Mao's Last Dancer (Movie Tie-In)

by Li Cunxin

  And what about my brothers in China? How have their lives altered since 2003?

  My eldest brother Cuncia suffered a second stroke two years after his first one, which he’d had at the age of fifty-five. His black hair had turned completely gray. He blames himself for his health, eating too much fatty food and not getting enough exercise when living standards had improved in China. He and his wife spend most of their days looking after their son Jing Jing’s only child, as both of his parents have to work to earn a living.

  My second brother Cunyuan’s relationship with his siblings has become strained in recent years, mainly due to his lingering bitterness toward our parents for not allowing him to marry the girl he’d wanted to marry, and for not letting him go to Tibet, all those years ago. Just for my sake, Cunyuan and my other brothers gather together when I come home for visits, but they have little to do with each other apart from that. Like all bad relationships, it inevitably started with misunderstandings, lack of communication and unspoken feelings.

  Cunyuan knows that I still love dumplings, so he and his wife always invite me to his home for a meal. Besides my niang’s dumplings, my second sister-in-law’s dumplings are the next best. Over dinner once, Cunyuan told me about his family, how his second daughter Lili had fallen in love with a transient worker from the south of China, and how she’d followed him to the Canton area. She’d become pregnant, but her excitement quickly turned to bitter disappointment when she discovered he had no intention of marrying her. Nor did he want anything to do with their child. She was heartbroken. But Lili was determined, so with the family’s support she became the mother of a very cute little girl. In my parents’ time, to have a child without being married would bring only bad luck and shame. Lili would have been despised by society, and her family would bear the disgrace. How China has changed!

  My third brother Cunmao has taken good care of his adoptive parents—my fourth uncle and aunt—over the years. Cunmao always secretly longed to go back to his true parents. But he couldn’t, for fear of destroying two families. That was until my fourth uncle’s death. Cunmao properly farewelled him, as a good son would do. He then called his birth father “Dia” for the first time in his life. Cunmao had waited for this moment for nearly fifty years. A few years later, my fourth aunt also passed away, and Cunmao could finally call his real mother “Niang.” What emotional moments for him! He felt he’d come home, and today he has found true peace and harmony.

  My parents suffered more pain and guilt than anyone, knowing that Cunmao had wanted to come back ever since, as a teenager, he’d found out who his true parents were. It gave my parents some comfort to see him grow into a loving and caring son to his adoptive parents. And now, their third son could finally return to the family he’d always belonged to. There were no celebrations. No ceremonial traditions. He just naturally took up that long-vacant place in the Li family. But he never forgot his first “Niang” and “Dia” and the depth of emotions they’d experienced for nearly fifty years.

  Cunmao is the general manager and shareholder in a very successful building materials and home furnishing supermarket in Qingdao. His wife owns a tea shop, and five years ago their daughter Lulu came to study in Australia. She subsequently fell in love and married a chef, and they have just bought their first home in Melbourne.

  My fourth brother Cunsang is a chef, too. His cooking is not fancy, but basic and delicious. Niang calls it “honest and homey.” Recently he discovered a hidden passion and talent for wood carving. His apartment is full of carved objects: birds, wild boar, flowers, fishermen. Most of these he carves from tree roots.

  “Why tree roots?” I asked him.

  “Tree roots are tough and challenging, but they will last in time,” he replied wisely.

  Cunsang’s wife, Zhen Hua, told me that Cunsang had taken nearly six months to complete one particular carving. I truly admired such patience and skill.

  “Which one is it?” I asked to see the masterpiece.

  “I gave it to a friend,” Cunsang replied.

  “But why didn’t you keep it?” I asked, amazed.

  “Because my friend liked it better,” he said.

  Cunsang has not changed. He always had a generous soul.

  Since 2003 my fifth brother Cunfar has built up a thriving transportation business, a real estate business and a sea cucumber farm. Sea cucumbers! Those ugly slug-looking things that taste like rubber! Some Chinese people swear they are good for fighting the flu, or for keeping one young and virile. Every time my brothers try to convince me to eat one, I tell them I’d rather be gagging on dried yams again than eating that grotesque creature!

