Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [0]
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
A Wedding, Quingdao, 1946
PART ONE
My Childhood
1. Home
2. My Niang and Dia
3. A Commune Childhood
4. Seven Brothers
5. Na-na
6. Chairman Mao’s Classroom
7. Leaving Home
PART TWO
Beijing
8. Feather in a Whirlwind
9. The Caged Bird
10. That First Lonely Year
11. The Pen
12. My Own Voice
13. Teacher Xiao’s Words
14. Turning Points
15. The Mango
16. Change
17. On the Way to the West
18. “Filthy Capitalist America”
19. Good-bye, China
PART THREE
The West
20. Return to the Land of Freedom
21. Elizabeth
22. Defection
Afterword
A Short Note on the Long History of China
Picture Section
Li Cunxin and China: A Historic Time Line
Writing and Pronouncing Chinese Words in English
Acknowledgments
Photograph Credits
Footnote
Imprint
To the two special women
in my life—my mother and my wife
A WEDDING
QINGDAO,1946
On the day of her marriage, eighteen-year-old Reiqing sits alone in her village home. The wedding has been arranged by marriage introducers, as is the custom. Today the bride will meet her groom for the first time. She worries that her future husband will not be kindhearted 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 bandage them to stop the growth. The tighter the feet are bound the smaller they will become. The girls are so crippled they have to walk mostly on their heels. When Reiqing’s mother tried to bind her feet, she defied her and ran away. But what will her future husband and in-laws think about her unbound feet?
The groom is twenty-one. He leaves home before sunrise. Strong men are hired to carry two sedan chairs from his village to the bride’s. There are trumpets, cymbals, gongs, and bamboo flutes.
The bride is almost in a panic by the time her groom arrives. He wears a dark blue cotton gown and a tall hat. Silk flowers are pinned over his heart. He kneels, and kowtows three times, bowing his head all the way down to the floor, facing north, in the direction of the god of happiness.
A feast follows. The cost of the meal will break the bride’s family’s finances. Many relatives and friends chip in, but the favors and debts will have to be repaid in years to come.
While the groom’s people feast, the bride sits on her bed, her kang, away from everyone. A silk veil conceals her face. This is called the “quiet sitting.” She wears a long dark maroon gown, with pink silk flowers sewn onto it. She has no jewelry; her family is too poor.
Toward 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 spit the last mouthful 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, symbolizing 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. These symbolize the early arrival of sons.
The bride cannot stop shaking. Tears stream from her eyes. Soon she will become a wife and another family’s daughter-in-law.
“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 gently wipes her daughter’s tears and hugs her. “I’ll always miss you and love you. Take good care of your husband and he’ll take good care of you. Obey him and make him happy. Bear many sons. Be kind to your mother-in-law.” 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. At the halfway point one of the carriers shouts, “Flip your mirror!” She takes the mirror she’s been given and flips it over: now she should forget her past and look forward