Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  Along the edge of the lake there were many weeping willows. I was still fond of willows, but ever since we’d moved back to the city I hadn’t had the need to confess to the trees anymore. Not like when I was eleven and homesick, back in the early days. Now, seeing the willows swaying from side to side in the breeze, I longed for refuge once again. I climbed onto a small tree and in under the cover of the leaves. I spoke to the weeping willows for the first time in five and a half years. How could my opportunity to go back to America be taken away so easily, just like that? Those six memorable weeks, the things that I saw and experienced . . .

  America was real. America was out there and I had seen it. The plane trips, the cars, the cowboy hats, the “bloody” steaks, the raw salad, the ballet classes and the Gershwin music. It was all so vivid and close. And now the ground I was standing on had disappeared from under me. I desperately tried to think of the real reason why the minister had suddenly changed his mind. Was it my report? Did I write too many good things about America? Perhaps Zhang got jealous and said something unfavorable to the ministry? Or was what I’d been told by the deputy true?

  I had no answers, but I knew I would do everything I could to find out the truth. Calm down, Cunxin, I told myself. Think of ways to persuade the minister to change his mind.

  I went back to the academy just before dinner. “Teacher Xiao is looking for you!” the Bandit shouted from a distance as soon as he spotted me. “Are you all right? You look terrible,” he asked as soon as he noticed my face.

  “I’m not allowed to go back to America,” I replied.

  “Why?” cried the Bandit.

  I couldn’t say. Tears choked my throat. I ran to Teacher Xiao’s office and knocked on the door.

  As soon as I closed the door, he rushed up to me and hugged me tight. “I heard the news, I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I was stunned by his hug at first. Hugging still wasn’t a communist thing to do. “Why, why, why did he take it away from me?” I sobbed. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Sit down,” Teacher Xiao said. He pulled a chair out from under his small desk and lit a cigarette. “According to Director Chen, the minister feels that you are too young to go to the West for a whole year.”

  “Do you think this is the real reason?”

  “It appears this is the only reasonable explanation.”

  “But he gave me permission to go back before I returned! What made him change his mind?”

  “I don’t know. Teacher Zhang and I asked the same question.”

  “Is there any way we can find out?” I persisted.

  “You never give up, do you?” Teacher Xiao smiled.

  I shook my head.

  “Teacher Zhang and I have convinced Director Chen to send a petition to Minister Wang to see if he will change his mind. I don’t know whether it will work. All we can do is wait,” he said.

  “Thank you, Teacher Xiao,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me. You need to thank Teacher Zhang. He did most of the talking. We both felt that after only six weeks in America your dancing had already improved enormously. I can’t imagine what a year would do for you. To miss this opportunity would be an unforgivable mistake. Ben Stevenson can offer you opportunities we cannot offer you here. Now, go to dinner. Otherwise there will be nothing left,” he urged.

  I didn’t hear back from the ministry for over a week. Then, on a Tuesday, Zhang Shu called me into his office. Teacher Xiao was already there. As soon as I entered the room I knew the news was bad.

  “Cunxin,” Zhang Shu began, “we have just been informed by the ministry. Our petition has been turned down. I’m so sorry.”

  My heart was bleeding. I tried hard to hold back my tears.

  “Cunxin,” Teacher Xiao said, “Teacher Zhang and I have decided to give you permission to take three weeks’ holiday to visit your family. You haven’t seen them for nearly two years. I’m sure they are really missing you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and stumbled out of Teacher Zhang’s office.

  A door to a whole new world had shut right in front of me, and I could do nothing more about it. All I wanted to do was go to sleep. I was tired and I was devastated. Just as I’d done on that very first night at the Beijing Dance Academy seven years ago, I plunged onto my bed and pulled my niang’s quilt over my head. The bright possibilities of ballet and a political career had lost their luster. My self-doubt resurfaced, and I lost all my mental strength and will.

  I couldn’t understand why not going back to America was affecting me so much. I became angry with myself for being so selfish. I was lucky to go to America once, and I should be satisfied and thankful. But a stronger voice kept rising above all other voices in my mind. “I want to go back. I want to study with Ben. I want to improve my dancing and most importantly I want to taste that precious freedom once again.”

  I jumped out of bed and ran to Teacher Xiao’s office. “Teacher Xiao, do you know where Minister Wang lives?”

  He frowned. “Yes, why?”

  “I want to see him.”

  “I don’t think he will see you even if you do go to his residence. I think you would be better to go to the ministry and make an appointment with his assistant instead.”

  “I don’t think his office will let me make an appointment. He has already refused my case twice, and it would take too long for his office to schedule me in. I don’t have that much time to waste. Besides, he is not a tiger. He won’t eat me, will he?” I added, remembering what Teacher Xiao had said to me once about Teacher Gao.

  “You and your memory,” he said. “I will never underestimate both your memory and your resolve.” So he wrote the minister’s address on a small piece of paper and handed it to me. “Good luck,” he said.

