looks. The longed-for love and attention never materialized.

  Within the first month of our arrival in Beijing, we heard that the president of America, Richard Nixon, was to pay a historic visit to China. It was February 1972. People in Beijing were jubilant. The government’s propaganda machine went into full swing and the Chinese media boasted of nothing else. This visit by Nixon was confirmation that Mao’s communism had won the final battle against capitalism.

  I didn’t share this euphoria. I didn’t care about Nixon. I was too homesick. But I did notice that the attacks on America’s evil capitalist values by the Chinese propaganda machines eased considerably while President Nixon was there.

  The first few weeks and months of our dance training I found impossibly hard. I had no idea what I was doing. Nothing made sense, I couldn’t do the exercises no matter how hard I tried, and I doubted myself constantly. My torn hamstrings from Teacher Gao’s exercises were continually painful and I’d injured my back during the acrobatics classes too. I knew I was destined to fail—it was just a matter of time before they sent me home.

  One day we were given some exciting news: Madame Mao was coming to our university in person, in just a few weeks’ time. Our academy was to prepare some d
ance exercises, and a small group of students would be selected to perform for her.

  I wasn’t included. I was heartbroken. I had been so excited at the thought of performing for Madame Mao, and now it wouldn’t be.

  After Madame Mao watched the specially prepared performance, she said to the officials, “The dancing looked all right, but where are the guns? Where are the grenades? Where are the political meanings?” She wanted us to combine traditional ballet steps with some Peking Opera movements, so from that point on our teachers made major changes to our training syllabus. In the middle of a classical plié we had to stiffen our hands into Kung Fu gestures while we were doing port de bras, and we had to finish off with a deathlike stare we called “brightening the presence.” Our teachers took it all very seriously. We had to prepare these “model” ballets, a combination of Western and Chinese styles that were a monument to Madame Mao’s obsession. In reality, it was political ideology gone mad. But our university strictly followed her instructions and policies. We became nothing more than Chairman Mao’s political puppets.

  I knew that some of our teachers were incensed by this approach, but they had to bury their integrity and their love for Western ballet in their hearts. If they didn’t, they would risk being labeled counterrevolutionaries, and be sent to jail or the pig farms. It could cost them their lives.

  They knew Madame Mao’s approach could never work. In classical ballet training we had to turn our joints out, but with Beijing Opera movements we were required to do the opposite. Ballet steps needed fluidity and softness. Beijing Opera required sharp, strong gestures. But propaganda ensured we believed that the Chinese model ballets were the world’s best. They were groundbreaking. They were “uniquely Chinese.” Nobody dared to question this, and we continued to do what we were told.

  We spent a lot of time at the academy studying Mao’s theories. We were expected to memorize every word in his Red Book and relate them to our daily activities. In fact, we spent more time on Mao than we did on ballet and all other subjects combined. Often we were divided into small groups to discuss Chairman Mao’s most recent ideas. We were taught to focus on the meaning of each word. Once a student even suggested that if we really understood the meaning of Mao’s words, then we wouldn’t need to eat. His golden words would replace our daily food. That student received high praise for his remarks from our political head. I just thought he was crazy—he’d never known starvation, that was clear.