Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  “Cunxin,” he said, “life is not meant to be fair. As an artist you have to remain honest to your art form. You are better than he and deserve to be seen. If I didn’t do what I felt was best for our art form then I would have failed as a teacher. You should stop dancing now if you don’t want to be the best.”

  Deep inside I knew Chen Lueng was right, and his words affected me. I knew ballet was an art form based on honesty. The audience could see a good dancer from miles away.

  I went to the other boy and told him I was very sorry for taking his place.

  That was my first career break and I worked very hard on that role. Teachers started to notice me more. The role didn’t just give me a rare opportunity to perform in front of Madame Mao: it also gave me confidence.

  The role of the little fat boy didn’t require any technically difficult dancing. The most challenging thing was a number of deathlike “brighten the presence” stares. The scene we were to perform for Madame Mao was called “Chang Qing Zhi Lu,” or “Chang Qing Showing the Road.” For our entrance the Bandit and I walked on with furiously fast heel-toe Beijing Opera walks. I lunged in front of him dramatically with a gun in my hand and both of us looked right into the audience with our deathlike stares. No movement was allowed, not even a breath or the blink of an eye. Then I had to play this embarrassed gesture, to scratch my head because my gun was exposed, which always triggered whispers of laughter from the audience. I was told that Madame Mao laughed too when I scratched my head. I was happy that Madame Mao laughed, and I practiced the scratching head bit so many times to make it as convincing as possible.

  This was also the year I started to do better in other classes, especially Chinese. I grew to love Chinese class and our teacher Shu Wen very much. He was a true intellect. He taught us with passion.

  One day in his class we were studying a fable that was half a page long. It took Shu Wen a whole week to help us unravel the meaning and intricacies of the story. It was about a young farmer who had wasted his precious planting season because he’d waited and waited for a blind rabbit to run into a tree and kill itself after another had done so on the edge of his land. “I have discovered the secret of getting food without physical work!” the farmer assured his wife. “I’ll bring home a rabbit every day, and we’ll have meat to eat forever.” But no blind rabbits came. By the time he realized his stupidity, it was too late. The crucial planting season was over, and his family’s savings were gone.

  Again the essence of this fable left its mark on me. Nothing comes easily. There are no shortcuts. Things only come when one works for them. Time should be treasured.

  After our midyear exams that year, we all sat in a circle on the floor and Teacher Xiao read out his report on the progress of each student. Then we were allowed to grade Teacher Xiao’s performance. A couple of students criticized Teacher Xiao for raising his voice and shouting at them. Teacher Xiao gracefully apologized. But when the bully Li Ming accused Teacher Xiao of favoritism toward Fu Xijun and me, he lost his temper. “I am proud to have the integrity to be fair to the diligent students. Anyone who has achieved something deserves praise and encouragement. Xijun and Cunxin have made huge progress. Learn from them.”

  Li Ming’s face turned from white to red, then from red to a funny shade of ash. I didn’t know whether he was embarrassed, angry or ashamed. Maybe he was all of those things. I was certainly embarrassed by Teacher Xiao’s praise in front of the class, but still, his acknowledgment meant a lot to me and his words continued to encourage me.

  We started our pas de deux classes in the second half of that year. I liked this class—it was my only chance to touch the girls. At first, the girls and the boys were on different sides of the studio. Then we were paired by our teacher according to size and strength. I secretly wished to be paired with the girls I liked, of course, but that was as close to the girls as we got. As soon as the music ended we would go back to opposite sides of the studio.

  In the second half of that year, some ballet films were shown to us. They were Russian and had previously been banned. We weren’t supposed to learn anything technical or artistic from them: we were just supposed to criticize the story. Giselle, for example, was clearly a story from a rotten capitalist society. We endlessly criticized the pathetic peasant girl, Giselle, who did nothing with her life other than desire the jewelry and lifestyle of the wealthy. We analyzed her pursuit of filthy material values. We laughed at her naïve love for the deceitful Prince Albrecht. How stupid and disgusting she was to turn her back on the peasant who truly loved her. “You can tell this ballet was designed by a capitalist,” our political head said. “He has glorified the rich and portrayed the peasants as whores. What a contrast to our model ballets! Our three classes of people are our heroes!”

  We were all Mao’s faithful children, and we all wholeheartedly agreed with our political head, but I couldn’t help quietly admiring Albrecht’s brilliant dancing. The dancer was Vladimir Vasiliev from the Bolshoi, and the images of his dancing left me gasping for air.

  During the Cultural Revolution almost every new creation in art was a joint project. Many new works had to have a Communist Party leader as one of the main creators or it would never get off the ground. There would normally be more than one choreographer, set designer, lighting designer and composer for any Chinese ballet, and the final product always looked as if the various parts didn’t quite fit together. Individualism was firmly discouraged. The Red Detachment of Women, which we’d performed for Madame Mao, was one of these ballets and it took eight years to complete. But once I’d seen the beautiful Giselle I began to doubt The Red Detachment of Women was quite so artistically brilliant.

