Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  But the officials had underestimated my niang. “How could you blame me?” she replied angrily. “You, the government, took my innocent son away! From the age of eleven you were responsible for his upbringing! Now, you are asking me what have I done? You have lost my son. You are responsible!”

  The officials were speechless. “You will hear from us again” was all they said.

  My parents had lived in constant fear and despair ever since then. They had been prepared to go to prison and lose everything they had to defend my honor. Some of my relatives and friends had distanced themselves from my family, for fear of being implicated in my defection, but the officials never contacted my family again.

  “Your niang developed nightmares after your defection,” my dia added. “If there were any loud noises at night, she would be terrified. For many nights she sobbed and sobbed.”

  “My heart would have bled to death if it weren’t for my desire to see you again!” my niang cried. “So many times I prayed to see you one more time. Now I can finally close my eyes and die in peace. My dream has come true! I am the happiest person on earth!”

  “Dia, what about you?” I asked.

  “I had to be strong,” he said. “But I was scared of losing one of my sons, a son we are proud of!”

  This was the first time he’d ever actually said he was proud of me. I knew it wasn’t easy for him to say, and my heart was light and happy.

  “Your dia lost so much weight during that time!” my niang continued. “His face was as long as his own shadow. Only sadness and agony. He spoke even less. Can you imagine your dia speaking less than usual! He let more noise out from his bottom end than from his top!” She laughed.

  My niang then told me of a dream she’d had, one that kept recurring for years and years. Just before I’d been accepted by the Beijing Dance Academy, in late 1971, she’d dreamed of a huge crowd, gathered in a cloudlike mist. Through the mist she could see many gorgeous dancers, like goddesses, dancing in the sky. Rainbows were their costumes, and the shining stars were the light. She told me that her dream had come true tonight, watching me dance. She had flown by airplane up to the ninth heaven. She’d seen the goddesslike dancing of the Houston Ballet. Her heart had been filled with pride and happiness. Now she could die in peace.

  “What you did on stage looked very difficult,” my dia said. “I was dizzy just watching you spin! I couldn’t believe you were still standing afterwards.”

  We talked and talked. So many questions, questions that had been stored in our hearts for so many years. “How many times your dia and I questioned ourselves,” my niang confessed. “Did we do the right thing, letting you go to Beijing at such a young age? I cried for days after your first letter. For days and days. When you said you had to wash your own clothes, I thought, What have I done?! Why did I encourage you to go? You were only eleven! We grieved for years. I knew you were homesick. I knew you tried hard to hide it. And I knew you would be even more homesick if we told you how we felt.”

  I began to tell them then how devastating my homesickness had been in those first two dreadful years at the Beijing Dance Academy. How hopeless I’d felt about my dancing. How afraid I was of being sent back home and bringing shame to the Li family. How I’d hidden in the weeping willow trees. And how, many times, I had clutched onto my niang’s quilt and sobbed myself to sleep.

  “How did you recover from this?” my dia asked.

  “Remember the pen you gave me?”

  My dia laughed. “That was the only way I knew how to encourage you to study hard, to reach your potential. I’m sorry if I hurt your pride.”

  “No, I’m grateful. Grateful for what you have done for me. I only wish I still had that pen. I lost it, on tour, during my first year with the Houston Ballet. I loved that pen.”

  “Do you still have the quilt I made you?” my niang asked.

  “After my defection the academy officials burned it along with all my other belongings.”

  My niang just sighed, but there was enormous sadness in that one short sound.

  I told them many things that night. I told them about my marriage to Elizabeth. I told them about Ben and what happened the night of my defection, and their jaws dropped with shock. They spoke not a single word until I had finished my story.

  Then they asked me about Elizabeth, but there was no judgment in my parents’ words. “Elizabeth must be a courageous girl to marry a Chinese boy so young,” my niang said simply. “There is a god who has looked after you and steered the course of your life. You are a fortunate boy.”

  That night, with my parents sleeping just a few meters away, I tucked myself under the blankets and slept like a baby. No more nightmares now.

  26

  RUSSIA

  Later that week, Ben invited my parents and me to his house for dinner one night. My good friend Betty Lou, who’d picked my parents up from the airport, would also be there.

  That evening at Ben’s, as soon as Betty Lou and I kissed each other on the cheek, she handed me a folded piece of paper. At first I thought it was either another review about our Nutcracker performance or a news article about my parents’ visit to America.

  The letter had been written on Christmas Eve. In the top right-hand corner I saw the emblem of the United States of America and the vice-presidential title underneath.

  Dear Betty Lou,

  Thanks for making me aware that Li Cunxin’s parents, Li Ting Fong and Fung Rei Ching, were planning to apply for visitors’ visas at our embassy in Beijing. I contacted officials at the Department of State and asked them to ask our embassy in Beijing if Mr. Li’s parents had applied for their visas. I was pleased to hear that their visas were issued on December 13. I hope that they have a safe journey and enjoy their visit with their son.

