Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [63]
As blood brothers,
the departure of one
will never wane the love in our hearts.
Not fortune or money,
but only the pursuit of innocence and honor,
will strengthen the love in our hearts.
I thought of the past seven years and our hard and lonely life at the academy. Without the Bandit and his friendship, my life there would have been unbearable.
The three-hour flight to Tokyo went very quickly. We were told we had to get off the plane for a couple of hours at Tokyo Airport. I couldn’t believe we had traveled so far in only three short hours. Zhang and I were afraid to leave the gate area in case we missed our flight. Before it was time to board, I happened to glance up at a coffee stand’s price list and noticed that a cup of coffee cost US$3.00. I did a quick calculation. That was nearly half a month’s salary for my dia!
This time we boarded a Northwest Airlines plane and it was even bigger than the first, a jumbo jet. It was awesome. There were endless rows of seats and we were, amazingly, ushered to an upper deck. Blankets and pillows were neatly placed on the seats and there were more gift bags and more flight safety cards for us to keep as souvenirs.
It was impossible for me to believe that I was actually sitting on this gigantic airplane on my way to the West. I looked down at the thick beautiful clouds and thought I was in the ninth heaven.
EIGHTEEN
“Filthy Capitalist America”
As we were about to land in Chicago, I suddenly remembered those pages from the book about the steel tycoon in Chicago, which I’d found on the street in our commune years ago, the ones that had stirred up such curiosity in my heart and mind. I longed to see if what I had learned from that book about this Paper Tiger country was true.
Zhang and I got off the plane and collected our luggage. Then we just stood there in our oversized suits. How would we recognize whoever was supposed to meet us? People around us collected their luggage, came and went, while we became more and more nervous. What if nobody showed up?
Suddenly I saw a group of people standing behind some glass windows on a second floor, and there was Ben, holding a card with my name written on it in Chinese. Zhang and I were overjoyed. Ben came to meet us just outside Immigration.
“Ni hao,” he said, one of the few Chinese phrases he knew. “Hello,” I replied, one of the few English words I knew.
I tried to use the words from my English dictionary to show Ben how ecstatic I was, but he was just happy to share our excitement with nods and smiles. When we couldn’t understand his words we just smiled more and said “yes.” My dictionary became my best friend from then on. Although my English was not good, Zhang’s was even worse. I ended up translating for him as well.
We boarded a flight to Houston and with Ben beside us we began to relax. As we flew over the American landscape I noticed how green it was, and how it was neatly divided into squares by straight roads and streets. We saw many little square patches of blue. Ben said they were swimming pools—he mimed swimming motions with his arms. He made us laugh but I could hardly believe there could be so many swimming pools in just one area. The contrast with the bareness of China was so amazing that I started to wonder once again about America’s lack of prosperity, according to the stories we’d been told.
At Houston Airport we were met by Clare Duncan, head of the Houston Ballet Academy, and two Houston Ballet board members. They handed Zhang and me a small bunch of native Texas flowers and a cowboy hat each. We didn’t know whether to accept these gifts or not—we were suspicious. We simply didn’t trust these Americans. I was the assigned leader of the two of us, because my political standing was higher than Zhang’s, so eventually I told Zhang to accept the gifts.
The Americans’ happy smiles also made us nervous. “This is not what it’s supposed to be like. Something is wrong here. They are our enemies. Behind their smiling faces will be a hidden agenda. I’ll find out what it is soon,