About the Author
Zhu Xiao-Mei was born in Shanghai. She began studying piano in early childhood with her mother and by the age of eight had already played for Peking radio and television stations.
At the age of eleven she entered the Beijing Conservatory, where her studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. She spent five years in a labor camp in Inner Mongolia. Despite the difficult conditions, she managed to continue to study the piano in secret. When she finally made it back to Beijing, she completed her studies at the Conservatory and left China, first for the United States and then for Paris, where she has lived since 1984.
Since then, Zhu Xiao-Mei’s career, although late and without any media support, has been expanding rapidly. She has given concerts throughout France, Europe, North Africa, Russia, South America, Asia, and Australia, in search of the public in venues that speak to her and where she enjoys playing, performing demanding works that she’s nurtured for years, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
The Secret Piano was originally published by Editions Robert Laffont in October 2007 and received the Grand Prix des Muses in March 2008. This is its first publication in English.
Zhu Xiao also teaches at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris.
About the Translator
Ellen Hinsey was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1960 and has lived and traveled widely in Europe for two decades, working on projects related to democracy.
She has been the recipient of a number of literary awards and prizes including a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin and a Lannan Foundation Award. She is the author of Update on the Descent (2009), The White Fire of Time (2002), and Cities of Memory (1995), which received the Yale University Series Award. She has also edited and co-translated from Lithuanian The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova (2008). Her recent translations of contemporary French fiction include Someone I Loved by Anna Gavalda and Hélène Grimaud’s memoir, Wild Variations. Her poetry, essays, nonfiction, and translations have appeared widely in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Irish Times. She currently teaches at Skidmore College’s Paris program.
1 Author’s note: Kangxi (1654–1722). It was actually a clavichord or a harpsichord presented to the emperor by Jesuit missionaries.
2 Literally, “big-character poster.” During the Cultural Revolution, Dazibaos were one of the most frequently used means for denunciation.
3 Author’s note: Officially, the movement was born on August 18; these are radical students who after August 18 would become Red Guards. See next chapter.
4 Author’s note: The Cultural Revolution was responsible for millions of deaths (although the precise figure has not yet been established). Events similar to those that occurred in Beijing took place throughout China, orchestrated behind the scenes by Mao Zedong. Mao feared losing control to his two political rivals, Liu Shaoqi (the “Chinese Khrushchev”) and Deng Xiaoping, who accused him of being responsible for the catastrophic outcome of the Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine, which claimed the lives of between twenty and thirty million people. See: John Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution, 1880–1985 (New York: Harper & Row, 1986). See also: Simon Leys, Essais sur la Chine, Robert Lafont, Paris, 1998.
The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations Page 25