  With warmest wishes,

  Sincerely yours,

  George Bush

  Tears blurred my vision. My hands shook. I gave Betty Lou an enormous hug. I couldn’t believe she had asked for help from the vice president himself. I couldn’t believe the vice president would actually take the time to inquire about a personal affair of mine. I thought of the minister for culture in China. In China I wasn’t worth one minute of his time.

  I told my parents about the letter. They too were speechless. “Zhi, zhi, zhi ...” was all my niang could say, and she shook her head in disbelief. “Be serious, Jing Hao! An American vice president inquiring about two Chinese peasants?”

  My dia also shook his head and smiled in agreement with my niang. “Jing Hao is kidding. George who?”

  I nodded my head and pointed at Betty Lou.

  She smiled and nodded back.

  Eventually it sank in. The vice president! Of America! My parents rushed to Betty Lou, and they too hugged her tight.

  While I was at work over the next few weeks, my parents were often taken out to see the sights of Houston by some of my friends. Or they simply enjoyed staying home. My niang continued to sew, even though her eyesight was poor, and she cooked most of the meals while my dia cleaned and fixed things around the house. They had great fun gardening too. I had a large backyard, and they ended up planting over fifty roses. They weeded and watered them every day without fail. Never in their lives had they even imagined the luxury of being able to plant flowers.

  My parents were forever grateful to Ben for what he had done for me. One day my parents invited Ben over for dumplings, and much to my niang’s utter astonishment Ben showed up with a top-of-the-line Singer sewing machine. Just for her! She was deeply moved by such generosity and thoughtfulness. But she was too scared to touch it. Eventually she was persuaded to give it a try and she began to practice, following the instructions carefully. But she nearly fed her fingers into the machine instead. “I’m no good at this modern stuff. It took me a lifetime to learn how to sew. It will take me another lifetime to learn how to use this machine.” But my niang did eventually take the sewing machine back with her to China—and gave it to one of her daughters-
in-law.

  My parents simply couldn’t get over so many things about living in America: the fact that people had hot water in every home, that I had a dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. But still my niang insisted on washing everything by hand. She had hot running water, after all. What more could she want? Hot water was everything! One of my parents’ most favorite things to do was to help each other wash their backs in the bath. And my dia spent a lot of time crawling in the attic or under the house inspecting the plumbing, the hot-water heater, the central heating, the air-conditioning units: he was like an awestruck child.

  The refrigerator was another fascination, and my dia and niang were surprised at how long food could be kept fresh. My niang had to shop for food almost every day in China, but here shopping was completely different. “There is more Chinese food here than in China!” she said, aghast. “Many of these ingredients I can’t even get in China at all!”

  One weekend I took my parents to Macy’s department store. “If this isn’t heaven, I don’t know what is!” my niang gasped. So many clothes to choose from! So much of everything everywhere! We stepped onto an escalator and she nearly lost her balance. Moving stairs!

  The three weeks of my parents’ stay were disappearing fast. I watched their reactions to America and relived some of my own reactions from when I’d arrived in America five years earlier. What a shock these three weeks were for them. They would reflect on this trip for many days, weeks, months, even years after they returned to our village in China.

  I didn’t want them to go back. I simply hadn’t had enough time with them.

  For their last few days in America I took them to Charles Foster’s condominium, an elegant high-rise in Galveston about forty-five minutes from Houston. The condominium was part of a five-star hotel, and the hotel staff serviced Charles’s apartment. My parents felt so guilty having the hotel people do all the work that my niang and dia made their own bed every morning instead. The staff thought no one ever slept in it. And my parents would go to one of the local piers and buy fish or shrimp from the fishing boats, and we’d cook them ourselves in the apartment.

  Two days before my parents’ departure another friend of mine kindly let us use his lakeside town house too, and to get around the complex my parents had to drive golf carts—the same kind I’d crashed into the ditch in Disneyland. At first I drove them to show them how, but my dia was quick to learn. He’d been working with trucks for so many years back in China, after all, so he was a natural driver. Even my niang reluctantly agreed to have a go. We spent only two days there, but on the last day when I woke up I found both my parents gone. When I looked out of the window I saw each of them driving a golf cart and chasing each other around like children playing tag. They laughed and giggled and laughed and giggled, and it was one of the happiest moments in their lives.

  My parents were in constant shock during their stay in America, but they took everything calmly, storing it in their memories so they could savor it all when they returned home to China. They had never expected to see such prosperity. They had never expected such kindness from the people of another country.

  I gave my parents some money before they left, so they could at least improve their lifestyle when they went back to our village. For all my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, my nephew, relatives and friends, I bought gifts. There was something for everyone, no matter how big or small. By the time they were ready to leave, my parents had many suitcases full of gifts: watches for my brothers, clothes for my sisters-in-law, picture books and nylon jump ropes for the children, mugs and T-shirts with the Houston skyline on them for friends and relatives, a couple of bottles of Maotai for my grandfather and oldest uncle, and Ben’s sewing machine too. “We left China poor, but will return so rich!” my niang exclaimed on their last night in America. “I don’t mean the material things. It’s the richness I feel in my heart. How well you’re doing here and how much you’re loved and respected! We will savor this trip for the rest of our lives. We’re truly fortunate.”

