Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [30]
“Your parents helped Chairman Mao win his first war. You can help him win his future battles. You will need to work hard every day of the year. Your daily schedules will be posted on the noticeboard on your floor.” Another pause. “Any who are not up to this, raise your hand now!” His head did not move but those scary little eyes moved from left to right, and right to left. Nobody raised a hand. He smiled. “Good! Now you can go to your supper.”
Director Wang’s speech left me confused. I vaguely understood that we had been assigned an important job, that I was to devote my life to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary causes. This was nothing new. But I couldn’t grasp the rest of what he said about art and politics.
We were led to the canteen, a large room with many tables and chairs. Over a hundred students from the opera and music academies were already sitting at their tables. It was unbelievably noisy.
We were told we were to have better food than other academy students, because of the physical demands of our training. I saw two big bowls of steaming food on each table, and on both sides of the canteen several tables for bread rolls, rice, and soup. We sat down, eight to a table, and divided the food evenly between us. On my table, only one girl and one boy looked familiar: I’d seen them on our train trip to Beijing. The others were all from Shanghai and spoke Shanghai dialect. The boy next to me, as small as I was, turned and said something, and when I tried to tell him, in my Qingdao accent, that I couldn’t understand, he just smiled.
The food looked and smelled delicious, but I had no appetite. My stomach felt like a twisted knot. I looked out of the windows. It was already dark outside, and the sadness in my heart began to creep up and overwhelm me. I forced myself to eat a few mouthfuls of rice, then quickly cleaned up and quietly left the canteen.
It was cold outside. The grounds were deserted. I looked up at the distant moon and a few faraway stars in the night sky. I was afraid to go back to the dormitory alone. I looked at the steamed-up windows of the canteen and knew that I couldn’t go back there either: they would surely laugh at me. I thought of my parents and all my brothers back home, and with each step toward our dormitory building, I fought my fear and growing loneliness.
The building was pitch-black. I searched for the light switches but couldn’t find any. Slowly I felt my way up the stairs and got to my room, dived onto my bed, and grabbed the precious quilt my niang had made for me. I plunged my face into it and wept.
I remember that first night alone so well. My niang’s quilt was like a life-saving rope in the middle of an ocean of sadness. I couldn’t stop thinking of my family back home. It would be their evening playtime now: my dia’s simple stories, my niang’s sewing, and my brothers’ game of finding words in the wallpaper. I tried to tell myself to stop thinking like this, but I couldn’t stop this unbearable homesickness. For many nights in those first few months I cried myself to sleep. I was only vaguely aware of my classmates returning from their supper. I pretended to be asleep and buried my head under my niang’s quilt.
The next morning, I was jolted back to reality by the harsh sound of the wake-up bell. The familiar smell of the smoke as my niang cooked breakfast was not there.
There seemed to be loud bells for everything. Strict orders, schedules, and rules had to be rigidly observed. We’d been woken at half past five. We rolled our blankets military-style and brushed our teeth (I had to watch the others to see how they did this). The bell rang again within five minutes to call us outside onto the still dark field.
We soon discovered that every morning would be the same. Each class captain would report that all students were accounted