A Girl Named Faithful Plum

by Richard Bernstein

  “Leg kicks,” the instructor said. “There are three kinds, so watch carefully. First, forward kicks, like this,” and he kicked his foot up in front of his face to a level well above his head. “Side kicks are second,” and the instructor kicked first his right leg up and to the side, then the same with the left. “Third is the circle kick,” and he kicked up and forward with his right leg, describing a clockwise arc whose high point was about a foot above his head. As his foot passed the middle point of its upper arc, he reached up his hand so that foot and hand slapped loudly together. This was followed by a counterclockwise motion with the left leg and another slap of foot and hand. “With each kick you advance a little bit, so that you kick your way from one end of the courtyard to the other.

  “Do it!” he shouted, and then led the way, once across the courtyard with forward kicks, then back with more forward kicks, and then two more round trips, one for side kicks and another for circle kicks. This was no longer funny. Zhongmei gulped air, but no matter how much she gulped, she couldn’t seem to get enough. Her sides were howling in protest. She could feel the blood throbbing in her temples. Her heart was racing so fast she feared it would leap out of her chest. By the end, her kicks, which had started nicely at head level, were barely above her waist and utterly out of reach of the hand upraised to meet her foot, but, thankfully, everybody else seemed to be in about the same condition.

  The exercise over (until the next day! Zhongmei reminded herself), Little Zhou led the first-year girls up the stairs to the dormitory, where they were mercifully allowed to get out of their weight-loss suits and change into dance clothing, baggy blue shorts and light blue tops.

  Zhongmei listened to the commentary around her. “I can’t move,” one girl said. “I feel like I was left out in the rain for a month, I’m so soaked,” another one said. “My feet are killing me,” a third girl said. Zhongmei remembered the woman who told her during the auditions that the Dance Academy would be the hardest thing she ever did, and only now did she understand what she meant. “Only six years to go!” yelled a girl, and all of the first-year students collapsed in a combination of exhaustion and laughter.

  “Breakfast first, then ballet class,” Little Zhou announced, and the girls went in a bunch down the stairs and across the courtyard to the cafeteria. Zhongmei poured a glass of cool water down her throat and then devoured some man-tou, steamed bread dipped in tangy shrimp paste. She drank a bowl of warm soybean milk mixed with a bit of sugar. She had a second bowl and another man-tou. And at precisely eight o’clock, still swallowing her breakfast, she followed Little Zhou back across the courtyard to the classroom building and up a flight of stairs to the second floor and studio two, for the class called fundamentals of ballet.

  14

  The Country Bumpkin

  “Good morning, girls.” A woman teacher greeted them after they’d filed into the studio. “My name is Zhu Huaimin,” she announced, “and this class is the single most important dance class you will ever take at this school, as important as all the other classes put together, because here you will establish the foundation for everything else that you will do at this school. I will expect every one of you to follow my instructions and to work very hard, and if you do, I can guarantee you that you will be ballet dancers of international caliber, among the best in the world.”

  Zhongmei recognized Teacher Zhu right away. She was the thin, severe-looking woman with the plastic glasses who had sat next to Vice Director Jia on that day when Zhongmei had done her blade-of-grass improvisation, the one who had looked angry at the decision to give Zhongmei a second chance.

  She sat on a wooden chair while the twelve eleven-year-old girls sat on the floor in front of her. “You will arrive promptly at eight o’clock every day, Monday to Saturday,” she said. “You will be on time. Any person arriving late will not be allowed to take the class that day. Three times late without a medical excuse and you will be expelled from school. We will practice here for one hour every day, and then you will go off to your regular schoolwork and your other activities.”

