About the same time the Bandit confided in me about his own passionate love for a classmate of his, Zhou Xiaoying. But in his efforts to pursue her he had somehow paid more attention to her girlfriend instead and she had fallen for him. We tried to guess each girl's feelings but after more than an hour of heated debate we got nowhere.
"I think a face-to-face talk would be better. That way she can see and feel your emotions and sincerity," I said.
"She would never agree to meet with me alone! She's too shy!" He shook his head hopelessly. "I love her with all my heart. My love for her is the purest thing on earth. I wish I could cut open my heart to show her how sincere and pure it is!"
I had no idea the Bandit loved Zhou Xiaoying that much.
"Can you speak to her for me?" he asked suddenly.
"Are you crazy?"
"Please, I beg you! If I lose her I will kill myself!" he said.
I saw tears in his eyes. "Okay, I will speak to her," I heard myself saying.
But by the next day the Bandit had changed his mind. "She will think that I am gutless having you represent me. And your political career would be in trouble if anyone found out. No, I can't let this happen," he said. Instead he'd decided to write a blood letter.
A couple of days later he rushed up to me and I immediately noticed one of his fingers wrapped in a white bandage. "You did write her a blood letter, didn't you?" I asked.
"I did!" he replied with excitement. "I think it will show my heart and passion better. It's all up to fate now."
But Zhou Xiaoying never replied to that blood letter. Both Zhou Xiaoying and her friend threw hateful looks at the Bandit whenever they met, as though he had betrayed both of them. He was devastated. I knew how much he loved her but there was nothing I could do to help. He continued to pursue her for several more years, to no avail.
By now, with the exception of the Sundays I spent with the Chongs, I used almost every spare moment to practise. My diaries were full of notes about dancing which I wrote after every practice class. I learned more in that one year than in the previous six years combined.
Around the time when we were preparing for our graduation the London Festival Ballet came to perform in China, one of the first professional companies allowed to perform under Deng Xiaoping's "open-door policy". They came to perform with us at our academy theatre and everyone talked about the "big-nosed people", the foreigners.
I had such problems trying to distinguish one big-nosed person from another. They all looked alike, whether they were in the movies or in dance videotapes or there in person. I had to remember what clothes they wore to differentiate them. If they suddenly changed costume between scenes I would be totally lost. And they seemed to speak so fast, without any commas or stops. One of the foreigners who came was an eighteen-year-old dancer called Mary McKendry and she watched me dance the "Three Little Boys Dance".
The Festival Ballet performed Giselle, and two mixed programs, including Harald Lander's famed Etude. I loved Giselle and by now we didn't have to analyse its political content. I wished I could watch this kind of dancing every day: it was astonishingly expansive and the big-nosed dancers' artistic interpretations and discipline quickly gained our respect. Etude too was one of the most technically challenging ballets I had seen-I longed to perform it, to learn more about Western culture, to work with these great choreographers.
Our graduation exam preparations went on for over three months and everyone worked very hard. Our final average grades would determine which dance company we'd get into. The Central Ballet of China would select only the top graduates. Others would be sent to cities far away or to provincial song and dance troupes.
A month before our final exam Teacher Xiao came to me and said,
"Some teachers say I have allowed you to do too many solos in your exam. Most students will do one or two, only one student is doing three. I think six might be too much for you. I don't want to burn you out," he said.
"No, I want to do all six!"
"Are you sure? Because once I hand my submission to Zhang Shu it will be very hard to change."
"Yes, I'm sure I can do it," I replied confidently.
He thought for a moment. "All right, but just remember, try to find the secret of doing every step as easily and effortlessly as possible. That is what dancing is all about."
To prepare six solos for my graduation exam was difficult but I thought of what Teacher Xiao had said and I went into every detail of every step, trying to taste the pulp of the mango. Each solo required a different technical and artistic approach. The first was from one of Madame Mao's model ballets, The White- haired Girl, and I was to dance with an imaginary grenade in my hand, ducking enemy bullets with fast, crisp movements. I worked hard on my two political solos but my real passion and love was for the Western classical solos. In those, however, I had such problems with a double tour en l'air and to achieve good height as well as complete the two turns down to kneeling position in the flash of an eye was an enormous challenge. My right knee was grazed and bleeding from constant landings and often I would pull splinters from my skin. I also developed painful shin-splints from trying to perfect the double cabriole in Giselle. Images of Baryshnikov, Nureyev and Vasiliev continually inspired me. But with this double cabriole all my previous approaches failed. I wasn't even tasting the skin of the mango. You have to work smarter, you have to get to the delicious pulp, I kept telling myself.
A few days before the exam I made the breakthrough. I had to dramatically change my weight distribution in the air and bend my body backwards as far as my flexibility allowed. When I finally got it right the feeling was sensational.
In the end I did perform all six of my solos and I enjoyed every step I danced. After seven years at the academy I even mastered eight consecutive pirouettes, occasionally ten. And now here I was, one among the last generation of Mao's dancers about to graduate.
For our graduation performance our academy wanted to revive Swan Lake for the first time since the Cultural Revolution. It was a difficult task-all the records on Western ballets, including Swan Lake, had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. It was one thing to put together just one solo from a ballet like Giselle but quite another to reproduce a full-length ballet.
Teachers had to recollect details from past performances of many years ago, but miraculously this collaboration worked and resulted in the complete ballet being produced. I was thrilled to be chosen as third cast for Prince Siegfried. I concentrated on nothing but my rehearsals. I worked on my weaknesses and focused on my goals and, by the time the teacher in charge of the rehearsals finally decided who was to dance the leading role on the opening night, I had been chosen as first cast.
As I rehearsed my role as Siegfried I asked my friend Liu Fengtian what he thought of my portrayal of the prince. He said my dancing was good, but I didn't look Western enough. I looked like a peasant boy pretending to be a prince. I knew what he said was true. Deep down I knew I had no idea how I should portray him. I had no problem with the dance steps but I knew nothing of European royalty. Even my teachers didn't know how a prince would carry himself. We knew only about our comrades and our political causes, but what a prince represented was in direct conflict with the values of communism.
In desperation I watched a few old Russian films so I could study a prince's walk, the way he held his arms and hands and how he looked at people. I even permed my straight hair (the costume department took care of that) so I could make myself look and feel more like a prince. But how could a Chinese peasant boy understand a Western prince's arrogance, his passion and his love? Our culture had always taught us to hide our emotions.