  Jing Tring, the little brother I’d once taken to the village grain grinder to find a cure for our warts, has his own human resources and recruitment company. It’s a new and growing area in China. His daughter Rong Rong is studying in Australia, and Mary and I have taken on the role of her Australian parents. Jing Tring and his wife came to visit us in Australia in late 2008. It was their first trip out of China. They were very impressed by many aspects of Australian life—the deep clear blue sky and clean air—but they found the rhythm rather slow compared to China. There was less hectic traffic, fewer stops and starts, fewer crowds, and the restaurants were quieter. People’s lifestyles seemed more orderly to him.

  Jing Tring had been asked by friends in China to bring back things like Swiss watches, expensive fishing rods and rare wines. They had to be the genuine Western article. Jing Tring and his friends are the new breed of Chinese entrepreneur—eager to buy and able to afford true Western luxuries.

  So much, then, has happened since 2003, not just for my families in China and Melbourne, but for many others in my story. In America, which had been such an enormous part of my dancing life for so many years, Houston is still like another home for me. I go back as often as I can.

  One time I met my former wife, Elizabeth, during one of my book tours near Boston. She’d contacted me soon after she’d read my book, and we agreed to have lunch for old times’ sake. Both of us were nervous—we hadn’t seen each other for over twenty years! We met at a Japanese restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts, and talked freely about our marriage, and how young we’d been, and put to rest some unanswered questions we’d buried deep ever since our divorce. We both had the maturity to accept the past. There was no animosity, no blame, no bad feelings, just mutual understanding and respect.

  I met up with Charles Foster, too, on that trip. No matter how far apart we live or how long it’s been since we last saw each other, we are still very close. Today Charles is widely recognized as one of the foremost immigration experts in the United States. He is still happily married to his Chinese wife, Lily, and they live with their two teenage sons in Houston.

  As for my mentor, Ben Stevenson . . . well, after retiring as director of the Houston Ballet, he became Artistic Director for the Dallas and Fort Worth Ballet, now the Texas Ballet Theater. He was in his element, excited about the extraordinary talents he’d found, and he still had the passion to build another world-class company, that same passion that had inspired me immeasurably when I had first met him. Our shared history has kept us close. Ben even hosted a book-signing event for me in Dallas, and has probably purchased more copies of my book as gifts than anyone else I know!

  And as my book took me all over the world again, much as ballet had once done, I began to reconnect with my past in so many ways. Meeting people like Elizabeth, Charles and Ben again brought back vivid memories of my defection and of how I’d thought I would never see China or my family again. I remembered, too, the various movie offers I’d rejected from Hollywood studios after the defection in 1981. My initial inclination was always to say no to such offers. It was truly scary to think of my life as a motion picture! I worried that the movie industry would be littered with intrigues and scandals and ego-driven executives. But I did secretly hope that, like the book, a movie might perhaps give people new hope and courage in their lives. Keepi
ng hearts warm, like I’d longed for, all those years ago.

  So I was encouraged by friends to consider this idea of a movie more carefully. Things are different now from 1981, they said. There’s no need to worry about any negative implications a film might have on your family back in China. I began to relent, and after meetings in Hollywood and London, at the beginning of 2006, a new development began . . .

  32

  “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE”

  Nine months after the publication of my book, at my office in the stockbroking firm where I worked in Melbourne, I received a phone call from someone who introduced himself as Jan Sardi. Was he a client of mine, I wondered. The name sounded familiar . . .

  Sensing my hesitation, he quickly told me he was the screen-writer for the film Shine, about the life of the pianist David Helfgott. I’d seen that film. It was one of my favorites!

  “Please tell me you haven’t given your film rights away yet,” Jan said.

  I told him that no, I hadn’t, but I was negotiating with a London producer.

