We chose two of the cheapest items on the menu. I hadn't any idea what I'd ordered but I was confident that in a restaurant of this stature we wouldn't be left starving.
Minutes later, the waiter placed a small plate of green salad in front of me and a small bowl of green soup in front of Zhang. I still remember the look Zhang gave me. I forced out a smile and quickly turned my eyes away.
"Are you okay?" Ben asked, concerned.
"Okay!" I replied brightly. Zhang just nodded. Louisa probably thinks we're so thin because we don't like to each much, I thought. I poked my fork into the greens and tasted a leaf of my very first salad. "Good taste!" I said to Zhang, trying to encourage him.
"Good taste!" Zhang replied and forced himself to finish his green soup. Luckily the waiter kept circling our table with freshly baked bread.
Louisa dropped us back at the studio and Clare Duncan showed us to the men's dressing-room. I put on the tights we had bought that morning. They felt very soft and comfortable compared to my bright blue pair from home.
The studio was packed with dancers when we arrived. On the centre barre the students moved up to make room for Zhang and me. Then Ben walked in. I remember he wore a T-shirt with " London " written on it and a pair of silk-like black pants. His energy and his passion for his teaching seemed to inspire everybody. During the class I kept a keen eye on other students and to my surprise I discovered Zhang and I compared well to the others. The precision of our technique was high and this could only have come about from the strict discipline of our Chinese training.
There were students here from England, Canada and other places, a result no doubt of Ben's international reputation as a teacher, choreographer and artistic director. Our schedule was full each day. There were many classes-ballet, character, modern ballet, pas de deux, body conditioning and choreographic workshops. I wasn't sure what to expect in the modern ballet class, but our Chinese folk dance classes and tai chi movements made it easy for us to find some common ground. The body conditioning class was different-it was based on something called Pilates, and I could see it would help me understand my own body and deal with my physical weaknesses and injuries.
Everyone in the classes seemed to be busy making new friends. Zhang and I couldn't remember their names or understand what they were saying but we were warmly embraced by many of the students. We were even given fifty dollars per week as a living allowance. I never dreamt of having that amount of money in my entire life! Eight months of my dia's wages! I tried to save as much money as possible from that living allowance so I could help my family when I returned to China.
We soon discovered that Ben was a very good cook and he also loved entertaining, so we were surrounded by people all the time we were there. That meant a lot of nodding and smiling on our part. Zhang and I were not bad cooks either and we were a big hit in the kitchen. We were so used to handwashing everything, though, that we hardly used the dishwasher or washing machine. After breakfast one morning Ben had to rush to a board meeting and he told us to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on. When I opened the cupboard to get the dishwashing detergent there were quite a few boxes of powder for me to choose from. Naturally I chose the biggest box, filled the dishwasher with laundry powder and turned it on. A few minutes later the whole kitchen was foaming. Masses of foam covered the kitchen floor and I was sent into a total panic.
During that second week in Houston, Ben's good friend Barbara Bush invited us to her house for lunch. I remembered she even had an indoor pool. She apologised for Mr Bush's absence: he had to attend a presidential rally in California that day.
I felt very privileged to meet Barbara, but her husband was such a high-profile politician that I was deeply suspicious of her hidden political agendas. Would she try to corrupt our political beliefs? I mentally prepared myself. But all we received was generosity and friendliness. Barbara didn't seem like a politician's wife at all. She reminded me of my niang. She was elegant and generous, and talked about China very fondly.
That day we'd been asked to bring our swimming suits. We didn't have any, so Ben had to buy them for us, like so many other things. Barbara and Ben chatted happily while Zhang and I swam in her indoor pool where the water temperature was perfect, a pool owned by one of the most powerful ladies in America. I could never have dreamt of this.
Barbara also had a little dog called Fred. She adored Fred. She'd even taken him to China with her while Mr Bush served as the first envoy. She talked about her dog as though he was a child. She told us that Fred was a very intelligent dog. I thought that if her dog had been a dog in my home town, someone would have eaten him for dinner.
We went to board member Louisa Sarofim's house a few times too. I couldn't believe her wealth. When I saw her garden, her pool and the surroundings I thought I had just walked into a well- maintained park. She took us inside and I saw some of the most beautiful paintings I had ever seen. Ben told me later that most of the paintings were worth millions of dollars. A million dollars? The number was too enormous for a Chinese peasant boy to comprehend. She must have more money than a god, but she was so nice and unpretentious and she loved ballet and took immense pride in the Houston Ballet's developments. The amount of wealth surrounding ballet in America seemed amazing to me. There was money everywhere. Once I even saw a ballet board member leave a hundred-dollar note on the table after a meal. Of course I quickly tapped him on the shoulder. Didn't he realise he'd left a hundred dollars behind? But he simply nodded his head and walked out. It blew me away. Over a year's worth of my dia's hard, hard work and it was simply left on the table. Sometimes I heard people talking of hundreds of millions of dollars, but again, such numbers didn't exist in my vocabulary. The financial and cultural gaps were simply too great to comprehend.
During the first week of the summer school, Ben arranged for us to attend an English language course and I began to learn ten to fifteen new words a day. I carried a piece of paper everywhere I went, with my new English words written on it. The most effective place for me to learn them was in the toilet. My English improved quickly and I ended up translating for Zhang. Clearly he should have spent more time in the toilet.
I was constantly surprised by how much freedom the American people had. One day in the dressing-room one of the students from New Orleans noticed my Mao button on my dance bag.
"Do you like your Chairman Mao?" he asked.
"Yes, I love Chairman Mao!" I replied with my fist over my heart.
"Well, I don't like our president Jimmy Carter. I don't think he's a good president at all," he said.
"No good? Jimmy Carter?" I asked, amazed.
"No good." He pointed his thumb down.
"Shh…!" I looked around nervously. "You not scared people listen to you talk about your big leader this way?" I asked in my broken English.
"No, why? I can say anything I like about our president. This is America."
"If I say bad thing about Chairman Mao," I whispered, "I will go jail and may be killed," I sliced my finger dramatically across my neck.
"You're kidding!"
"Yes, it is true!" I replied.
"You know," the student continued, "Ronald Reagan, he's the governor of California and wants to be the next president. He was only a Hollywood actor before."
"Actor?" I didn't understand what "actor" was so I took out my dictionary. An actor who wants to become the president of America? Surely I had translated incorrectly. Ben choreographed a dance for Zhang and me over the next few weeks using George Gershwin's music. We had such difficulties understanding what Ben wanted us to do in the rehearsals though. Everything was so relaxed and our minimal understanding of English made it intensely frustrating for Ben. Zhang and I could easily complete the difficult and challenging turns and jumps but taking an effortless walk across the studio without turning out our feet or pointing our toes was a real challenge. At one point during a rehearsal Ben grabbed my arms and shook my entire body. "Relax, relax!" he shouted. Then he rushed over to Zhang and did the same. Zhang's shoulders will pop out of their sockets any minute, I thought. When I finally got the hang of what Ben wanted, it felt like I was cheating. It was too easy and casual. It didn't feel like dancing at all. But I could feel the gradual progression and developments in Gershwin's music and I could feel Ben's choreography naturally meshing into it.