by Li Cunxin
So all of us, Niang’s seven sons, went to her room around two in the morning. We were dreading to wake her, but the hospital was eager to take Dia’s body away from the ward. To our surprise, Niang was already wide awake. She must have felt the loss.
“Niang, Dia has gone to a better world,” Cuncia said. Niang gently nodded. “Take me,” she said.
We wheeled her to Dia, two floors up. She looked at him tenderly for a long time, then made a despairing sound, and heartbreaking sobs and tears followed. Her body heaved uncontrollably. I went to her and held her tight. “Niang, Niang ...” was all I could say.
By local tradition, our dia’s body would be taken back to his home and placed in an open coffin in the living room for the three-day waiting time. But because of his surgery, the doctors advised us to keep his body at the crematorium. So we carried a piece of cardboard bearing our dia’s name and his date of birth, written in black ink, all the way to his apartment, and placed it on a table in the living room. His soul would follow his name and all of us home, until we placed the sign in his permanent resting place three days later. A picture of Dia’s kind, honest face was also put in the middle of the table, and in front of it were three burning incense sticks, and tall candles on either side. There was Dia’s favorite food: cooked fish, vegetables, meat, eggs, wine, fruit and of course roasted sunflower seeds and peanuts. There were also two small glasses of the harsh Chinese liquor called Maotai, and Dia’s favorite Western drink, the Drambuie that I’d brought home for him. A clay basin was placed on the floor to contain fire and ash from the burning of paper money, the traditional gold paper bearing the symbols of a gold nugget and an old coin: only this sort of money could be used in Dia’s next world. And with China’s new prosperity, there were some other items added to the list of things to be burned—paper cars and houses, paper refrigerators and even paper televisions, so Dia could enjoy all these modern luxuries in his new world.
I didn’t cry much, though. I couldn’t. It wasn’t because I wasn’t heartbroken. Maybe it was because I was so overwhelmed, worrying about Niang. I felt exhausted and had intense headaches. I found my emotions suppressed without really knowing why.
On the last day, a large entourage of the Li family, friends and relatives arrived at the crematorium. It was early, a freezingly cold morning, with strong chilling winds. Snow had frozen into thick layers of ice on the paths. Everyone wore plenty of clothes: layers of sweaters and woollen pants, heavy jackets, gloves and scarves. Even with my overcoat I was still shivering uncontrollably. I felt frozen in my heart.
Since our na-na’s death over forty years ago, this was only the second funeral I’d ever attended, and to my surprise the old funeral traditions of Na-na’s day were returning. Chairman Mao’s efforts to destroy the old traditions hadn’t worked. People still lavished their loved ones with affection, bringing paper money and lighting incense, kneeling and kowtowing three times. In the old days, all the sons would have to wait by the dead for the entire three days, without sleeping at all, burning the incense and the paper money to allow the loved one as much wealth as possible in their new world. The sons would kneel, kowtow and cry, along with all the visitors. Funerals were an expensive and exhausting experience.
The seven of us met at the crematorium’s ash-box shop. There was a lump of a crowd outside. At 8:30 we were finally allowed to cram into the shop, but inside the variety of ash-boxes to choose from was overwhelming. It had to be the right size to fit into the small cement slot at the cemetery, but then there were lucky shapes, and colors, and would redwood be better than stone, or perhaps a carved or painted one? After much discussion, we eventually settled on an expensive,ancient-looking carved redwood box for our dia’s ashes.
At 9:30 it was time to enter the spacious display hall. It was a big square room, and our dia lay serenely in his coffin, on a raised platform in the middle of the room. Bouquets and baskets of flowers and wreaths bearing his name surrounded the coffin and leaned up against the walls. The whole room echoed with wailing and weeping. It was then I realized that this would be the very last time I’d ever see my dia. I could no longer contain my grief, and tears at last flooded out. My legs felt weak, and a pair of strong hands grabbed me from behind and supported my shoulders. “You are all right. I am here,” the Bandit whispered.
“Your attention, please, while I read the eulogy,” the ceremony master yelled over the incessant wailing. He tried several times before the crying quietened down, but still the sobbing persisted and I couldn’t concentrate on his words. I murkily remember hearing Dia’s name, his date and place of birth, a list of his achievements, and that he’d been eighty-five. I remember hearing, “Li Tingfang always regarded himself as a lucky man by marrying his beloved Fang Reiqing. He was most proud of his seven sons. All are present today. As we see, he was loved, admired and respected by his family, his friends, fellow villagers and colleagues. He worked hard all his life. He provided his family with love, comfort and food ...” At this moment Cunfar cried out, “Dia!” and a chorus of crying followed. The ceremony master asked for calm and continued. “Li Tingfang was a good man, who lived a proud and dignified life. Today we farewell him on a safe journey to a magical world, to live a better life for ever after.” Then he called us all forward and we circled around Dia in a final farewell. As the Bandit supported me by the coffin, I tried so hard to get a good look at my dia through my tear-fogged vision, but I couldn’t see clearly. I wiped away my tears with a handkerchief, and took one last look at my father, a vision that would forever now live in my treasured memories.
