But no matter how successful I would become as a dancer, there was always one last unfulfilled dream. So, in early 1988, with Mary holding my hand, I went back to the Chinese consulate in Houston.
It was still in the same building where I had been detained, nearly seven years earlier. This time I was there to ask the Chinese government's permission to allow me back into China to visit my family. To go home. I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I would receive.
The entrance to the consulate was now much grander. A big round emblem of the People's Republic of China had been erected high above the gate. Once inside we were warmly greeted by the cultural consul Mr Tang, who led us to a meeting room and offered us some Chinese tea. He didn't have any idea that this room was the very same room where Charles, Elizabeth and I had been detained back in April 1981.
I was nervous and uncomfortable sitting there. Images from that night seven years before flashed through my mind. I felt claustrophobic. My heart began to race.
Mary sensed my apprehension and gently reached for my hand and held it tight. Almost exactly like what Elizabeth had done on that dreadful night.
Consul Tang was easy-going and friendly but, even so, I wasn't sure what to make of him. Should I trust him? I'd walked into a trap here before. I didn't want that kind of nightmare again. I guessed that he would have been well informed of my past, but Consul Tang didn't mention that. Instead he began to tell us how the Chinese now had more freedom and a much higher living standard under Deng Xiaoping. He emphasised that China today had an open-door policy towards the rest of the world. It had been nearly nine years since I'd left China. Things had changed.
"Cunxin," he said, "I've read your file and I know quite a bit of your past. We want to forget what has happened, but there still could be considerable opposition within the Chinese government to your return to China. But I will try my best to help you because I believe that what you have achieved in the last nine years has only added glory to the image of the Chinese people. I hope Beijing will grant you permission, but I can't guarantee that they will."
I left the consulate feeling vaguely optimistic, but the waiting over the next few weeks was unbearable. A month passed. No word from the consulate. I called Consul Tang.
"Nothing yet. I'm sorry," he responded.
With each passing day my hopes became dimmer.
Two months later I had just about given up hope altogether when, after a rehearsal one day, I found a message in my pigeonhole at the studios: "Please call Consul Tang at the Chinese consulate."
With a trembling hand I dialled his number and prepared myself for bad news.
"Cunxin! Congratulations! You have been granted permission to go back to China. You and your wife can come to the consulate any time to apply for your visas."
At last. I was going home.
28 Going Home
Mary and I had to finish our May performances in Houston before we could depart for China. Two months more of waiting. By the time we were ready to leave we had five suitcases full of gifts and had organised to send two refrigerators on ahead for my family back home. Mary couldn't quite understand the gift-buying frenzy. In her mind, giving them money would have been far better. But for me, the gifts were part of the Chinese tradition I was accustomed to.
The thought of seeing every one of my brothers, my uncles, aunties and friends from my childhood, and especially my friends in Beijing -the Bandit, Teacher Xiao, Chong Xiongjun and Fengtian -made me overwhelmingly restless. These loved ones had only existed in my dreams for the past nine years. Now, each passing day seemed like a month. I grew impatient. I tried meditation to distract me from my obsessive longing, but I simply couldn't wait a day longer.
I usually had no trouble sleeping on planes but the trip home to China was different. There seemed to be a spring in my eyelids and every time I tried to close them they just popped right open again.
Even though I'd already told Mary so much about everyone who was important to me in China, she wanted to know more, always more. She asked me so many questions and she was just as excited as I was. We had so little sleep on that trip. But we didn't feel tired. We lived on adrenalin and excitement.
Beijing Airport, 3 June 1988. It was around seven in the evening when we landed. It was summertime and the weather was warm. My blood brother the Bandit and my violinist friend Fengtian were to meet us. And there they were, waiting in the crowd outside the baggage carousel. I rushed towards them, each of us with eyes full of tears, arms outstretched ready to shake hands, which was the correct thing to do for Chinese people in public. But instead, in a split second, I pulled them towards me and we hugged and hugged, sobbing on each other's shoulders.
"It's been a long time," the Bandit finally murmured.
I said nothing, only hugged him tighter.
I wanted to say so much, but no words could describe my joy. I had imagined this moment over and over, incessantly, for the last nine years.
The airport in Beijing was the same one that I'd left from in 1979. But now it was much grander, with a massive extension. By the time we hauled our luggage onto the minibus it was nearly 10 p.m., but the place was still crowded and there were long lines of taxis busily loading people in and out. Things had changed, I thought. When I'd left, air travel was well out of the reach for most Chinese and a taxi was a rare sight indeed.
Our minibus sped onto a dimly lit road towards a hotel in the city where the Bandit had booked a room for us. We talked non- stop. So many questions to ask each other. It was impossible to cram the past nine years into the two hours of this minibus trip. The only times the conversation paused was for me to translate for Mary.
Mary looked on in amazement all through the trip. She was speechless. This reunion. The long-lost friendship. She couldn't believe how much love there was between the Bandit and me.
By now both the Bandit and Fengtian had married. The Bandit's wife Marji was a manager in a foreign joint-venture four-star hotel. She spoke fluent English, so she could translate for Mary too. Fengtian's wife Jiping was a Chinese folk dance teacher at the Beijing Dance Academy. On that bus trip to our hotel, Marji, Jiping and Mary immediately became good friends.
But just before we arrived at our hotel, the Bandit told me something else. Something unsettling. The Chinese secret police wanted to see me.
Not again, I thought to myself. But they were already waiting for me when we arrived at the hotel. Two men and a woman. They wanted to talk to me, alone, but Mary refused to leave me. She said she couldn't understand Chinese anyway, so what difference would it make? That wasn't entirely true: by then Mary could speak and understand some Chinese, but the officials didn't know that so they relented and let her stay.
The Chinese secret police asked me a lot of questions, mainly about the defection in 1981. They asked me again if there was any Taiwanese or American government involvement. There were two conflicting reports, they said, from the consulate in Houston and from the embassy in Washington. They wanted to know which was closer to the truth. They were very polite and I never really felt in danger, but they did say that, for my safety, they would provide me with discreet protection. I knew what that meant. They were going to keep an eye on me.
Mary and I stayed in Beijing at first and spent every minute with my friends. The Bandit told me all that had happened since I'd left: he was now a soloist at the Central Ballet of China. Both Fengtian and Chong Xiongjun had been selected by the Song and Dance Company of China. Chong was married too, to a nice lady who worked at a clothing factory in Beijing. Much had happened. I had been away so long.