  “Can you hold off until we meet? I only need half an hour of your time,” he asked.

  Jan and I met the following day. The planned half-hour session turned into a two-hour meeting. He came armed with a copy of Mao’s Last Dancer and a notebook full of ideas for a movie. It was uncanny, as though he’d been working on the project for years. He seemed truly passionate about my story.

  A few days later, Jane Scott, the producer of Shine, came and met me too. She was just as passionate about her vision for the movie, and at the end of that meeting I asked my film agent to negotiate with them. Even though they were not offering huge sums, my instincts told me that they would take good care of my story. Here were people who would make a movie with integrity and class.

  One thing I learned about filmmaking from these meetings was the importance of a good screenplay. A good screenplay is the foundation of any successful film. Jan gave me his screenplay for Shine to read, to get a sense of his writing style. He wanted me to help in the writing process, and I agreed. He would spend over a year reading through the 680,000 words of my original manuscript, looking at dance videos, dance reviews and interview footage. Then he’d travel to China and America to meet people like Teacher Xiao, Ben Stevenson, Elizabeth and Charles Foster. He’d often arrange meetings, on a weekly basis at first, and he’d ask endless questions, and always came prepared with a thick stack of cards for different scene ideas.

  During all the time we spent together, Jan always showed incredible respect for my story. His challenge was the same as that which had confronted my book editors with the original manuscript: what to keep in and what to let go. He had to reduce a book of over 400 pages to a screenplay of 108 pages, without losing the emotional impact of my story.

  A year later, after many drafts, Jan showed me the final screenplay. I felt its authenticity, its emotion: it had stayed true to my original story. I was happy.

  Of course, a film can’t go ahead without securing funding—one of the biggest hurdles for any filmmaker—and though Jane had some potential investors, there was a long way to go yet, and she wasn’t sure if they would come through for her in the end. Perhaps I could help, I told her. From time to time, at my speaking engagements, business people would ask me if there’d ever be an opportunity to invest in my film, and a colleague at my stockbroking firm, Damien Silk, wanted to be involved too. I thought that Jane might not want to put this in the hands of a couple of stockbrokers—after all, it is notoriously difficult and risky to raise film finance from the private sector—but after meeting with us to discuss possibilities, that’s exactly what she did. And within twenty-four hours of our opening offer there was enough demand from potential investors to assure us all that we would eventually raise most of the film’s budget. There was now a film!

  Not long after that, another incredible thing happened. I’ll never forget it. It was Jane on the mobile. “Li, I have some very good news to share with you!” she said.

  “What is it? Tell me!”

  “Bruce Beresford has agreed to direct our film!”

  “Bruce who?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Bruce Beresford . . .” Jane repeated. “He directed Breaker Morant and Driving Miss Daisy and ...”

  “I know, I know! I know who he is!” I interrupted excitedly. I simply could not believe such wonderful news!

  Jane said that Bruce wanted to go through the screenplay with me in detail, and ask lots of questions about my past experiences.

  So I met up with Bruce and we spent an entire weekend working together. He had an intimidating stature, but was such a gentle beast: easygoing, with a contagious sense of humor, and a curious and inquisitive mind. I asked him if he’d have a professional actor playing me, and maybe a dancer double for the ballet scenes.

  “No, I don’t think that’d work. I was hoping you’d have a dancer in mind,” he replied.

  “Well, yes, but I don’t know if he can act,” I said.

  “Well, as long as he’s not totally stupid, I think I can teach him how to act,” Bruce said confidently.

  Ever since word got out that there’d be a film of Mao’s Last Dancer, I’d been inundated with CVs, pictures and DVDs from actors, hoping they could play me. Then one day a good friend at the Australian Ballet told me he’d seen a wonderful Chinese dancer at the Birmingham Royal Ballet. His name was Chi Cao.