We’d purchased a double slot at a scenic cemetery not far from our village for Dia’s ashes: one slot for Dia and another for Niang’s when her time came. The slots were side by side in the ground. I thought of Na-na, who hadn’t wanted to be buried next to my grandfather because his first wife was buried next to him. It was always our parents’ wish to have their ashes buried side by side, to spend their next lives together.
The cemetery was in a small valley surrounded by mountains, with a little manmade lake and some lovely pagodas, and there we had another ceremony. Since Dia’s death, each family member, young and old, had made some little nuggets of shiny gold and silver paper. There were sacks of them, and lots of yellow rice paper with the money symbol stamped on them, all prepared over the three-day waiting period.
Dia’s ash-box was placed in the cement slot, and my eldest brother carefully arranged seven pieces of willow branch around it. They had to be from the same branch, as straight as we could find, and evenly cut. They represented Dia’s seven sons. Miniature jewelry, food and money were also buried in the slot. It was sad to see the waiting slot next to Dia’s. I thought of Niang, still in her hospital bed, struggling for her own life. It was a terrifying, harrowing feeling.
Once the marble top was sealed, we knelt one by one in front of Dia’s resting place and kowtowed three times. We burned the gold and silver nuggets, the paper money, the incense, wine and firecrackers. On our way out we stopped at a temple with a gold god of death sitting cross-legged in the middle, and there we burned the rest of what we’d brought, praying aloud for the god to look after our dia. How I prayed and prayed that he would.
It is a week after the funeral. Jing Tring and I pick Niang up from the hospital. On the way, we stop to buy her a wheelchair. Two and a half weeks after her stroke, and only ten days after Dia died, Niang is coming home.
Niang has recovered some sensation in her right leg, but not her right arm. The doctors cannot tell us whether she will ever walk again. Niang, however, is in better spirits today. Jing Tring and I take her back to her apartment, and as soon as she comes into the living room she notices Dia’s picture still sitting there on the table. “Take me there!” she points frantically. So we wheel her close and she looks at him for a long time. Her eyes are moist. “He was a good man,” she says simply.
I spend as much time with her as I can over these next few days. I massage her every day, p
raying she will regain her mobility. I watch her determined face when she tries to move her paralyzed arm, and feel her frustration when she can’t. How fragile she’s become! Even speaking seems to drain her energy, and often she will close her eyes and rest.
Our much-anticipated Chinese New Year hasn’t turned out as we’d hoped. There are no fireworks, no brightly colored clothes, no happy visits to friends and relatives. Instead it is a sobering, reflective time. We gather around Niang on New Year’s Eve and kowtow and wish her a speedy recovery. We kowtow to Dia too, but there is an empty feeling without him that night. The delicious food doesn’t quite taste the same. There is no laughter. Our niang eats her food in her room as usual, because she is more comfortable there, but when she hears us discussing whether we should drink alcohol that night, she says very definitely, “Drink! Your dia would want you to be merry tonight!” Dear Niang, even after all she’s been through, she still thinks only of others.
That night I realize just how much our dia had meant to us over the years, how much of his character we have all taken on. I feel immensely fortunate to have had a father who instilled in us good morals and principles. He was always a tall person, nothing to do with his height, but with the dignified human being that he was. “Pride is the most precious thing in our lives,” he’d said when I was five. “Never lose your pride and dignity, no matter how hard life is.” In my mind I can still hear his stern voice and see his serious expression the day I’d stolen my friend Sien Yu’s toy car.
I truly believe that the ultimate measure of one’s success in life is not what position you have occupied or how much money you have, but what kind of person you have become, what difference you have made to the people around you. My great fear is that at the end of my life, I won’t measure up to my dia’s extraordinary success.
Each day that passes is a day closer to going back to my own family in Australia. How I long to be with Mary and the children, but how can I leave Niang? Leaving my niang is always painful, but now I wish never to part from her. I wish I could take her back to Australia with me.
“You need not worry about me!” she says when she senses my reluctance to leave. “You go now. Take good care of your own family. I’ll be fine with your brothers and sisters-in-law.” And it is true. I do take great comfort in knowing that Cunsang and my other brothers will take care of her, and that I will return as soon and as often as I can.
After three weeks, the time finally comes for us to say goodbye. I hug Niang with all my heart. Suddenly she flings her good arm around my shoulders with surprising strength and hugs me tight, just like she’d done after she’d made me return the toy car to Sien Yu. At this moment now, I feel her enduring love once more, that same love that had given me strength and confidence as I was leaving home at the age of eleven to go into the unknown, that same love that had given me hope and courage at the Chinese consulate in Houston when my life was hanging by the thinnest of threads. Her love would always be the reason for overcoming my toughest challenges and impossible odds. I would never forget it, and it would sustain me to the end.
Soon after I get home I relive my story in another form. Jane Scott arranges a private screening of the film Mao’s Last Dancer, for me and my family in Melbourne.
I am tense and nervous when I enter the cinema. I have stomach cramp before I sit down.
