About a year after we married, she was finally accepted as a dancer by a small contemporary dance company in Oklahoma. She immediately started work. She was excited at last. She loved her new dancing opportunities. She loved performing. She was happy and alive.
Then one evening she phoned me from Oklahoma. "Li, I want a divorce."
I was shocked but not totally surprised. "If this is what you want, okay," I murmured sadly.
"I'll be back to get my stuff soon," she said shakily. "I'm sorry, Li, I really loved you."
I didn't blame Elizabeth for our failed marriage. I blamed myself. I had let Elizabeth down. I had failed as a husband. I didn't understand love in Western culture and I shrank back into my own protective cocoon, withdrawing from many of my friends. I felt hopeless. I doubted that a marriage between East and West could ever work. Hadn't Consul Zhang told me this, that night at the consulate? What could I have done to have saved our marriage? We loved each other. We had each other, and now we had lost each other. I blamed fate. Fate had pulled a dirty trick on me. I thought of my parents' successful marriage and felt only more grief and shame.
Now there was no way back. I had no home to go to now, so I poured myself into my dance even more. Ballet was the only thing
I knew how to do. It was my salvation as I tried to survive on my own in the Western world.
After our divorce, to help me pay my rent, I shared an apartment with another student for that first year. The second year I moved into a one-bedroom unit and I finally had my own space.
By now it was May 1982, the year I would go to London for the very first time. Ben had choreographed a pas de deux using Vivaldi's Four Seasons and he had especially created it for Janie Parker and me to perform at the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet gala.
Janie had joined the Houston Ballet in 1976. She'd fallen in love with Ben's choreography and artistry and, despite the outrage of George Balanchine and the artistic director of her company in Geneva, she'd followed Ben to Houston.
Janie had the most beautiful long legs and pretty feet. When she stood on pointe her legs seemed to stretch on and on. She was very lyrical in her dancing and, like me, she loved the romantic ballets.
This was going to be our first partnership and I was very apprehensive. She was one of the top two principal dancers of the Houston Ballet. In reality I was a little too short for her when she stood on pointe, but I made sure that I was strong enough and went through a physical strengthening program to make absolutely certain.
I couldn't wait to get to London. I longed to see it. London, Paris, Washington DC -the symbolic capitals of the Western world. I had seen some pictures of London but to be there in person, to experience the mood of this great city, would be awesome.
Like my first experience of America, I was shocked with what I saw in London. I'd guessed that the Chinese government would probably have lied to us about England too, but I was still overawed by its wealth and prosperity. The grandness of Buckingham Palace made me gasp with wonder. Where was the tragic poverty, the depressingly dark, unhappy London I had been told of in China? Britain should have made China look like heaven, but to my horror, it was the reverse.
It drizzled sporadically for the entire time we were in London but when the sun peeped out it was gloriously beautiful. The flowers in the meticulously maintained gardens, the café tables along the pathways, the wide busy streets. If only I could stay longer and enjoy all this! But our schedule was gruelling, and we spent most of our time in the hotel and the theatre. I did manage to see Piccadilly Circus, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and I marvelled at the glorious detail of Big Ben and Parliament House. The history fascinated me. Ben even introduced me to rich clotted cream for afternoon tea one day, and I remember sitting there in that café and thinking of the London Festival Ballet dancing in Beijing that time in 1979, so long ago now, it seemed.
Back in Houston, before my defection, Ben had been negotiating with the Chinese government to take some Houston Ballet dancers to China. This was one of Ben's great dreams, but after my defection everyone including Ben thought this possibility was dashed. But to everyone's surprise the Chinese Government allowed Ben to proceed with his plan. The Houston Ballet dancers were paired with the Chinese dancers and it was all a great success. As I had expected I wasn't allowed to go, nor would I have dared to return.
Ben's relationship with China mended after that trip and I was happy for him for that, but I still worried about the possible implications my defection might have had on my family and for several years I didn't write or call them, fearing I would get them into further trouble. When I eventually did dare to write, I received no reply and this just added even more worry to my already heavy heart.
It was now eighteen months since my defection and the Houston Ballet was to do a six-week tour through Europe: Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Luxembourg and Monaco. It would be my first look at the Continent.
I loved the places we performed at. Epernay was one of them: our impresario had booked us there for two performances and we were warned that the stage was small, uneven and raked.
During the afternoon rehearsal it became apparent that the stage was far too small to accommodate the entire cast of Etude. Ben had to take some dancers out of a couple of the larger scenes. I was one of the principals and had to find the smoothest part of the stage on which to perform my difficult turns. After the rehearsal, Ben gathered all the dancers together. "I know we are in the city where the best champagnes are made, but I hope you are disciplined and responsible enough not to drink any before the show," Ben warned.
The audience enthusiastically received our performance. But I did see a few wobbly legs that night. Maybe it was the raked stage, maybe it was the champagne, but right after the performance the British consul general, a distant cousin of Ben's, provided the whole company with Möet amp; Chandon and Taittinger, passed around in flowery handpainted glasses. It was consumed like water and the party lasted into the early hours of the following morning.
From Epernay we travelled to Nice, with its beautiful Mediterranean beaches and turquoise water, where I would brunch in a beach café and watch the boats passing back and forth. I visited the Matisse and Chagall collections and at night dined with the dancers and friends from the ballet, tasting red wines I had never even imagined and eating superb cuisine in even the smallest and shabbiest of cafés.
While touring in Italy we had a few days free. I went to Florence with three of my Houston Ballet friends. I was awe-struck by Florence. Endless monuments and sculptures, the history of the Medici family, masterpieces by Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, the Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Signoria. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited that I missed my lunch appointment with my friends and my hotel check-out time, and had to rush to the train station to catch my train to Venice.
Venice was the place all of us were eager to visit. A friend had once told me that "to discover romance and beauty in Venice one must walk and walk". Well, at least that's what I thought she'd said. So I walked and walked, from one historical site to another. I stood there, in total amazement at the striking of the bell in the Torre dell'Orologio, at the incredible paintings, at the rich Venetian colours. This was romance and beauty in its ultimate form, I thought. I saw decay everywhere, part of the true beauty of Venice and its rich history. But this ancient city also made me sad-I thought of China and all that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.