Li Cunxin - Mao's Last Dancer

Then I heard the sound of rapid footsteps. "I go first!" Then, "All right! All right! Hurry up!" Then I heard my second brother Cunyuan shouting into the phone. "Cunxin!"

"Erga…" My throat choked with tears.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Never better!" I managed to reply.

"Dia and Niang are coming to the phone! Your brothers are all here, except our big brother. He is still in Tibet…"

Before Cunyuan could finish, suddenly my third brother Cunmao's voice interrupted.

"Ni hao, Cunxin!"

"I'm so happy to be able to hear your voice. How are my fourth uncle and aunt?" I asked.

"They're good, but they're getting old," he replied.

"Please tell them that I love them and miss them," I said.

"I will." Cunmao handed the phone to my fourth brother, who then passed it on to my fifth brother and finally to my youngest brother.

"Jing Tring!"

"Where are you?" he asked.

Before I could answer him, I heard my fifth brother saying in the background. "What a stupid question! Where do you think he is? In America."

"I'm in Houston, in my house," I replied.

"What time is it there?" he asked.

"Seven-thirty in the evening," I replied.

"Oh, we are on different times!" he said unbelievingly.

I heard more of my brothers' laughter in the background. "Sixth brother, we all miss you so much! We are so happy you are alive!" he said.

"Jing Tring, I miss you all too…"

I was about to go on, but then another voice spoke urgently into the phone. "Jing Hao!"

I was overjoyed. I couldn't speak.

It was my niang. At last.

"Jing Hao, Jing Hao?" she kept asking, over and over again.

"Niang…"

"Is it really you, my sixth son…?" Her voice choked and she started to sob. "Ohh, my son!" she sighed. "I never thought this day would come before I leave this world. How happy I am. Gods have mercy. I can die peacefully now," she murmured.

"Niang, I have the central government's permission for you and Dia to come to America! We will see each other soon!"

"Jing Hao, please don't talk of such false hope…"

"But Niang, it is true! I have the permission letter in my hand! Now! You can start to apply for your passports!"

"Ohh… Ohh… Jing Hao said we can go to America to see him!" she said to the rest of the family, and I heard a roar of cheers in the background. Then she added, "Jing Hao, your dia wants to talk to you."

"Niang… before you go, I just want to tell you… I love you," I said.

This was the first time that I'd ever told her that. How many times I'd wished I'd said it to her before I'd left China.

There was a silence.

Then all I heard was the sound of my niang's quiet sobbing.

It took several months for my parents to obtain their passports, but once they did, the US visa was quickly granted. Charles Foster helped with all their applications, the US State Department was already well informed about my situation, and knowing the vice-president of the United States was a very helpful way of speeding things up.

While all this was going on I had to prepare for the Japan International Ballet Competition in Osaka. After my success in Jackson, Ben encouraged me to enter with one of the rising stars of the Houston Ballet, Martha Butler, who was only seventeen. At first I had reservations about Ben's selection: I thought Martha was too young and inexperienced to perform in such a high- pressure competition. But once again I was proven wrong…

Apart from my brief stop at the Tokyo airport to change planes on my first trip to America, this was my first experience of Japan. Once again I was confronted with a prosperous and industrial country but because of limited studio space in the host city of Osaka we had to take a fast train every day, for over an hour, to Kyoto for rehearsals.

Kyoto was one of the most beautiful and peaceful cities I'd ever seen: Buddhist temples, beautifully maintained gardens, the meditative rock gardens with their musical sounds, dripping water, bamboo and tranquillity. And the food-so delicately beautiful, like small artworks. The sushi was almost too pretty to eat. Some of the Japanese traditions reminded me of the Chinese customs that I had grown up with. I remembered too my dia talking about the Japanese occupation of Qingdao during the Second World War. Here in Kyoto I was so close to China, to my family and my friends only three hours away, yet still I felt so distant. Nothing would change, I thought. I would never be allowed to return to my homeland again.

Martha and I were placed twenty-sixth after the first round of the competition. I thought this was amazing, considering Martha had never performed in this kind of professional environment before: she hadn't even performed a full classical pas de deux in her entire life. She was so nervous that she kept her mouth open the whole time she was on stage. One of the judges said she looked like a goldfish.

In the second round we performed a contemporary work Ben had choreographed for us. I had to carry Martha in my arms, with her body sadly curled up. We were searching and struggling for a way out, but were pulled back by a powerful, invisible force everywhere we went. After all our hopes of survival had been crushed, we finally ended our performance with a slow, death- like movement, both of us entwined together. All through our performance I pretended that I was carrying the last beloved survivor of my family after our village back home in China had been destroyed. No home to go back to and no loved ones left. All we had was each other. Sometimes my thoughts were too painful for me and I prayed that my family back home would never suffer the same fate as the fate we danced that night.

Martha's standard improved on a daily basis for those two weeks at the competition. She was a fast learner, with great mental strength and beautiful physicality. I knew she would one day become a wonderful artist and to our astonishment we were awarded a silver medal by the international jury. Ben again received the medal for best choreography. It was a great feeling, to receive such an honour. We had danced against competitors from the Bolshoi, the Kirov and the Paris Opèra Ballet: we learned so much from them and Martha and I had formed a close partnership.

After our return from Japan, Martha and I went straight into rehearsals for Nutcracker. I'd been told by Ben that my parents would be arriving in about a month's time, so one evening Preston and Richard came over to help me begin to get my house ready.

"What's all this?" Richard yelled, pointing at a pile of stuff in the middle of my living room: there was some timber, a spare toilet seat, some tiles, bags of cement, and tools…

"They are my treasures. They are very useful," I replied.

"I know they are useful, but are you going to use them before your parents come?"

"I'm not sure," I replied.

Richard rolled his eyes. "Out, out, throw them all out!" he shouted. Richard and Preston went through each item in that pile and chucked out almost all of my "treasures". Then they organised a working party of dancers, stage-hands, an electrician, carpenter and plumber, even some board members. They painted, cleaned, fixed… and by the end of the week my house was transformed. There wasn't even any sawdust left on the windowsills. But they hadn't finished yet-Richard lent me two bamboo plants in huge flowerpots. Ben bought a pair of antique Mandarin chairs and Preston gave me an antique Mandarin skirt which he'd had framed by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. By the end of it all my house looked like a million dollars.

Ben and Preston had taken over the arrangement of my parents' travel too. They wanted me to leave everything to them: just concentrate on Nutcracker. So I did.

A couple of days before my parents' arrival, I went crazy with shopping. I bought so many different kinds of food, all the rare and precious things we could never dream of having in China when I grew up: eggs, tree fungus, dried mushrooms, seafood, pork, chicken, rice, even Tsingtao beer and the best rice wine called Maotai which, in China, was only available to high government officials. I bought fruit-apples, pears, oranges, bananas, grapes and a whole watermelon and stacked them into two big plates on the dining table. My small fridge was overflowing. I also bought a futon bed for my parents to sleep on because I was concerned they wouldn't be able to sleep on a bouncy Western mattress after so many years of sleeping on a hard earth bed. I bought them thick cotton shirts and sweaters too. I was beside myself with excitement. I wanted to buy them everything the Western world had to offer. I knew they would be blown away by what they were about to see.