Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [23]
More spark for our hungry imaginations came from the touring movies. Once or, if we were lucky, twice a year, a small group of people from the Qingdao Propaganda Bureau would come to our village to entertain us with a movie about things like Mao’s Red Army triumphing against the Japanese army, Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang regime, the struggle against the class enemies, or tales of Mao’s revolutionary heroes. There were also popular opera and ballet movies.
As soon as a date was set and the names of the movies were known, we would discuss nothing but the coming event. I could hardly contain my excitement! I was such an emotional mess at the movies. Everything would make me sob. My devotion to Mao and his ideology was greatly intensified. I wanted to be a revolutionary hero! But I loved the Beijing Opera singers as well, their singing, dancing, fighting, and acrobatic skills. They were as close to a kung fu movie as we would ever get. The kung fu masters were the heroes of my imagination, but kung fu books and movies were banned in China then. Only the folktales told by some of the elderly villagers kept that passion alive.
I liked the fighting in the Chinese ballet movies, but I really thought the people looked funny standing on their toes, and they didn’t speak any words. Opera always won over ballet when we chose a play to act out.
Secretly I held a dream—one day I would be able to sing and do the kung fu steps of the opera singers. But I knew deep in my heart that this dream would never come true. My future lay in the commune fields as a laborer.
SEVEN
Leaving Home
I was nearly eleven years old when the headmaster came into our freezing classroom with four dignified people.
I immediately thought of the incident about the writing on the wall. What was wrong this time? But to my surprise, the headmaster introduced them as Madame Mao’s representatives from Beijing. They were here to select talented students to study ballet in Beijing and to serve in Chairman Mao’s revolution. He asked us all to stand up and sing “We Love Chairman Mao”:
The east is red, the sun is rising.
China’s Mao Zedong is born.
Here to give us happiness.
Hu lu hai ya.
Our lucky star who saved us all.
As we sang, the four representatives came down the aisles and selected a girl with big eyes, straight teeth, and a pretty face. They passed me without taking any notice, but just as they were walking out of our classroom, Teacher Song hesitated. She tapped the last gentleman from Beijing on the shoulder and pointed at me. “What about that one?” she said.
The gentleman from Beijing glanced in my direction. “He can come too,” he said in perfect Mandarin dialect.
The girl with the big eyes and I followed Madame Mao’s people into the headmaster’s office.
There were eight other children already in the room when we arrived. We all wore our thick, quilted homemade coats and pants and looked like little round snowballs.
“Take all your clothes off except your underwear! Step forward one by one! We are going to measure your body and test your flexibility,” a man wearing glasses ordered.
Everyone stood there nervously. Nobody moved.
“Didn’t you hear? Take your clothes off!” our headmaster barked.
“I’m sorry,” one of the boys answered timidly. “I don’t have any underwear.”
To my surprise, I was the only child who had underwear, hand-me-downs from several older brothers, patchworked with mending by my niang. All ten of us during that audition had to share my one set of underwear.
The officials measured our proportions: upper body and legs, neck length, even our toes. I watched the students being tested before me; they cried out and winced. One of the officials came over to me and bent both my legs outward. Another official held my shoulders