  “Do you still remember the story about the frog in the well?” my dia asked all of a sudden.

  I nodded. I remembered.

  “Thank you for showing us what is outside our well. If it weren’t for you I would die an ignorant man. We may be going back to our well, but at least we’ve experienced the kind of life that Deng Xiaoping might lead us to in China one day. Now we will carry only fond memories and all the goodwill of your American friends home with us,” he said.

  We talked way past midnight. We were so afraid that some important things might be left unsaid. The uncertainty of whether we would ever see each other again weighed heavily on our minds. It was during our conversation that night that I suddenly realized my dia had become quite talkative.

  I took them out to the airport the following day.

  “I don’t know when we will see each other again,” I said, close to tears.

  “But now we have seen you and met your friends we can lay all our worries to rest,” my niang reassured me. “We will go home feeling happy about your life here in America. I only wish you’ll be allowed to see your brothers again one day. They all miss you.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be allowed to go back home.”

  “With Deng Xiaoping’s open-door policy,” my dia added, “you never know. Who could have imagined that we would be allowed to come here?”

  “I will miss you,” I said to him.

  My niang hugged me tight. I felt her warmth, her love.

  Finally I watched them disappear behind the customs checkpoint. I stood there for a long while afterwards, just staring at the wall.

  After my parents’ visit to America I could telephone them in China and write to them, freely, without fear of reprisal, and I could send them money too. But I was still not allowed to go back. There was a considerable amount of resentment among Chinese government officials for what had happened that night at the consulate in April 1981. But at least I had seen my parents, and the heavy weight of sadness had lifted from me.

  Now it was back to ballet and another competition was coming up, this time in Moscow in June. I knew there was a lot of politics involved in these competitions, and my experiences in China had made me wary of going to Russia. But Russia had always had a certain allure ever since I’d watched so many brilliant Russian dancers in those videos back at the Beijing Dance Academy. I longed to go there. I was not a U.S. citizen, however, and the Russian government had problems with me, a Chinese defector to the U.S. who still held a Chinese passport and who wanted to represent America. The Russian government hated defectors with a passion. They had lost some of their best dancers to the West that way—Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Makarova and others too.

  Faced with a dilemma, Ben and Charles started a massive campaign to lobby both Congress and the Senate to pass a special resolution, to change my status and allow me U.S. citizenship a year ahead of the usual qualifying time.

  The task was huge. To me it was inconceivable. Only rarely in American history had this been achieved before, mostly for Olympic competitors. Charles thought we had a chance, though, because we had the George Bush connection, so we lobbied on the grounds of a possible gold medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition. Americans love gold medals of any sort, even ballet ones, and I received many, many letters of support. Time was critical, though, given the bureaucratic process. Charles contacted congressmen, senators, anyone and everyone who had any political connection at all, and we eventually gathered enough support to have the bill passed by the immigration subcommittee of Congress. But we ran out of time to get the necessary approval in the Senate. Fortunately, however, the American International Ballet Competition Association persisted and eventually the Russian authorities relented. They would allow me to represent the U.S. Ben and the Houston Ballet’s pianist would go with me, and before long I was on my way to Moscow.

  I was of course aware that the people of the Soviet Union were still living behind the Iron
Curtain, but nevertheless, once there I was surprised at just how much the Russian people were starved of freedom. It was worse than I had imagined. The fear of the KGB seemed to be on everyone’s minds.

  One day I went to Red Square to see Lenin’s preserved body, not because I was interested in him as a communist forefather or anything, but just like the other tourists I went out of curiosity. By then I had totally abandoned my old communist beliefs.

  I entered the mausoleum, following all the other tourists in single file. As we descended into the depths of the tomb, I noticed the polished black and red granite that covered the floor, the walls and the ceiling. It was awesome. Guards everywhere stood motionless, as though we didn’t exist. And there was Lenin, lying in his sealed glass coffin. A ghostly white figure. He didn’t even look real. He was so small: how surprising that just this one small man could have such an impact on the world. His communist ideals formed the background I grew up on, and his influence was felt in nearly every corner of the earth. I looked at him and remembered Chairman Mao. I had seen Chairman Mao’s preserved body in its glass coffin once also, on a trip organized by the Beijing Dance Academy, and I remembered thinking he looked pretty ugly. But Lenin’s distorted face was even worse. I thought of my na-na, displayed in her coffin in the middle of her living room, when I was just eight years old.

  I was surprised to see how many similarities there were between China and Russia. The harsh lifestyle, the lack of food, the drabness of people’s dress, the discrepancy between the official exchange rate and the black market. The food at restaurants was limited too. I’d had Chicken Kiev in America on a couple of occasions and I thought, since this was Russia, Chicken Kiev would have to be much better here—like having Peking Duck in China. But I was terribly disappointed. It was nothing like what I’d had in America. The only thing that wasn’t disappointing was the marvellous Russian caviar. I smeared it over toast, I ate it all the time. To me it was inexpensive, but for the Russians it was nothing but an extravagance.