  The following evening I took two different buses and forty-five minutes later arrived at Minister Wang’s residence.

  It was an impressive compound with high walls and a tall, metal-barred security gate. There was also a guardhouse and a military guard with a semiautomatic machine gun at the ready.

  “Hello, Comrade,” I said to the guard as confidently as I could. “I’m Li Cunxin from the Beijing Dance Academy. I’m here to see Minister Wang.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t,” I replied honestly.

  “Go home if you don’t have an appointment,” the guard growled.

  “I only need to see him for one minute. Please, it’s an urgent matter,” I begged.

  “No, go home. You cannot see the minister without an appointment. Move! If you don’t move, I’ll have you arrested.”

  I left, angry and humiliated. This was not how comrades should treat each other.

  But I was back the following night. This time, a different guard was at the gate.

  “Hello, Comrade. I’m Li Cunxin from the Beijing Dance Academy, and I’ve just returned from America representing China. I was told to meet Minister Wang tonight,” I lied.

  “What time is your appointment?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. Our academy made the appointment for me.”

  “Wait a minute. What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “Last name is Li,” I replied, hoping he wouldn’t ask for my first name. Li is a very common last name in China, so maybe someone else with the last name of Li had an appointment with the minister that night, I prayed.

  “What’s your first name?” the guard asked.

  No such luck. “Cunxin,” I said.

  “I don’t see any appointments made with the minister tonight,” he said, checking the appointment book. “Are you sure you have come on the right night? The minister is attending a banquet. He won’t be back until late.”

  “I’m sorry, I must have the date wrong. Thank you,” I said to the guard. I walked to the end of the street and turned the corner, then sat on a stone doorstep and waited for the minister’s return. I took out my list of twenty new English words and tried to memorize them. T
hen I went over what I was going to say to the minister, keeping an eye out for his car.

  By midnight I was freezing and tired, and there was still no sign of the minister’s car. I ran to the nearby bus stop to shake off the cold and caught the last scheduled bus back. I missed the last connecting bus, so I had to run for half an hour after that to get back to the academy. The security guard was already asleep, and I climbed over the gate as quietly as a cat.

  The next day after our ballet class Teacher Xiao called me to his office. “Cunxin, I’m worried about you. Why don’t you give yourself a break?”

  I shook my head and told him what I’d done the last two nights. “I won’t give up until every possible avenue has been explored,” I said defiantly.

  I could see tears in Teacher Xiao’s eyes. “Cunxin, for all the years I’ve known you, I have never once doubted your determination. But here you are not dealing with internal factors. You are dealing with things beyond your control. Like a flea trying to overpower an elephant. Just give yourself a break. There will be another opportunity in the future.”

  “Isn’t there any other way?”

  Teacher Xiao shook his head. “The minister rarely reverses his decisions. Your situation is the least of his worries.”

  But still I would not give up. On the third night I returned to Minister Wang’s residence, and this time I doubled my list of English words to forty and wore more clothes. I was prepared to wait all night for a chance to see the minister.

  The same guard from the first night greeted me. “Hello, Comrade. Do you have an appointment this time?”

  “Yes, one of my teachers has made an appointment with the minister’s deputy, and I was to meet him tonight at seven-thirty,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “Wait here.”

  My heart thumped and my face turned red and I hated myself for lying. If it weren’t for the darkness the guard would have easily detected my guilt simply by the color of my face.

  A few minutes later, the guard came back. “You can’t even lie properly! Go home and don’t come back again until you have a proper appointment. Otherwise I’ll shoot you.”

  I noticed the guard was in a better mood than the first night. “Comrade, I’m sorry that I have to lie to you but I must see Minister Wang, even just for one minute.” I told him the reasons why I wanted to see the minister. I begged him to put himself in my shoes and to give me a chance. “I promise that I’ll only take one minute of his time.”

  “Okay, but I don’t know when the minister will be back, and I can’t guarantee that he will see you.”

  This time I didn’t have to hide at the end of the street. I walked back and forth, memorizing my forty English words and going over what I would say to the minister for the hundredth time.

  Just before ten o’clock the guard called me over. “Xiao Li, I am going inside at midnight. If the minister is still not back by then I can’t guarantee my replacement will let you hang around.”

  “I understand,” I replied.

  Then he hesitated. “What’s America like? Tell me a little,” he asked quietly.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “Anything!” he replied eagerly.

  I told him about the cars, the tall buildings, the ATM machines . . .

  “People can get money out of a machine in a wall?” He was very amused.

  I was mindful not to show too much enthusiasm about America. When I told him about the guard at the White House with no machine guns, he was amazed. “You must be joking.”

  “No, it’s true. Security is very lax there.”

  “What is the White House like? Is it really white?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, trying to sound as though I didn’t care much about the White House at all.