  It was during our busy end-of-year exam preparation time, in January 1976, that the premier of China, Zhou Enlai, died. Several long remembrance and reflection sessions were organized at the academy to commemorate Zhou’s great contributions to China. I was surprised to see so many of my teachers sobbing.

  Right after Zhou’s death, Deng Xiaoping was arrested. Mao appointed Hua Guofeng to succeed Zhou Enlai, but it soon became clear that Hua Guofeng was an ineffective leader. He was a follower, a puppet of Mao and the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four immediately organized a “Denounce Deng Xiaoping” campaign. He was labeled an old rightist whose motive was to corrupt the communist system and eventually overthrow it. Some of his speeches were published, and I learned one of Deng Xiaoping’s most famous sayings: Bu guan shi bai mao hai shi hei mao, zhuo dao lao shu jiu shi hao mao. “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is white or black, it’s a good cat as long as it catches mice.” But many people only halfheartedly participated in the “denounce Deng Xiaoping” campaign. In fact, it almost backfired. Rumors began circulating about Madame Mao’s male concubines. She was frequently accompanied by a handsome retired dancer, or a retired opera singer, a movie actor or a Ping-Pong champion. People started to notice. I could sense a huge tide of resentment developing against the Gang of Four.

  Around the same time we started to rehearse another model ballet, and this time I was chosen to be the main character. The ballet was called The Children of the Meadow, a Lei Feng type of story about the new generation of children under Mao and their devotion to his cause. Some dancers from the Central Ballet of China came to teach us the steps and I was awestruck by the dancers’ technical abilities. Even the “little bouncing ball” himself was there, a dancer from the Central Ballet of China known for his incredibly fast turns and jumps. He was such an inspiration—I vowed to reach his standard one day too.

  We rehearsed one act of this ballet for several months and then performed it initially in our academy theater. I received some encouraging comments about my performance—my biggest fan was one of the chefs from our canteen! I had no idea about different aspects of performing and no stage fear at all. But this changed quickly when, a week later, we were bussed to an industrial city near Beijing called Tangjing to perform for the public. During the opening night performance my brain we
nt completely blank. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what I was doing on stage. I couldn’t even remember what happened afterwards. All I could remember was that I had forgotten the steps. My partner looked at me, and I realized I was just standing on stage doing absolutely nothing. That was my first stage fright, at age fourteen, and I would never forget it.

  After that performance the head of our ballet department Zhang Shu spearheaded an important project which we began in 1976. We were to create a full-length ballet, our academy’s first such project, and everyone was excited about the auditions. The story was about a teenage brother and sister whose parents were captured by the Guomindang army and hanged on an old symbolic tree called Hai Luo Sha. The ballet was named after the tree. After the parents’ death the two brave young children were separated and joined different factions of the Red Army. At the end of the ballet they came back with Mao’s armies, reunited, and killed the murderers of their parents.

  I was overwhelmed and utterly surprised to be chosen as first cast for the lead role. All of a sudden I was the envy of the entire academy. The pressure was immense but the opportunity for me to dance in a new creation was beyond my wildest dreams.

  The choreography took over six months. We rehearsed every afternoon. Day in and day out we repeated many new steps and sweated over many movements, only to find out it wasn’t what the choreographers had in mind. I changed three to four soaking-wet T-shirts every day. My legs started to cramp. Out of compassion one of the choreographers brought me cups of warm sugared water to replenish my lost energy. Sugar was such a rarity in China—an immense treat.

  There was no doubt this role was technically very demanding. I worked hard, but different choreographers had choreographed different sections of the ballet and I had to listen to three different people’s instructions at once! It was so confusing. The ballet underwent changes right up to the last minute and on the opening night, in front of thousands of eyes, my nerves turned my muscles numb. My whole body trembled. My legs felt weak. I was exhausted even before the curtain went up. On my grand entrance I was supposed to perform this explosive series of giant leaps, but my legs felt like noodles dangling in the air. The second half of the ballet went better but the difficult dancing parts were mostly in the first half and, naturally, the person who played Chairman Mao received most of the applause.

  I was disappointed with myself beyond description. I had let the whole academy down. I had let Chairman Mao and Madame Mao down. I went to all three choreographers and apologized. I went to Zhang Shu the next day and asked him what I could do for my nerves. “Experience, only experience will help you,” he said.

  The end of this year was the first and only time that we went to see the army stationed outside Beijing: there were several elite divisions, and about ten of us were assigned a soldier each as our mentor to accompany and instruct us every day. Their daily schedule was strict, and we had to keep up with them. At five o’clock we were dressed, washed and outside in line on the parade ground within five minutes. Our Beijing Dance Academy’s strict schedule meant that we had met that kind of efficiency before, but still, waking up at five was hard. We jogged and practiced our morning routine before breakfast and practiced our dancing on any flat surface we could find. Then we joined some of the soldiers’ training activities for the rest of the day. We learned how to walk, turn, stop and run the military way. We even learned how to fall and crawl under imaginary tanks and enemy gunfire. Many of us had bruises all over after those first few days. We learned how to hold guns too—important for our political ballets, we were told. We spent days at target practice and my eyes became so tired, but again I thought of the bow shooter that Teacher Xiao had told me about and I was determined to practice hard.

