Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [8]
It was often well after seven in the evening before our dia came home. He would be worn out, and my niang often had to massage him at night to prepare him for the next day. He never missed a single day’s work.
My parents didn’t go to school when they were children, so they could not read to us. But nighttime was still story time, and our dia would tell us stories and fables. We always listened eagerly.
My brothers also played their own version of I Spy. One of them would select a word from the newspapers glued all over the walls, and whoever spotted this word first would have a turn to select the next. Sometimes we wouldn’t find the word for days. We always thought it sad that our parents didn’t join in because they couldn’t read.
My dia was always patient and emotionally controlled, sometimes stubborn, but always good-tempered. The only time I remember him losing his temper with us was when my fourth brother’s teacher came to report to our parents about his bad school marks that year. Cunsang knew his teacher’s report wouldn’t be good. He gathered together my fifth brother, Cunfar, my youngest brother, Jing Tring, and me and said, “Let’s make chaos! I hate her, and she doesn’t like me either!” We needed little encouragement. The teacher sat on one end of the kang and my niang on the other. Our dia poured them a cup of tea each. As soon as the teacher started to tell my parents of my brother’s poor school progress, we began running from side to side on the kang and screaming.
Our dia gave us a dark look. “Be quiet,” he said.
“I’m sorry about our misbehaving children,” our niangapolo gized.
After a few quiet seconds, Cunsang whispered in our ears: “She let out a loud fart the other day and pretended it wasn’t her!” We laughed uncontrollably. “Farter, farter, smelly farter!” we shrieked.
The teacher pretended she didn’t hear, but our parents were terribly embarrassed. “You will be in trouble if you make any more noise!” our niang threatened us.
“All boys are wild,” the teacher said. “I don’t know how you cope with so many of them.”
A few minutes later I knocked the teacher’s cup over and spilled tea onto her clothes. We were like three wild animals.
Eventually the teacher had had enough. “I have to go now. I have other families to visit tonight,” she said, giving us a disgusted look. My parents continued apologizing to her on her way out.
As soon as she was gone, my niang turned to my dia. “Lock the door!” she screeched. “Kill these wicked boys! I can’t believe how bad they are!”
Jing Tring started to cry, so she removed him from the kang. “The little one is too young to understand. It’s not his fault. Just kill the big ones! See if they dare do it again!”
My dia stormed into the room with a broomstick in his hand and closed the door. I had never seen him so angry. His face was frightening enough, let alone the flailing broomstick. He hit us with that broomstick so hard that I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide.
My niang kept urging him on from the other side of the door and we kept screaming. “We won’t dare do it again! We won’t dare do it again! We promise!”
Our niang’s head popped in and out of the room like a yo-yo. “Teach them a lesson! See if they will ever dare to do it again!” We didn’t know then that she thought we looked so comical she was laughing her head off outside, but she had to pretend she was angry with us. What a lesson that was: we never misbehaved like that again.
THREE
A Commune Childhood
By 1969, the poverty around Laoshan had worsened. I remember going with my friends to the beach one day, an hour’s journey on foot, to find clams and oysters or, if we were lucky, a dead fish. We each carried a bamboo basket and a small spade.
Many people were already there, also searching. After about half an hour we’d found nothing except empty sea-shells. The beach