  Teacher Zhu asked each of the girls to announce their names and where they came from, and Zhongmei noted that all of the girls came from big and famous cities like Shanghai, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, and Beijing itself. When it came her turn, she gave her name and said she was from a state farm in Heilongjiang Province called Baoquanling. There were barely audible twitters from some of the other girls, and Zhongmei thought—but she wasn’t sure—that she heard somebody whisper the Chinese words tu bao zi, which is the common term in Chinese for a country bumpkin, a hick, a rube, a local yokel. Zhongmei looked up at the semicircle of other girls to see who had whispered the phrase, but all she saw were portraits of goody-two-shoes innocence looking back at her. And yet, she had heard titters and whisperings. Why did they seem to think she was a little bit ridiculous?

  But that wasn’t the worst. The worst came with an incident so strange and unlikely that it’s hard to believe it really happened, but it really did. As they introduced themselves, a couple of the girls boasted of having performed on television in their hometowns.

  Now, in Chinese the expression for being on television uses the same figure of speech as English does. You go on television; you are seen on television. But to Zhongmei, who had never watched television before arriving in Beijing, it seemed that the people she saw on television were in the television, not on it. And so, innocently, she asked the obvious question: “Why would anybody ever go on a television?”

  There was a stunned silence in the studio followed by tittering, followed in turn by knowing looks exchanged among some of the other girls, though, again, when Zhongmei looked up, all she saw was a solid phalanx of goody-two-shoes expressions.

  “What kind of question is that?” Teacher Zhu asked finally. “What’s so strange about going on television?”

  “You mean some of you do a dance on top of your televisions?” Zhongmei naïvely asked.

  That comment was followed by another terrible silence in the room, a silence that seemed to emanate from the darkened countenance of Teacher Zhu.

  “You have the temerity to make fun of this class?” Teacher Zhu said angrily. Zhongmei looked up at her. The lenses of her glasses reflected images of hanging fluorescent lights. “Do you think this is some kind of joke?” But it wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

  Zhongmei felt heat on her neck, as if somebody had just pressed an iron there, and then, suddenly, it was as if she had passed through a current of freezing air. Her skin pricked. Her heart seemed to ice up. “No,” she said meekly, understanding that she had done something wrong but not knowing what. “I wasn’t—”

  “Do you think the Beijing Dance Academy is a place for disrespect of your teachers?” Teacher Zhu said.

  “No,” Zhongmei said, confused because she had meant no disrespect. She was only asking a question.

  “How dare you behave this way in my class,” Teacher Zhu roared.

  “But I didn’t mean to …”

  “You didn’t mean to,” Teacher Zhu said, mimicking Zhongmei’s timid and frightened manner. “Then would you explain your comment, please.”

  Zhongmei hesitated, knowing that all she could do was repeat the question that had gotten her into trouble in the first place.

  “I just asked why anybody would get on a television,” Zhongmei said finally, having thought of no other way to reply.

  “I will not have this!” Teacher Zhu roared, her face red, her mouth contorted in anger and astonishment. “You will get out and stand in the hall and you will stay there until you learn to behave!” she shouted, her voice both harsh and piercing, the reflection in her glasses lurid and terrifying.

  There was no tittering now. All the girls stared at the floor, each of them glad it wasn’t she who had aroused Teacher Zhu’s ire, but each of them a little nervous that she might be next. Except for one girl. Zhongmei noticed Xiaolan, Little Orchid, looking at her in what seemed genuine con
cern, or maybe it was only that she looked sad compared to the other girls, who were making efforts to frown with disapproval.

  “But,” said Zhongmei, “I only wanted to know—”

  “But nothing!” shrieked Teacher Zhu. “Get out!”

  Zhongmei sat for a second, too stunned to obey this extraordinary and unjust command.

  “I told you, out of the room,” Teacher Zhu said. “What are you waiting for?”

  Zhongmei pulled herself to her feet. Before she turned to the door, she glanced at Xiaolan, who mouthed the words “Don’t worry” in an effort to give Zhongmei some comfort. As Zhongmei walked out of the classroom, Teacher Zhu’s final words followed her like an angry dog nipping at her heels. “Stand outside in the corridor,” she said, “and stay there until class is dismissed. I won’t have anybody showing such disrespect.”