Mary’s mother, Coralie, comes with us. Our children are the most excited of all. Jan Sardi and Jane Scott are also there with the film publicist and, except for Jane, everyone is seeing the film for the first time.
I close my eyes and try to calm myself down before the screen lights up.
It is strange, that first time my name is called out in the film. Watching someone being me is very surreal. But my unease is quickly dispelled by the unfolding story, as I am taken back in time to those experiences I’d endured as a child, experiences that stretch far, far beyond the film footage itself. And then, seeing my beloved niang and dia in the film, after I’d only just said farewell to Dia and left my niang back in China! It is so difficult. I wish my dia hadn’t gone. I wish with all my heart they were sitting beside me in this cinema, proud and happy once more.
I remember those paper wishes I’d sent up to the gods when I was just a small boy in the fields of Qingdao. I remember daydreaming about all the beautiful things in life I would never have. I remember begging the gods above for food for my family, for a way out of the deep dark well. My imagination then, as a small boy, had traveled far beyond that world, into my own special land. Now my dia has traveled far beyond our world, into his own special land. It is 2009. Perhaps the story of my dia and my niang won’t end here, but will continue to keep hearts warm and hopes alive for many more years to come.
THE LI FAMILY TREE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To embark on writing my autobiography was an enormous challenge. At times I wondered if I was insane ever to agree to write it in the first place. Then again, I had the privilege of working with two of the most sensitive, caring and creative editors at Penguin Australia. They skilfully pulled the story out of me and guided me through it in a most fascinating and rewarding process. My publisher, Julie Watts, and my editor, Suzanne Wilson—they are not only two of the best editors one could ever dream of working with; they are also two people with high principles and integrity. Without the sound advice of these two special women and the highly professional team at Penguin, Mao’s Last Dancer would never have happened. Also to Cathy Larsen, the designer of my book, for her creativity and wonderful design work.
A special thanks to my dear friend Charles Foster, to whom I owe my life and more. He has made an important contribution to this book. The Bandit, Teacher Xiao, Fengtian and others in China have also helped. And to my beloved parents and all of my brothers back in China who allowed me to tell their stories. They helped me with their recollections of our hard, hard childhood. They endured my endless bombardments—phone call after phone call, letter after letter. To ask them to reflect on those years was like asking them to relive them. They provided me with enormous emotional support in the writing of this book.
And thank you to all my other friends and relatives who helped me with my book and who so enthusiastically supported me.
Li Cunxin
DISCUSSION GUIDE
1. How are fate and destiny shown as common themes throughout the book?
2. Do you think Li did so horribly in his first year at the Beijing Dance Academy because he lacked talent or because he was homesick?
3. When the Bandit wanted to make Li his Blood Brother (page 182), Li was hesitant at first because he didn’t think he could live up to the Bandit’s expectations of him as his brother. Do you think it was their shared emotional need to feel like part of a family at the Academy that made him finally agree? Why or why not?
4. The hardships of commune life seem exhausting and relentless, but Academy life was not much easier. Which would you choose and why?
5. Some of Li’s teachers at the Academy were very encouraging and motivational to the students and some were not. Discuss some of the varied teaching styles and why you think they differed so much. Do you think this had to do with the Cultural Revolution or different personalities?
6. Li is a very emotional boy, often breaking into tears when he is sad or unsure of things. How does this differ from Western preconceived notions about people, especially men, in communist China?
7. Discuss Li’s first trip to Houston and his defense of, and eventual confusion about, Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
8. Do you think personal or artistic freedom was Li’s main objective to return to America?
9. Was Li’s harrowing experience at the consulate in Houston, prior to his defection, a necessary move by the Chinese government, especially its threatening to harm his family? Even with China’s updated “open-door policy,” do you consider this a scare tactic, or required for the country’s communist ideals?
10. When Li’s marriage to Elizabet
h ends in divorce, Li blames himself, saying he “. . . didn’t understand love in Western culture ...” (page 346). Do you agree? Discuss how Li’s guilt plays a role throughout the book.
11. Discuss Li’s conflict with his freedom and the price he paid for it.
12. Do you think Li would have been as disciplined and dedicated to ballet if not for the intense work ethic instilled in him in China?
13. “Taste the mango” was a phrase that Li followed from his days at the Academy, when Teacher Xiao mentored him to excel. Discuss some of the important things in Li’s life and career that would not have been possible had he not made that phrase one to live by.
14. Li’s fourth brother, Cunmao, has a very different sense of duty to his family from Li (page 429). How so? Why do you think these brothers handled their family situations so differently? Did Li’s leaving for the Academy have everything to do with it, or was it something else entirely?
15. Li’s niang and dia instilled pride, courage, dignity, and love in him. How do you think his life would have been different had he not done everything for his family? Discuss how this mentality in China is different from Western culture. Do you think this is still the way of thinking in China, which is more heavily Western-influenced now?
PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the photographic material included in this book. The publishers would appreciate hearing from any copyright holders not here acknowledged.
Front jacket and spine: Li Cunxin as a boy, and the New Village, Li Commune. Photographs courtesy Li Cunxin.