Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [28]
I’m frightened. I want to go home to my niang. I start to sob. A soldier asks me why I am alone. I tell him I’m lost, and he kindly takes one of my bags and leads me to the exit. I am so grateful to him, and as I step out of the crowded train station I am relieved to see one of our teachers from the Dance Academy.
It is Chen Lueng, the tall teacher who auditioned us. A bus from the academy is waiting too—I’m the last person to climb on.
I hear one of the teachers tell the driver to close the door. I want to be helpful, so I start to pull the door closed, but the driver has pushed the control button and the door closes automatically in front of me. It takes me by total surprise. The old-fashioned buses at home don’t have doors like this. I stumble back and fall. Everyone laughs. I have made a fool of myself within the first few minutes of being in Beijing.
Throughout my childhood in Qingdao, I’d always lived with the harsh reality of not having enough food, seeing my parents struggle, witnessing people dying of starvation. I would have sacrificed my own life to help my family, but would that have made much difference?
Yet somewhere deep in my heart there is a buried seed of hope. That seed has always existed, and its power is strong. It makes me feel that one day everything will be all right.
Beijing is my chance. I was scared to leave my parents, yet I knew this would be my only chance of helping them. I am afraid of what is waiting for me, yet I know I have to take that first step forward. I can’t let my parents down. I can’t let my brothers down. I am carrying their dreams as well as my own. My niang said “never look back.”
I pick myself up off the floor of the bus and walk down the aisle toward my seat.
EIGHT
Feather in a Whirlwind
At first the thrill of being in Beijing near our beloved leader Chairman Mao completely overwhelmed me. Here I was, part of the Beijing Dance Academy, with Madame Mao our honorary artistic director. My family, the people in our village and commune, even the Shandong Province officials would all have enormous expectations of me: from this moment onward, I would have an “iron rice bowl”—a good job and enough food for life.
On the way to our academy on the bus that day, we detoured to Zhongnanhai, where Chairman Mao, Madame Mao, and all the top government officials lived: a huge complex, close to the Forbidden City, with barbed wire and high, faded red-gold walls. Security guards stood beside huge red doors, their hands firmly grasping semi-automatic guns. Guards seemed to be everywhere, spread evenly along the walls. I simply couldn’t believe I was here! Here, where our godlike leader slept, worked, and made all his important political decisions.
I was stunned with the sheer scale of Beijing: enormous buildings, wide smooth streets, nothing like the muddy dirt roads we had in Laoshan County. And the men and women—their Mao-style jackets looked so smart! I could see very few patches on their clothes. And the number of cars, buses, jeeps, bicycles—how could there be so many bicycles in one city! Officers in army uniforms directed the flow of traffic, but nobody seemed to pay much attention to the traffic lights.
As the bus pulled into Tiananmen Square, my heart leaped. I immediately noticed the Gate of Heavenly Peace on our left and the grand building of the People’s Congress on the right. I’d seen them in so many pictures. Tiananmen Square was our great symbol of communism. It was here, at the Gate of Heavenly Peace, that Chairman Mao declared the birth of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, a date that all the children of China had etched into their minds.
We got out of