That first class lasted nearly two hours, but it seemed like for ever. I couldn't wait for the bell to ring so I could take those horrible shoes off and let my cramped toes stretch out. I thought about running in the streets like I did in my commune, or wrestling with my friends. I didn't want to dance. I wanted to go outside and make a snowman and throw snowballs. Our second class that morning was Beijing Opera Movement. Our teacher was Gao Dakun. "Hurry up, you're late!" Gao shouted. "Spread out around the barre!" he barked. "Beijing Opera movements are all about flexibility and suppleness. If you don't have suppleness, you can't be good in my class. Do you understand?"
We all nodded, terrified.
"Good, let's start with your legs up on the barre," he said.
I looked at the barre in front of me. It was as high as my chest.
"What are you waiting for? Didn't you hear me? Your leg on the barre!"
I was one of the three smallest boys in our class. I tried to put my leg up but the barre was just too high.
Without another word Gao walked over to me and lifted my leg. I felt a tinge of pain in my hamstring and automatically bent my knee.
"Keep your knee straight!" He pushed my knee down on the barre. "Now I want you to bend your body forward and try to touch your toes with your head. Stay down there! Don't get up until I tell you so!" Gao ordered.
The pain was excruciating and was increasing at an alarming rate.
"Didn't you hear me, keep your knees straight!" Gao shouted at Zhu Yaoping, the small boy from Shanghai who'd spoken to me at dinner the night before. "Keep your head down!" he told Fu Xijun, another boy from Qingdao. "Okay! Now, let's change legs!"
My right leg was now in such pain that I had trouble even lifting it off the barre. I quickly glanced at the other students. I wasn't the only one suffering.
When I lifted my other leg onto the barre, I knew what to expect this time. So I started to count. I was prepared to count up to fifty. I wondered if I was the only one counting as a way of coping with such agony, until I heard the boy next to me counting too.
Each time, from that first class on, I prepared myself for the worst. I decided I needed to be mentally strong enough to last through at least a hundred slow counts. But if Gao left the classroom to get himself some water or have a cigarette, then the hundred counts would increase to who knew how many. The pain made me want to scream. Often Gao would lean on our bodies and force us down lower. We would be in terrible trouble if we bent our knees. My hamstrings would often tear, but we were not allowed to stop. We were not allowed to scream or cry.
I hated Gao Dakun and his class. I feared confronting him. I dreaded looking at him. Just the thought of his class made my stomach churn. He always seemed angry and he constantly screamed at us. He called us names too. He called me "the boy with the brainless big head", and I hated him even more.
Before our midday sleep on that first day, as we were heading back to our room, Zhu Yaoping, the small boy from Shanghai, slid down the stair rail at our dormitory. It looked fun, so I copied him. We ran up the stairs and slid down the rail, chasing each other, until one of the political heads appeared from nowhere. "What do you think you're doing?" he growled.
We stood there, hearts thumping.
"You are never to do this again! Do you understand? You could break your legs if you fall. This is not allowed in Madam Mao's school!"
There was no fun in this place, I thought. Only rules.
We had other classes that day, but they were just a blur. I couldn't understand the teachers' Mandarin accents, but at least we were to have an early dinner because, we were told, we were going to see the Central Ballet of China perform.
We went by bus to the Heaven's Gate Theatre close to the centre of Beijing. The ballet was one of Madame Mao's model ballets, with the familiar title The Red Detachment of Women. Zhu Yaoping and I sat next to each other. I managed to stay awake for the first act, but during the second I could no longer fight off my sleepiness. My eyelids got heavier and heavier and I eventually fell into a deep sleep. I was woken only by the applause at the end of the act.
I was frightened when I looked around. I didn't know where I was or what I was doing. The trip to Beijing, the whole of the last twenty-four hours, all seemed like a dream. When I recovered from the initial shock, I realised that Zhu Yaoping and all my classmates had already left. Suddenly I had to go to the toilet but by the time I found it there was already a long queue, and then the bell rang and the ushers were urging people back to their seats. I hurriedly followed some people into the theatre but couldn't find my classmates. I panicked. I went back to the lobby again. "I've lost my group, I can't find my seat," I told an usher.
"May I see your ticket?"
"I don't have my ticket, our political head has all of our tickets," I replied.
By this time the lights were fading. The usher grabbed my arm. "Follow me, I'll help you find your group after the performance," and he pulled me into the theatre and found an empty seat in the back row. I was nervous being separated from my friends, but soon tiredness overcame me again and I slept through the rest of the performance. Then, just as the lights came on, the usher pulled me out of the theatre and we waited for the familiar faces of my friends. They eventually emerged two doors away. I was so happy and relieved when Zhu Yaoping rushed up and said something to me in Shanghai dialect. I didn't even care that I couldn't understand a word of it.
On the bus trip back to our university, I began to feel terribly sick. It was as though the whole world was spinning. I wanted to vomit. I told the teacher, who asked the driver to stop the bus, and I hopped off just in time. They put me in the front seat after that, just behind the driver. One of the teachers assured me that I only had motion sickness and I would feel better sitting there. But I'd never been sick when I went on the bus with my niang to visit our grandparents. I felt traumatised, embarrassed, trapped in my own emotionally torrid world.
It was midnight by the time we went to bed that night, way past my bedtime in Qingdao. I thought of my niang, my dia and my brothers, all sleeping together in their own beds, and I felt my homesickness begin to return. After the lights were turned off, I clutched onto my niang's precious quilt once again, covered my head with it, and sobbed myself to sleep.
9 The Caged Bird
Every morning was the same. It seemed that I had only just closed my eyes when I heard the ear-piercing scream of the five-thirty bell. I would drag myself to the washing room and pour freezing- cold water on my face to drive away my sleepiness. The jogging, the early-morning exercises and breakfast all happened while I was still half asleep. Only my cold cramped feet, the awkward ballet positions and the French names in Chen Lueng's class would wake me up.
Later that week we had our first Chinese folk dance lesson, with Teacher Chen Yuen. He was younger than the other teachers we'd had so far and wore a pair of spectacles. He seemed friendly, with a funny sense of humour, and he even told us jokes.
In Chen Yuen's class we got to dance much more freely. I particularly loved a Mongolian horse riders' dance we began to learn. But the best part of this class was the four musicians who sat at the front of the studio and played their traditional Chinese instruments. I thought they were beautiful. One played a "piba", which looked like a guitar but sounded hollow and sad. There was also an ancient-looking horn and an "erhu"-a two-string instrument which produced the most heart-wrenching sounds, and the "yanqin", a string instrument so beautiful and powerful that I thought there were twenty different instruments playing at once! I loved it. I loved the passion of their music. I had never heard anything like it. Their music made me want to dance: I could hear the clip-clop sound of the approaching horses; I could hear those Mongolian riders roaming the deserts, and I longed to be free like them.