  Zhongmei went into the dark and gloomy corridor. A streaked window at the end let in some gray light. A portrait of Chairman Mao looked down at her from the wall and seemed silently to scold her. How could the bright and happy prospect she had felt only minutes before have turned into the misery of this dingy corridor? Zhongmei stared at the worn wooden floor. This was her first day of her dream of attending the Beijing Dance Academy and it had suddenly turned into a nightmare. She held back her tears even as the gray of the Beijing autumn entered into her heart.

  That night, Xiaolan stood in front of Zhongmei’s bunk and said, “I’m sorry Teacher Zhu was so mean to you.”

  “All I did was ask why that other girl went on a television,” Zhongmei said. “What did I do wrong?”

  Xiaolan explained the phrase on television and what it meant. “She thought you were mocking her,” Xiaolan said, speaking of Teacher Zhu. “She should have understood that you just didn’t know about television. I understood that, but she didn’t.”

  “Now I’ve made her into my enemy,” Zhongmei said. “Now I’ve made her hate me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Xiaolan said. “Don’t worry. She’ll like you when she gets to know you.”

  Zhongmei shrugged and sat at the edge of her bed. She was glad that Xiaolan had spoken to her, but also ashamed at having been so stupid, the only girl in the class who didn’t know what it meant to go on television.

  “Look,” Xiaolan said brightly. “I have something to show you.”

  She walked over to her own bunk, took a book from the small table next to it, and brought it back to Zhongmei. It had black-and-white pictures of a beautiful ballerina in a frilly white costume doing a perfect arabesque, her raised leg pointing diagonally upward, the knee slightly bent, her other foot planted on the ground in perfect pointe position. Her left arm balanced her raised leg. Her fine hand was opened as if she were striving to grasp something just out of reach. It was the most beautiful picture that Zhongmei had ever seen.

  “Where did you get it?” she asked Xiaolan, forgetting Teacher Zhu and her worries for the moment.

  “I got it from the library,” Xiaolan said.

  “The library?”

  “Yes, right here. There’s a library on the first floor. We’re allowed to take books to our room.”

  Zhongmei held the book in her lap and scrutinized the picture. “What’s her name?”

  “That’s Margot Fonteyn,” Xiaolan said, though she pronounced it in the Chinese way so it sounded like Ma-luo-ge Foh-en-tan. “She was a great dancer, very famous, everybody loved her. Look, there are more.” She flipped the pages and Zhongmei saw other dancers in poses of perfect loveliness. One especially caught her eye. It showed a girl of the most refined and exquisite features wearing a kind of village costume laced at the front and ending in a fringed skirt that flew wildly around her. One hand was on her hip, the other splayed outward, the fingers parted. The dancer’s hair was bound in a piece of cloth and hung nonchalantly over her shoulder.

  “That’s Suzanne Farrell,” Xiaolan said, pronouncing it Su-sa-nah Fa-er-le.

  “She’s great,” Zhongmei said.

  “Someday you’ll be just like her,” Xiaolan said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Not after today,” Zhongmei said, but her heart was already beating quickly at the hope that, maybe, somehow, Xiaolan might be right.

  “You’ll be like her,” Zhongmei said, “not me.”

  “I hope I will too,” Xiaolan said, “but so will you.”

  “How can you know that?” Zhongmei asked, wishing that Xiaolan had a good reason. And she did.

  “Because I heard about what you did at your improvisation,” said Xiaolan, “after they let you try a second time. Everybody said you were amazing.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t amazing,” Zhongmei said, deeply flattered. “So many of the other girls were better than me.”

  “I can tell just looking at you,” Xiaolan said with conviction. “I can see it in your eyes, and one of these days everybody will see it, even Teacher Zhu.”

