Li Cunxin - Mao's Last Dancer

On the day of her marriage, a young girl sits alone in her village home. It is autumn, a beautiful October morning. The country air is cool but fresh.

The young girl hears happy music approaching her house. She is only eighteen, and she is nervous, frightened. She knows that many marriage introducers simply take money and tell lies. Some women from her village marry men who don't have all their functional body parts. Those women have to spend the rest of their lives looking after their husbands. Wife beating is common. Divorce is out of the question. Divorced women are humiliated, despised, suffering worse than an animals fate. She knows some women hang themselves instead and she prays this is not going to be her fate.

She prays to a kind and merciful god that her future husband will have two legs, two arms, two eyes and two ears. She prays that his body parts are normal and functional. She worries that he will not be kind-hearted and will not like her. But most of all she worries about her unbound feet. Bound feet are still in fashion. Little girls as young as five or six have to tuck four toes under the big toe and squeeze them hard to stop the growth. It is extremely painful, and the girls have to change the cloth bandages and wash their feet daily to avoid infection. The tighter the feet are bound the smaller the feet will become. Eventually all five toes grow together. Infections often occur and the girls are so crippled they have to walk mostly on their heels. But when this bride was about eight and her mother tried to bind her feet, two or three years later than was usual, she defied her and ran away. Her mother eventually gave up, but secretly she was pleased. A daughter with unbound feet could help do the hard chores. But would her future husband and in-laws think the same?

The groom is a young man of twenty-one. He leaves home before sunrise. Sixteen strong men are hired to carry two sedan chairs for the three-hour journey from his village to the brides. There are trumpets, cymbals, gongs and bamboo flutes, and the brides sedan chair is covered with red and pink silk banners and flowers. The groom's is a simple blue sedan chair, which will leave from the east side of the village and re-enter from the west.

As soon as the groom's entourage leaves home, the women of his family start to prepare the house and the wedding feast to follow. They glue coloured paper cuttings all over the walls, doors and windows-different shapes, with lucky words on them, to symbolise happiness and good fortune. They place a square table in the centre of their courtyard and cover it with a red cloth. In the centre they place nine huge bread rolls, called mantos, in the shape of a pagoda. There is also a metal bowl, with candlesticks and incense holders on either side. On the ground are two round bamboo mats.

The bride is in such a panicked state by the time her groom arrives. He wears a dark blue cotton mandarin gown and a big tall hat, with silk flowers pinned over his heart. He kneels, and kowtows three times, bowing his head all the way down to the floor, always facing north, always in the direction of the god of happiness.

Tea, sweets, roasted sunflower seeds and peanuts are then served. A lunch feast follows, but the cost of the meal will break the brides family finances. Many relatives and friends chip in to help, but the favours and debts will have to be repaid in years to come. The groom's entourage has to be satisfied, however. The meal will affect her new family's attitude towards her. It will determine whether she will have a smooth or bumpy ride on the way to her in-laws' house. The young bride remembers that a friend of her mother's was married a year before-at her wedding, the musicians played funeral music and the carriers walked her around in circles, making her dizzy and sick. Even worse, the carriers lowered her sedan chair to the ground, which is very unlucky: that bride would end up with a life of hard work instead of a life of luxury. All this was caused by the in-laws dissatisfaction with the food that was served at her house.

While the groom's people drink their wine and eat their food, the bride sits on her bed, her kang, away from everyone, with her silk veil concealing her face. This is called the "quiet sitting". She wears a long dark maroon gown, with pink silk flowers sewn onto it. Her hairpiece is full of beautiful coloured hairpins and flowers, and is very heavy. She has no jewellery because her family is too poor.

Soon, her second brother secretly whispers to her through a crack in the door, "My brother-in-law has all his moving parts!" This is news from heaven. The young bride sobs with joy.

Towards the end of the meal, the bride's mother brings her a bowl of rice, a double-sided mirror and ten pairs of red chopsticks. The bride has to eat three mouthfuls of rice, and the last mouthful she spits into her mother's pocket. She has to keep some rice in her mouth to last all the way to her in-laws' house before she can swallow, symbolising that she will never starve along the entire journey of her life. Then she puts eight pairs of chopsticks into her mother's pocket. The remaining two pairs she keeps, the ones with chestnuts and dates tied on them, symbolising the early arrival of sons.

The bride cannot stop shaking. Tears stream from her eyes as she spits the rice into the pocket. Soon she will become someone's wife and another family's daughter-in-law. She grabs her mother's hand, as if clutching onto a life-saving straw.

"You silly girl," her mother says to her. "Don't cry! You're going to a family with enough food. Do you want to be poor for the rest of your life?" She takes out her handkerchief and gently wipes her daughter's tears and hugs her long and tight for the last time. "My girl, I'll always miss you and love you. Take good care of your husband and hell take good care of you. Obey him and make him happy. Bear many of his sons. Look after your mother-in- law like you've looked after me. Be kind to her until she dies." She lowers the veil over her daughter's face, and leaves, feeling nothing but pain.

The bride sobs quietly for the first half of her journey to the groom's village. She has never left home before. She is terrified. At the halfway point one of the carriers shouts, "Halfway point, flip your mirror!" So she takes the mirror she's been given and flips it over: now she should forget her past and look forward to the future. Then she is met by a group of four carriers from the groom's village, to make the changeover. She doesn't touch the ground. The musicians continue their happy wedding tunes and the carriers walk carefully along the uneven dirt road.

When she arrives at the groom's gate, the metal bowl on the table is already flaming with fire. The candle and incense are lit. The groom gets out of his sedan chair and waits for his bride, her face still concealed by her thick silk veil as she is assisted out of her sedan chair by two of his sisters. They walk together towards the table while a local wise man reads loudly an ancient poem. Few people understand it because few of them have ever gone to school, but the bride and groom kneel on the two round bamboo mats while they listen, and afterwards kowtow. The groom then takes his new bride's hands and helps her up. She cannot see the flames from the bowl on the table, but she can feel the intense heat. This fire is the fire of passion, the fire of love.

Before the bride takes her first step with her husband, the groom's fourth brother gently brushes the soles of the bride's shoes with a time-worn iron filled with burning coals, to give her warmth from the end of her body right up to her heart. Led by her husband, she walks slowly towards the door, where there is a horse's saddle. They have to cross over it together. The bride cannot see anything through her veil and she is so afraid that she will trip, but the saddle symbolises hard times in life and they have to overcome it together. She hesitates. Her husband squeezes her hand. "Stop. Now lift your foot," he whispers. She pulls up her gown to her knees and steps over safely. But as soon as her second foot touches the ground, her heart sinks. She has shown her unbound feet to the entire world! Her in-laws will be disgusted. She wants to scream, to go home to her mother. She will be laughed at, humiliated for the rest of her life. Her husband's family will think she's brought them disgrace and shame.