  I knew that name! He was the son of two of my former Beijing Dance Academy teachers! Like me, Chi had graduated from the academy at the age of eighteen, and was now a principal dancer, and a great possibility for the role of me in the movie. John Meehan, the then director of the Hong Kong Ballet, also said there were several wonderful dancers in his company that could play a part in the film. So in October 2007 Bruce, Jane and I flew to Hong Kong to audition them, and then on to England to meet Chi Cao.

  Chi had injured himself just before his audition, but he’d taken painkillers so he could continue. And Chi’s performance was electrifying: Bruce and Jane knew they’d found their star.

  Then another brilliant dancer who’d just joined the Australian Ballet School from Beijing was discovered. His name was Chengwu Guo and he was only seventeen. I watched his impressive display of strong technique and astonishing skill. Chengwu had also graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy. So many parallels! I invited Bruce, Jan and Jane to see him perform and, like Chi, Chengwu was immediately offered a role, as the teenage me. And finally, a boy was found to play the young me from an athletics school in Beijing. He was a nice-looking boy: I would’ve definitely been selected for more roles at the Beijing Dance Academy if I’d been as cute as him!

  I was amazed at the coincidences that were emerging. Chi, Chengwu and I were all from the Beijing Dance Academy, and we’d all won similar awards and danced at similar ballet companies. Maybe there’s more to coincidence in life than we truly know.

  Filming was due to begin in early March 2008. First there was filming in China, then it was on to film in Sydney on April 21 and after that filming in Houston.

  With such a large cast and crew, the Chinese locations were always going to be the most challenging. Early in 2008 the script was sent to the China Film Bureau, where it was painstakingly examined by the officials. Some of their objections seemed simply ridiculous: Madame Mao’s name couldn’t be mentioned, though they didn’t mind if we used an actor who looked and dressed just like Madame Mao, as long as we called her “Government Leader.” But despite their suggested changes, everything seemed to be progressing smoothly and Jane was confident things would go well. So locations were secured, sets were built, costumes made and actors and crew contracted. By early March everything was ready to begin.

  Then things started to unravel.

  We began to hear that several other film permits, which had already been issued to Western films due to shoot in China, had just been pulled. Then they stopped issuing foreign film permits altogether. The official line was that the bureau was “reor
ganizing their thoughts and establishing new procedures.”

  Enormous efforts were made by various Australian government departments; all lobbied the Chinese authorities on Jane’s behalf to obtain the permit. But the Chinese government were clamping down: they never officially denied the permit, and they never officially issued it either. One would think things couldn’t get any worse for our film, but they did. Most of the camera equipment was seized at Customs and wasn’t released on time for the start of filming! So local equipment had to be hired instead, which made things even harder.

  It was a terrible dilemma for Jane and her Chinese producer. They had a cast and crew of over three hundred people, and to abandon filming in China would have disastrous consequences for the film. But to go ahead meant risking the anger of the Chinese government. More equipment could be confiscated, people arrested—even deported!

  I couldn’t possibly guess what Jane went through in making her decision to continue. It would take an incredibly strong person to endure the nightmares of filming in China even with a permit, let alone without one. Such tenacity at times could border on hardheadedness and was a source of our occasional disagreements. But go ahead she did, and on March 17, 2008, I was finally on my way to the film set—a redecorated warehouse in the countryside about an hour and a half outside Beijing.

  When I walked onto the set, I was suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was my family home in the village. There was the room from my childhood! The woks, the windbox, the cupboards on the wall . . . I lost all sense of where I was. I could see myself as a boy once more, with my niang and dia and all my brothers. The production team in China had done a remarkable job—everything looked absolutely authentic. Many of the Chinese team would have grown up in China in the 1960s: they knew how to make it real.

  Bruce Beresford introduced me to some of the cast, including “me” as an eleven-year-old, and the glamorous Chinese actress Joan Chen who would play my mother. I also met another wonderful actor, Wang Shuang Bao, who’d be my dia. I returned to Australia feeling confident about the filming, but was still worried that it might never be finished because of all the dramas with the permits!