Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [17]
The Li funeral entourage was impressive. Many distant relatives appeared, some we didn’t even know existed. The procession moved slowly behind the coffin, all the way to the gravesite. I had never heard or seen my dia cry before. We had to kneel in front of Na-na’s coffin and kowtow three times before she was lowered into her grave.
We had to wear something white for a whole year after Na-na’s death. Our parents wore white shirts, but for us children the only things our niang could afford were white strips of cloth sewn onto our shoes. We often went to visit Na-na’s graveyard so she wouldn’t be lonely in her new world. Each time, we brought her lots of symbolic money and food. I loved going back to her grave to wish her a happy life, but it always saddened me too.
Within a month of Na-na’s death my niang suddenly fellill. Despite seeing a few local healers, her sickness persisted and on the second night she had a strange dream: Na-na accused her and my dia of not looking after her. She complained that her house was shabby and the roof leaked. My niang tried to reason with her. “We looked after you to our best ability while you were alive and gave you a lot of money for your new world. What else can we do?”
“Who told you I’m dead?” my na-na snapped.
The next morning my niang told one of her sewing friends about her strange dream. “Maybe she needs help,” her friend whispered in her ear. “Why don’t you do a test to see if I am right?”
After her friend left, my niang took out a pair of chopsticks and an egg and placed the chopsticks pointing north on her kang. She lit two sticks of incense, closed her eyes, and called out: “Niang, mother of Li Tingfang, if it was you who showed your spirit last night, please show your spirit again now.” Then she placed the egg between the chopsticks with the pointed end down. The superstition held that if it was Na-na’s spirit calling for help, the egg should continue to stand up on the pointed end all by itself.
My niang opened her eyes and was stunned. The egg was still standing up!
For a few moments she didn’t know what to do, until the egg fell and started to roll toward her. She grabbed it in her hand, as though it were Na-na’s spirit, and immediately kowtowed three times in the direction of Na-na’s burial place. “Niang! We will come to see you soon and bring you food and money! Please forgive us!” she murmured.
When my second brother arrived home from school that day she asked him to take two of his younger brothers to check on Na-na’s grave straightaway. Three of us raced each other to the burial site and found a large round hole there, dug by an animal. We were not aware of our niang’s dream then, so we simply filled the hole and told Niang what we’d found. As soon as our dia came home from work, she said to him urgently, “Go to our niang’s grave with some food and money, and make sure the hole is properly secured. I will explain later!”
My dia went back to the grave, carrying a shovel, a bottle of water, some incense, and paper money.
Later that night our niang finally told us her dream and her test with the egg. All of us children laughed and thought she was just being superstitious, but our dia was more thoughtful. “One cannot fully believe it and yet one shouldn’t disbelieve it.”
“That’s what Confucius would have said,” I thought. Our niang’s fever receded the very next day.
My parents discussed this incident often. So did our niang’s group of friends, whose superstitious beliefs gave them hope beyond the harsh reality of daily life.
The death of Na-na was the first time in my life that I lost someone I loved dearly. Every time I entered or passed her house, tears would stream down my face. I kept hearing her sweet voice. I dreamed about her often.
SIX
Chairman Mao’s Classroom
The year my na-na died was the year I was supposed to start school. The compulsory age was eight, but there was no