  “I can’t believe they let a Chinese ballet student get so close!” Under the dim light I could see his expression of disbelief. To leave no doubt in his mind about my commitment to communism, I told him that I despised our class enemies in America and that I was sympathic toward the American poor. But I could tell he was more interested in hearing about things like ATM machines.

  About an hour later, two bright headlights appeared from one end of the street.

  “Stand aside, this is him,” the guard said and quickly walked to the driver’s side. I couldn’t hear what he said, but a couple of minutes later the minister’s car drove through the entrance and the guard pulled the gate closed behind.

  “Sorry, Xiao Li. The minister didn’t want to see you.”

  “What did you tell him?” My heart was still palpitating.

  “I told him why you were here and that you’d been here for several nights. But all he said was ‘Drive on.’ He was rather annoyed.”

  I walked away under the faint streetlight. My whole world had crumbled. That was my last chance, my very last chance. I would never go back to America now. I had been beaten at last. How naïve you are to think your existence would mean so much to the communist cause! I told myself. Do you think an important leader such as Minister Wang would spend a single second thinking about you, a mere peasant boy? How foolish to believe everyone was equal in China. I had believed this communist doctrine for so many years. But in the minister’s eyes I was no one. He didn’t even bother to glance out of his car at this eager and pathetic boy.

  I thought bitterly of the minister riding away in his flashy car. I thought of a story we’d been told at school about Mao not eating pork, of him deliberately suffering hardships just like the rest of us, and I seethed with rage.

  I realized then that China was like any other nation on earth. There was no equality. But I, like all the Chinese people, had given Chairman Mao and his government our unwavering support for many, many years. I never questioned them. What choice did we have? The media was totally controlled by the government. One couldn’t escape their brainwashing. “Cunxin, you’ve been manipulated all these years. It’s time to wake up. The government and Minister Wang are no longer there for you. You have to look after yourself. You only have one life to live.”

  I went back to the academy and lay awake until the early hours of the morning.

  I don’t know what time I finally fell asleep. I didn’t hear the wake-up bell in the morning. I didn’t wake when the Bandit shook me at lunchtime, and I slept through the morning classes and afternoon rehearsals. I felt someone putting his hand on my forehead to feel my temperature. “Cunxin has a fever,” I heard them say. My throat throbbed. My bones ached. My entire body was burning. But the most painful thing was my memory of the night before. Sleep was the only thing that would cure me of my misery and my shaken beliefs. I held on to my niang’s quilt for dear life.

  Finally I heard the voices of Teacher Xiao and the Bandit. “Wake up, Cunxin, wake up!”

  I forced myself to open my eyes and look at their kind, caring faces. Tears welled in my eyes and I began to sob. “Leave me alone. I want to go back to my dreams.”

  “Cunxin, just listen to me now!” Teacher Xiao said. “You have two choices. Think of this as a card game: you can simply give up and stop participating or you can play on and see what happens. You have a long life and career in front of you. There will be many triumphs as well as setbacks, but if you give up now you will never taste the mango!”

  I looked first at Teacher Xiao and then at the Bandit. I burst into uncontrollable sobs. My anger, my disappointment, my injured pride and my shattered beliefs all forced their way out at once. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

  The next day, from Director Chen’s office, I made a phone call to Ben Stevenson in Houston. “I can not come,” I told him. “My big leader in government say no.” Once more my heart was bleeding with pain.

  He asked me some questions I didn’t really understand. The only words I detected were “why,” “disappointed” and “sad.” I kept asking him to repeat. Eventually he screamed down the phone in sheer frustration. “You! Come! Later!”

  “No. Big leader say no. I. Wr
ite. Letter. For you.”

  After I had spoken to Ben, I immediately phoned my village and asked for my parents. “Fifth Brother, it’s Cunxin. I am coming home.”

  “Aren’t you going back to America?” he asked, surprised.

  “No, not anymore,” I replied.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing wrong. I will explain when I get back. Tell our parents not to go spending money on special food for me,” I said.

  “Are you all right? Did you do something wrong?”

  “No. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m all right. The minister for Culture thinks I’m too young to go back alone. I have to go now. I will call you once I get my train ticket.” I quickly put the phone down. I didn’t want him to hear me crying.

  For the following two days I was very emotional. I couldn’t wait for the sun to go down so I could clutch onto my niang’s quilt and quietly shed my tears.

  Two days later I purchased my train ticket, ready to go home for a three-week holiday. But that afternoon, as I was mindlessly scanning through the People’s Daily, a headline caught my eye. “Minister Wang, the Minister for Culture, Will Lead a Delegation to South America for Five Weeks.”

  I pulled the paper to my chest as though I had found a treasure and immediately ran to Teacher Xiao’s office.

  “Teacher Xiao, Teacher Xiao! Read this!”

  “Yes. I’ve read it already. The minister is going to South America for five weeks. What’s strange about that?”

  “Who will be in charge of the ministry while he’s gone?” I asked.