Part Two. Beijing
8 Feather in a whirlwhind
At first, despite missing home, the thrill of being in Beijing near our great and beloved leader Chairman Mao completely overwhelmed me. Here I was, part of the Beijing Dance Academy, with Madame Mao our honorary artistic director. My family, my relatives, the people in our village and commune, even the Shandong Province officials themselves, would all have enormous expectations of me: from this moment onward, I would have an "iron rice bowl"-a good job and enough food for life.
On the way to our academy on the bus that day we detoured to Zhongnanhai, where Chairman Mao, Madame Mao and all the top government officials lived. It was a huge complex, right next to the Forbidden City, with barbed wire and high, faded red-gold walls. Security guards stood beside huge red wooden doors, their hands firmly grasping their semi-automatic guns. Guards seemed to be everywhere, spread evenly along the walls, ready to pull the trigger on anyone who might pose a threat.
I simply couldn't believe I was here! Here, where our god-like leader slept, worked and made all his important political decisions. What was it like in there? I wondered. I could see many tall trees inside, and I'd heard that there was a fishing pond there, called Daiyutai. I imagined it had lots of different fish in it, and it must surely be round, like the image of Mao, our sun.
I was stunned with the sheer scale of Beijing: enormous buildings, endless street-lighting, wide smooth streets, nothing like the muddy dirt roads we had in Laoshan County. And the men and women-their Mao-style jackets looked so smart! I could see very few patches on their clothes. And the number of cars, buses, jeeps, bicycles-it simply shocked me. How could there be so many bicycles in one city! Officers in army uniforms directed the flow of traffic, but nobody seemed to pay much attention to the traffic lights themselves. I was completely fascinated. I'd never seen traffic lights before.
As the bus pulled into Tiananmen Square, my heart leapt. I could see long rows of gigantic light-poles. I could see an ocean of people. I immediately noticed the Gate of Heavenly Peace on our left and the grand building of the People's Congress on the right. They were so familiar-I had seen them in so many pictures: even in my collection of Mao's buttons at home there was one with Chairman Mao smiling and waving at me from the top of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It made my spine shiver. Tiananmen Square was our great symbol of communism. It was here, on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, facing millions of jubilant people, that Chairman Mao declared the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1949. It was a date that all the children of China had etched into their minds.
For our first day in Beijing it was sunny, and the combination of body heat from the crowd, the sunshine and the smog made the Square warm. Our bus wasn't allowed to drive too close to the centre, so we got out and our political heads and teachers herded us towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace. People swarmed everywhere, many stopping to take pictures, so it took some time before we could get close. Then one of our political heads told a security guard that we were from Madame Mao's school. That mention alone was enough, and he happily let us into the security area surrounding the Gate of Heavenly Peace, so we could pose for several group photos.
It was only once I settled back onto our bus that a sense of insecurity began to overwhelm me. I sank down into my seat and looked out the window. The buildings around the Square seemed to stare at me. Why are you, peasant boy, here in this magnificent city? Throughout my childhood I had always dreamt of coming here. I had always believed I never would. Yet now I was here, among fifteen million people. I felt like a feather swept up in a whirlwind. I was only eleven years old. Nothing could have prepared me for this.
Our bus travelled through the city streets and gradually the tall buildings of Beijing were left far behind. We drove on and on, heading, we were told, towards a village called Zhuxingzhuang, about one hundred and twenty miles away. The name meant Zhu's New Village and it was to be our new home.
The wide, open fields of the countryside seemed to invigorate me. The fields here were flat compared to the layered fields surrounding my home town, but there were enough similarities in the countryside to relieve my anxiety just a little. It was a long drive, and one of the teachers suggested we sing propaganda songs as we went along and this too temporarily kept my attention.
Eventually, just as our bus turned into a drive, the political head proudly announced, "We are here! Our school is on the left."
I could see tall, bare trees on each side of a driveway (it was February and still bitterly cold) and within a couple of minutes our bus turned towards a metal-barred gate which had bright red letters over the top of it: Central 5-7 Performing and Arts University. The numbers, our political heads explained, referred to 7 May 1970, when Madame Mao delivered a famous speech to the arts and education communities, using Chairman Mao's philosophies to encourage all intellectuals to engage, both physically and mentally, with the three classes: peasants, workers and soldiers. They were golden words to the Ministry of Culture, so they proposed that Madame Mao should be the artistic director of this new university, and that it should be located in the heart of the communes, where future artists could learn and work among the peasants every day. In such an isolated site, surrounded by communes and fields, students would be protected from any negative influences from the city. Madame Mao supported this idea and the project quickly received the central government's backing.
Our bus came to a stop inside a compound and we all filed out. A small group of officials and teachers helped the girls with their luggage before we were all taken inside a new three-storey building. I smelt fresh paint as we entered, an overpowering, unfamiliar smell, but the teachers didn't seem to notice. Before we climbed upstairs to the second floor, one teacher read out our names and divided us into groups according to our age and gender. I was put in the younger boys' class.
There were three stairways: we went up the centre one and I noticed next to the other stairs there were two bathrooms, one for each sex. The teachers explained things as we went. The boys' bathroom was divided into two sections: the outer section was for washing and there was only cold water there. We were told that we had to collect our hot water from the boiler-room near our canteen. Water coming through pipes, instead of having to carry buckets from the well! I thought it was amazing!
Next we were shown our bedrooms. There were four rooms, two for boys and two for girls, and about ten or eleven of us to a room. The beds were crammed in so close together. It would be a luxury to have a bed all to myself, but I knew I'd still miss my brother's smelly feet and long for the security of my parents.
We were allowed a few moments to put our personal belongings away, so I put my snakeskin and the smelly dried shrimp and my other items in a little bedside chest of drawers next to the bed I was allocated. Then I got out my niang's precious handmade quilt and carefully folded it on top of the bed. Then all of us, all forty-four students, were taken to the sports-ground near the canteen by our three political heads. They organised us into four straight lines according to height, the smaller ones at the front and the tallest at the back. I was the second smallest boy in my line.
Once everyone was standing quietly, the head of our academy, a broad, strong man in a green army uniform, started his lecture. "Students, I am your director and you can call me Director Wang," he said in a rusty, deep voice with a distinct southern accent. He looked around. I could see his scary little eyes. There was complete silence. "On behalf of our beloved Madame Mao, I welcome you to the Central 5-7 Performing and Arts University. You are privileged to be chosen to be part of Madame Mao's new school. Do you know what your chances of being chosen were?" He paused. "One in a billion! That's right, one in a billion! You are the lucky and proud children of the workers, peasants and soldiers of China! You will carry Chairman Mao's artistic flag into the bright future. Not only will you receive six years of ballet training, but you will also study Chinese folk dance, Beijing Opera Movement, martial arts, acrobatics, politics, Chinese and international history, Chinese and international geography, poetry, mathematics and Madame Mao's Art Philosophy. What's Art Philosophy you may ask?" He paused again and looked around once more with his scary little eyes. "Art Philosophy is the relationship between politics and the arts. It is Madame Mao's wish that you don't just grow up being a dancer, but a revolutionary guard, a dedicated and faithful servant of Chairman Mao's great crusade! Your weapon is your art. Madame Mao and over a billion pairs of eyes will be watching your progress. The expectation is enormous. The hurdle is high. The task is difficult.