Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [39]
It was a windy autumn day. We were given three hours to climb the wall. Its bulk and beauty stunned me. The size of the stones, its breathtaking height into the misty mountains, its endless snakelike meandering—it all made me gasp. I had seen pictures of the Great Wall before, but actually to stand on it, to look upon this incredible human miracle … I shook my head in disbelief. “Wouldn’t it be nice to see the Great Wall one day?” my second brother, Cunyuan, had once said. Now, here I was, climbing the ancient stone steps and wishing that my family could see it too.
The end of our first year was approaching and the end-of-year exams were coming up. Our possible grades were: excellent, very good, good, below good, above average, average, below average, and … bad. Tension was high among the teachers as well as the students. I wasn’t worried about my academic classes because I knew I wasn’t the worst there, but my dancing classes were another matter.
There were four dance-related exams: ballet, acrobatics, Chinese folk dance, and Beijing Opera Movement. Acrobatics and Chinese folk dance were less of a worry, because the teachers were kinder and those classes were fun. But for my ballet and Beijing Opera Movement classes I was scared to death. We had to perform in front of academy officials, students from other classes, Chiu Ho, and a panel of teachers with pens and pads in hand.
On the day of the Beijing Opera Movement exam, sunlight shone through the studio windows. We walked into the room in a line—and upon seeing the many pairs of eyes, I froze completely. My mouth went dry, my tongue felt swollen. It was as though all those eyes were focused on me alone.
We were placed on the barre first and before the pianist struck the first note, I was already dripping with sweat. I panicked. I couldn’t remember the dance combinations even though we’d been preparing them for four weeks. It wasn’t so bad on the barre, because everyone did the same exercises at the same time and I could follow the others, but once we moved into the center of the floor, we were broken up into three groups.
I was trembling all over. My legs felt weak. I couldn’t remember a single thing. I was in front now and had no one to follow. I peeked at the mirror and I could see that others were following my mistakes. Teacher Gao Dakun looked at us angrily. As the exam went on I performed worse and worse. The agony lasted for over an hour.
I knew that exam had been disastrous. I was so distressed that I missed lunch and ran to my weeping willow trees. It was over two hours later when I went back to our dormitory.
When I entered the room full of eyes again the following morning, I noticed our ballet teacher Chen Lueng was standing by the piano, looking very tense. My heart pumped faster. This exam was to be judged mainly on barre work—we spent over three quarters of our class time on it. I didn’t hear a single note of the music and I could feel my legs cramping. Chen Lueng had screamed at us all year for holding on to the barre too tightly, and here I was, gripping on to it for dear life.
Finally the torture of those end-of-year exams was over. We waited for our grades. I knew in my heart this was not something I should be looking forward to.
I was right. My highest grade was “below good” for math and Chinese. The rest of my grades were “average,” even for ballet, and my worst grade was “below average” for Teacher Gao’s Beijing Opera Movement exam, which was no surprise to me at all.
I wasn’t the worst student in my class, but with my poor results I was definitely near the bottom. We all knew each other’s scores because our teachers read them out, loudly, in front of the entire class. My face flushed with each announcement of my low grades. It summed up my miserable first year. I was convinced that soon Director Wang would call me into his office, tell me I was no good, and ask me to go home and never return.
ELEVEN
The Pen
Our first year was finished. The Chinese New Year holiday was coming