Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [67]
“Shh … !” I looked around nervously. “You not scared people listen to you talk about your big leader this way?”
“I can say anything I like about our president. This is America.”
“If I say bad thing about Chairman Mao,” I whispered, “I will go jail and may be killed.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Is true!” I replied.
Ben choreographed a dance for Zhang and me over the next few weeks using George Gershwin’s music. We had difficulties understanding what Ben wanted us to do in the rehearsals because of our minimal understanding of English. Also, although Zhang and I could easily complete the difficult and challenging turns and jumps, taking an effortless walk across the studio without turning out our feet or pointing our toes was a real challenge. At one point Ben grabbed my arms and shook my entire body. “Relax, relax!” he shouted. Then he rushed over to Zhang and did the same. When I finally got the hang of what Ben wanted, it felt like cheating. It was too easy and casual. It didn’t feel like dancing at all. But I could sense the gradual progression and developments in Gershwin’s music and Ben’s choreography meshing into it.
By the end of our six-week stay I had started to relax. I began to make friends among the students, the dancers in the company, and even some board members. Each weekend we had to report to the Chinese consulate. One of the senior consuls was Zhang Zongshu, whose wife was a translator. They were assigned to look after us.
It turned out that Ben had decided to ask Consul Zhang if I could come back to work with the company again. Consul Zhang and the Chinese consulate sent a favorable report to the Ministry of Culture. I was granted permission to return for a whole year to work with the Houston Ballet, only two months after my scheduled return to China. There were also discussions about the possibility of Zhang Weiqiang’s return.
The thought of being able to come back to America made me happy. I was so grateful to the Chinese government. I felt that they really cared for me. For me, a peasant boy. Communism truly was great.
For our last few days in America, Ben took Zhang and me to Washington DC and New York. We didn’t do much in Washington except pose for photos in front of the White House and the Kennedy Center. In some ways I was disappointed. I had expected to see a massive number of security guards with machine guns, just like those I’d seen in Beijing. But there were only a few guards standing by a small gate, looking rather relaxed. They even let us stand next to the fence to have our pictures taken.
Ben rushed Zhang and me around like mad to see as many of the great sites of New York as possible—the Twin Towers, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park … I was in awe of this hustling, bustling city. Everything surprised and impressed me—the gigantic buildings, the number of cars, the cleanliness compared to Beijing. Then a friend of Ben’s showed us a thing called an ATM. I was speechless when twenty-dollar bills began spewing out. To see money coming out of a wall was beyond my wildest imaginings. I couldn’t stop comparing everything to China and my family’s life back home.
We returned to Houston for our last two days before heading back to China. People gave us farewell gifts. Ben had made our stay such a positive experience and was proud to have arranged for the first two Chinese cultural exchange students to come to America. He’d been thoughtful and generous, protective and kind. He had poured special interest into our dancing. I knew I could never repay him. When Zhang and I said our final good-bye to Ben at the airport, we felt sad to be leaving a special friend.
On the plane I thought of the possibility of returning to Houston in only two months’ time. I thought of how I’d felt about America and its people before I came. I laughed when I remembered my initial suspicions.
Most of all I thought of those dark, scary images of capitalist society and how they had now been replaced by an entirely different picture in my mind. China’s