Martha's standard improved on a daily basis for those two weeks at the competition. She was a fast learner, with great mental strength and beautiful physicality. I knew she would one day become a wonderful artist and to our astonishment we were awarded a silver medal by the international jury. Ben again received the medal for best choreography. It was a great feeling, to receive such an honour. We had danced against competitors from the Bolshoi, the Kirov and the Paris Opèra Ballet: we learned so much from them and Martha and I had formed a close partnership.
After our return from Japan, Martha and I went straight into rehearsals for Nutcracker. I'd been told by Ben that my parents would be arriving in about a month's time, so one evening Preston and Richard came over to help me begin to get my house ready.
"What's all this?" Richard yelled, pointing at a pile of stuff in the middle of my living room: there was some timber, a spare toilet seat, some tiles, bags of cement, and tools…
"They are my treasures. They are very useful," I replied.
"I know they are useful, but are you going to use them before your parents come?"
"I'm not sure," I replied.
Richard rolled his eyes. "Out, out, throw them all out!" he shouted. Richard and Preston went through each item in that pile and chucked out almost all of my "treasures". Then they organised a working party of dancers, stage-hands, an electrician, carpenter and plumber, even some board members. They painted, cleaned, fixed… and by the end of the week my house was transformed. There wasn't even any sawdust left on the windowsills. But they hadn't finished yet-Richard lent me two bamboo plants in huge flowerpots. Ben bought a pair of antique Mandarin chairs and Preston gave me an antique Mandarin skirt which he'd had framed by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. By the end of it all my house looked like a million dollars.
Ben and Preston had taken over the arrangement of my parents' travel too. They wanted me to leave everything to them: just concentrate on Nutcracker. So I did.
A couple of days before my parents' arrival, I went crazy with shopping. I bought so many different kinds of food, all the rare and precious things we could never dream of having in China when I grew up: eggs, tree fungus, dried mushrooms, seafood, pork, chicken, rice, even Tsingtao beer and the best rice wine called Maotai which, in China, was only available to high government officials. I bought fruit-apples, pears, oranges, bananas, grapes and a whole watermelon and stacked them into two big plates on the dining table. My small fridge was overflowing. I also bought a futon bed for my parents to sleep on because I was concerned they wouldn't be able to sleep on a bouncy Western mattress after so many years of sleeping on a hard earth bed. I bought them thick cotton shirts and sweaters too. I was beside myself with excitement. I wanted to buy them everything the Western world had to offer. I knew they would be blown away by what they were about to see.
The final rehearsals for Nutcracker would usually have taken an enormous physical toll, but not this time. I had so much energy.
My feet were light. I was filled with music and colour, and my heart blossomed like a lotus flower. Just thinking about my parents would bring tears to my eyes, but now they were tears of happiness and joy.
I wanted this opening night performance to be magic, not only for the general public, but also for my parents. This would be the first time they would see me dance, the first time they would see a live performance, and I would be dancing the prince. The anticipation was agonising. And, at the back of my mind, I was still afraid that the Chinese government might change its mind at the last minute and prevent my parents' coming.
For several nights I lay in bed, eyes wide open, thinking about my dia and my niang. I wasn't sure what they would think. Would they like America? Would they handle the culture shock and be able to enjoy their time here? And how would they cope while I was working?
18 December, 1984. The day my parents were due to arrive. I spent the entire day in the studio and theatre. I had to concentrate on the performance. It was the only thing that helped my anxiety. Eventually I ran out of things to practise, so I started my makeup early that afternoon. My makeup brush was very unsteady, my hands trembled and I could hear my heart thumping loudly. Everything felt strange and new. I tried to concentrate but it was impossible to chase away the images of my parents, brothers and all the people I loved back home.
The last thing I had to do to finish my makeup was to spray some silver glitter into my hair, to suggest snowflakes. As my dresser helped me put my jacket on, I glanced at myself in the mirror and wondered what my parents would think of all of this. They were coming from another world.
I went on stage and felt the intense heat of the spotlights. How would my parents react to these bright lights, to the thousands of people clapping in the audience? I wondered, would they be proud of me?
It was time for the performance to begin. My lips felt dry and I was breathing fast. As the time ticked away, my anxiety and nervousness rose. "Why aren't we starting? What's wrong?" I asked the stage manager.
"Nothing. We're just delaying the performance by a few minutes- people are stuck in traffic," the stage manager replied.
The truth was, however, that my parents' plane was an hour late. By the time they arrived it was about twenty minutes past curtain-up and I was a nervous wreck. They'd been met at the airport by my friend Betty Lou and escorted by police car through the rush-hour traffic.
Word spread quickly through the audience about my parents' arrival. Houstonians were well aware of my story, so when my parents were finally ushered into the theatre the whole audience burst into applause.
My poor niang! My poor dia! They had never been away from Qingdao before. They had just had their first car ride, train ride and airplane experience all in one day, and now here they were, suddenly faced with the blinding lights of a grand theatre and a sea of people applauding them.
"Six years! Six long years!" my niang kept saying. "Finally I'm going to see my son. My heart is so hot, it burns with joy and pride!"
I was told of my parents' arrival only moments before the applause erupted from the audience. My whole being burst with happiness. I wanted to soar into the air. I wanted to cry. I wanted to see them then, at that very moment, but the performance was about to start and I knew I would have to wait.
The audience was ecstatic. People applauded even when I just came on stage. They too wanted me to dance well, to dance for my parents.
My partners were Janie Parker and Suzanne Longley that night and they shared my excitement. Ben's pas de deux were challenging, some of the lifts were difficult and often created problems for us in rehearsals. But not that night. Everything was seamless. The lifts felt light, the partnering effortless: I felt my partners' every subtle movement and they felt mine. My nerves were there, yet under control, and they became my endless source of energy. My leaps were high: I was flying like a bird, gliding through the open sky. If the music had allowed it, I would have leapt into the air all night. There was no hard work, only sheer joy.
The audience seemed totally captivated. I could taste the excitement. All the hopping up and down stairs, the pirouetting in the candlelight, the torn hamstrings and the painful injuries of the past twelve years-it all felt worthwhile that night. When the curtain came down at the end of Act One, I knew I had completed one of my best performances-and I had done it in front of my parents. The dream I had once been too afraid to dream had come true.