Mao's Last Dancer

by Cunxin, Li

• ISBN13: 9780399150968
• ISBN10: 039915096X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-30
• Publisher: Putnam Adult

Summary

In a small, desperately poor village in northeast China, a peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, interested more in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strangers come to his school -- Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mold into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision for China. The boy watches as one of his classmates is chosen and led away. His teacher hesitates. Will she or won't she? She very nearly doesn't. But at the last moment, she taps the official on the shoulder and points to the small boy. "What about that one?" she says. This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the thinnest thread of chance, changed the course of a small boy's life in ways beyond description. One day he would dance with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world. One day he would be a friend to a president and first lady, movie stars, and some of the most influential people in America. One day he would himself become a star: Mao's last dancer and the darling of the West. Here is Li Cunxin's own story, one that very nearly vanished, like millions of other peasants' lives, amid revolution and chaos. It is a story of courage, of a mother's love, a boy's longing for freedom -- a beautiful, rich account of an inspirational life, told with extraordinary honesty, dignity, and pride. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Li Cunxin was born in a village near the city of Qingdao, in northern China. At eighteen, he was selected to perform with the Houston Ballet, leading to his dramatic defection to the United States. Li, who has performed as a principal dancer with the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet, now lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and their three children

Table of Contents

A Wedding: Qingdao, 1946	p. xi
My Childhood
Home	p. 3
My Niang and Dia	p. 20
A Commune Childhood	p. 37
The Seven of Us	p. 55
Na-na	p. 70
Chairman Mao's Classroom	p. 81
Leaving Home	p. 104
Beijing
Feather in a Whirlwind	p. 123
The Caged Bird	p. 140
That First Lonely Year	p. 154
The Pen	p. 168
My Own Voice	p. 180
Teacher Xiao's Words	p. 201
Turning Points	p. 220
The Mango	p. 236
Change	p. 245
On the Way to the West	p. 255
The Filthy Capitalist America	p. 266
Good-bye, China	p. 282
The West
Return to the Land of Freedom	p. 303
Elizabeth	p. 314
Defection	p. 325
My New Life	p. 339
A Millet Dream Come True	p. 351
No More Nightmares	p. 365
Russia	p. 379
Mary	p. 392
Going Home	p. 408
Back in My Village	p. 416
Another Wedding: Qingdao, 1988	p. 431
Postscript	p. 441
The Li Family Tree	p. 447
Acknowledgments	p. 449
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