Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [24]
By the time they’d finished testing everyone, only one boy and one girl were selected to go to the next level. I was that boy. I was excited but frightened. The officials mentioned ballet; but I had no idea what ballet was all about.
The audition was a hot discussion topic in our village over the next few days. At first my parents didn’t pay much attention. There was no way in the world anyone in our family could have any artistic talent. My brothers and classmates teased me. “Show us a ballet step! Show us a ballet step!” They knew I had no idea. For me, the most exciting aspect of it all was not the ballet but the possibility of going to Beijing to be near our beloved Chairman Mao: the possibility, however unlikely, of getting out of my deep well.
I went to the commune office a few weeks later to go through the next level of audition. This was much harder. The girl with the big eyes from my class didn’t pass this round: she screamed when they bent her body backward and was disqualified. Then it was my turn. One teacher lifted one of my legs upward, two others held my other leg steady and straight. They kept asking me if it hurt. It was excruciating! But I was determined to be chosen, so I kept smiling and replied, “No, it doesn’t hurt,” as they lifted my leg higher and higher. Be strong! Be strong! You can bear the pain! I kept telling myself. I did bear the pain, but the hardest thing was pretending to walk normally afterward. They had torn both my hamstrings.
After the audition at commune level we went through to county, city, and provincial levels. Each time more children auditioned and more were eliminated. During the physical examination at the county level, the scar on my arm from the burn I received as a baby nearly disqualified me. One of the teachers from Beijing noticed it and referred me to a medical examiner.
“How did you get this scar?” the doctor asked.
I didn’t want anyone to think of my niang as irresponsible, so I told him I’d cut my arm on a piece of broken glass and that the cut had got infected.
“Do you have any funny sensations, like itching on rainy days?”
“No, never.” I looked straight into the doctor’s eyes. I prayed he wouldn’t eliminate me. I prayed for my niang’s sake. She would feel so guilty if I was disqualified because of this scar. After the examination, I overheard the doctor talking to Chen Lueng, the teacher from the Beijing Dance Academy. He was the gentleman from Beijing who Teacher Song had tapped on the shoulder that day at my school. “That boy’s scar will definitely get larger as he grows,” the doctor told him. My heart sank. My only chance of getting out of my deep well was gone. I made up my mind never to tell my niang it was the scar that did it.
When the physical tests were completed, we were tested for other abilities: our response to music, our understanding of Chairman Mao’s ideology. They also checked our family background three generations back. Chairman Mao’s communist theory about the so-called “three classes of people” was crucial when selecting us. All three classes had to be represented—peasants, workers, and soldiers. Children whose families were associated with wealth and education anywhere in the past three generations were disqualified. Madame Mao wanted to train us to be faithful young guards. Our backgrounds had to be pure and reliable.
The final hurdle in the selection process was for the officials to meet my family. They wanted to meet everyone to check out their physical proportions. I was nervous they might have a problem with my niang because she was short, but her larger-than-life personality, and my dia’s good figure, saved the day.
Days, weeks passed. No news from Beijing. The hope in my heart dimmed