  Dear Da-jie,

  The ballet teacher doesn’t like me, but I have a nice friend. Her name is Xiaolan, and she’s the prettiest girl in my class. I wish you could come to Beijing to see me. I also wish we had television in Baoquanling. It would have saved me some trouble. Do you think you could come to Beijing? You could sleep at Policeman Li’s house.

  Zhongmei

  Zhongmei’s childhood in Baoquanling, China

  It’s easy to forget that before Li Zhongmei set off on her path to become one of the most famous dancers in China, she was just a normal kid who played with her friends and siblings, like any other. Above, a four-year-old Zhongmei (second row, right) poses for a family group photo in 1970, alongside her brothers and sisters. In the first picture below, she’s seen dancing with her future brother-in-law in the summer of 1979—just after she completed her rigorous first year at the Beijing Dance Academy. Below that—in a photo taken during the same year—she poses with her music teacher and one of her best childhood friends, Fu Bo. The two friends can be seen happily playing in the fields in the third photo below.

  In the first photo below, sisters and frequent pen pals Zhongmei (left) and Zhongqin share a special moment in 1979. In the second photo below, Zhongmei (second from the left) and her sisters gather on the front steps of their home that same year, accompanied by their young brother, Li Feng. Zhongmei is wearing a special dress in the bottom photo while she gazes across the lake in Beijing’s Beihai Park in 1978, just before the start of her first year at the Dance Academy.

  Zhongmei, country girl to city girl

  In the first photo below, Zhongmei (front row, far left) poses for a group photo with her Dance Academy classmates in 1980 (her friend Xiaolan can be seen in the second row, second from the left). All the while, Zhongmei missed home and her sister Zhongqin, seen in the second photo below. (Zhongmei is just six years old at the time.) The third photograph below was the one Zhongmei’s father sent to Policeman Li to help him recognize her when she arrived in Beijing to audition for the Dance Academy.

  Zhongmei through the years

  Zhongmei in the dance studio

  All of these photos were taken in late 1980 and 1981, when Li Zhongmei was in the midst of her third year at the Beijing Dance Academy. In the photo above, she (literally) bends over backward to please one of her dance teachers. In the photo below, Zhongmei receives guidance on her balance (she is the dancer seen on the far right.) And in the second photo below, Zhongmei (front, left) and her fellow classmates tirelessly practice their footwork and technique in a studio at the Dance Academy.

  An older Zhongmei returns home to pose with the entire Li family at their home in Baoquanling. That same year, Zhongmei’s beloved sister Zhongqin stitched the costume she’s wearing in the below photos—and Zhongqin herself poses with Zhongmei in the second photo below, immediately outside their front door.

  Zhongmei in the early 1980s

  Zhongmei nurses her feet and adjusts her shoes in the dance studio as she nears graduation and the end of her time at the academy. In the second photo above, she smil
es with her friend Xiaolan (left) at Policeman Li and Da-ma’s home in Beijing, 1981. Ever the perfectionist, she dutifully practices her positions in the photo below, also taken in 1981. (Zhongmei is on the far left.)

  A girl named Faithful Plum

  Zhongmei strikes a triumphant pose at her own solo show in Beijing in 1990, at age twenty-four, before she embarks on her first trip to the United States, which she will later call home.

  15

  Banned from Ballet

  The sun was already bright and streaming through the high windows of studio two the next day as Zhongmei and the other girls, having gotten through the sweaty, agonizing ordeal of the morning run and calisthenics, filed in for fundamentals of ballet. Even Chairman Mao, looking down on the scene from his honored place on the wall, seemed to be smiling.

  “Good morning, good morning,” Teacher Zhu said as each girl came into the room, and each girl in turn recited a respectful, “Good morning, Teacher Zhu.”

  “Everyone to the barre!” Teacher Zhu commanded, and the girls scurried for places along the wall. Zhongmei scurried for a place, noticing as she reached the barre that there was a piano in the studio and the same accompanist she had seen at the audition.