  Grenade throwing was one activity I wasn’t good at, no matter how hard I tried. We practiced with fake grenades at first, but after a few days my shoulder joints were swollen with nagging pain. On the day we were scheduled to throw the real grenades we first had to throw a fake one so our throw could be measured. I pumped myself up with courage. I imagined a group of enemies standing in front of me. This was a life-and-death situation. I gathered all my strength and threw the fake grenade out with all my might.

  It fell way short of the target, embarrassingly short. It didn’t even carry over twenty yards. But I wasn’t the only one—many of my classmates also failed to reach the required distance. The academy officials wisely canceled our real grenade-throwing event, just in case.

  Apart from the gun shooting I didn’t really enjoy my military experience at all. I spent the whole time longing to return to our academy routine. I wanted to get back to my leaps and pirouettes.

  This was the same year that I was elected as one of the three Communist Youth Party committee members and vice captain of my class. Then one day a Communist Party official at the academy called me into his office. “Cunxin, you have done a good job at the Communist Youth Party. You have set a wonderful example for all the students. Although you are still too young to join the party, we would like you to start thinking about it now. Communist Party members are the purest and strongest communist believers. We believe you have that mental strength. The party would like to educate you to become a true Communist Party member, to carry the party’s torch, to raise the country’s flag every day, every hour, every minute. Theresponsibilities are enormous, but Communist Party members are a glorious breed of human being.”

  I nodded dutifully and left his office confused. To join the Communist Party was every young person’s dream. But when I heard his words about a glorious breed of human being I began to wonder. I thought of the Communist Party members I knew: some were special people like Teacher Xiao and Zhang Shu. But there were also some I didn’t want to be in the same company with, such as some of the political heads. And besides, with my increased interest in ballet I had little time for long meetings. Lately I’d even started speeding up the meetings I chaired at the Communist Youth Party, and I’d even been considering relinquishing some of my responsibilities. When I asked Teacher Xiao and Zhang Shu about this conflict between the endless meetings and my dance practice, both of them advised me not to give up my political position. It was important for my artistic future, they said. Later, much later, I was to discover their advice had been right.

  Soon after Zhou Enlai’s death, there was a massive earthquake in the coal-mining city of Tangshan, about a hundred miles east of Beijing. Officially, over two hundred thousand people were killed and over a hundred and fifty thousand injured. There were rumors that this earthquake was an unlucky sign, a sign of hard times and unrest ahead. It happened in the middle of a long, hot summer, while we were preparing for our midterm exams. Millions of victims were homeless, and all the hospitals in many cities were filled. Several older buildings fell down in Beijing too. Our academy was considered an old building, so we had to vacate it and live temporarily in tents in Taoranting Park. Tremors went on for two whole days. Torrential rain poured down relentlessly. Shops in Beijing ran out of plastic covering for people to use as temporary shelters. We left our building in such a hurry that many students didn’t even bring their clothes. It was wet and freezing at night and we had very little food: biscuits and dried bread for two days.

  My second brother, Cunyuan, was a volunteer at the local hospital in Qingdao looking after some of the earthquake victims, who came in by the trainload. Those victims were so shocked that any loud noise at all would terrify them, Cunyuan told me. One knocked a hot-water bottle onto the floor in the middle of the night. It exploded and sent the earthquake victims into immediate panic—they started to scream and tried to run for cover, and that in turn caused the whole building to shake. One of the nurses tried to calm them down by blowing a whistle, but that made the situation even worse. Panic turned to utter terror. People became desperate. A few poor injured victims jumped out of the building and killed themselves in an attempt to escape.

  Then, later that year, the unthinkable event . . .


  Our beloved Chairman Mao died.

  China paused. The whole nation mourned. It was early September, and I remember gathering in front of a loudspeaker on the sports ground and hearing the announcement of his death by his successor, Hua Guofeng. We cried our hearts out. I thought of my na-na’s death. But this time, crying for Chairman Mao, it was like a religious experience mixed with a certain fear. I had worshiped Chairman Mao. His name was the first word I had learned in school. The words from his famous Red Book were embedded in my brain. I would have died for him. And now he was gone.

  The day after we heard about Mao’s death, the Bandit and I gathered at a quiet corner of our academy grounds and sat on a concrete Ping-Pong table to talk about this shocking news. China’s future was now uncertain. Mao’s death could only mean immense insecurity. As a young Red Guard, I was plunged into grief. I felt lost. There hadn’t been much color in China before, but now things would be bleak indeed.

  “There will be total chaos in China soon,” the Bandit said despondently. “There will be civil war, maybe even the old chieftain warfare will return again. We should be prepared!” he said, becoming emotionally charged.

  “Where would you go to fight a guerilla war!” I said, amused.

  “Back to the mountains of Shandong Province of course!”

  “I’m not sure I want to leave ballet and live in the mountains for the rest of my life,” I replied.

  “Where is your courage? Didn’t Chairman Mao fight many years of guerilla warfare?”

  “Yes, but you don’t have to be a guerilla to serve the communist cause. Our best weapon is ballet,” I argued.