Word of our little impromptu dance spread quickly, and we ended up performing as we walked through the village, the children begging us to dance for them. Again and again, Li would lift me above his head and their little faces were full of wonder. I asked Li to have the children perform something for us in return. This request always resulted in them bursting into song, with one hand on their hip and the other hand waving in the air with military-style precision.
‘What are they singing, Li?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘It’s a popular song, “We Love You, Chairman Mao”!’
I began to realise how amazing it was that Li had managed to escape such a stringent regime. Nothing meant more than freedom – of thought, of education, to move and travel, to live the life you chose and to have your own thoughts. I felt sad that a whole generation of people were denied a proper education, because during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 the educated class were all taken away to work on farms or to jail, or simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Some historians have estimated that tens of millions died – mostly due to poverty, but millions were murdered. It just blew my mind.
I could see that Li’s family was doing well, in part because Li could send them money. Others didn’t have that. I was seeing firsthand the damage of the Cultural Revolution. If not for Madame Mao wanting to see ballet and realising that all the teachers had been sent to communes in the countryside (supposedly to ‘cleanse their filthy minds’), working on pig farms and in other harsh environments, Li would not have gone to Beijing and learned ballet, or travelled to Houston and met me. So many times during that visit my mouth was agape at the reality of it all.
Since Mao had imposed the one-child policy in China, some women got pregnant a second time and the child would have to be aborted – all enforced by the state. Women were encouraged to have hysterectomies to avoid ongoing abortions. We were told stories of babies birthed and abandoned. They would be ‘unauthorised babies’ and couldn’t be registered for education or medical benefits. Some parents were even jailed for breaking these rules.
Second brother, Cunyuan, had found a baby girl, Jie Jie, abandoned in a field in northern China and brought her home. There was a note from the mother, hoping that luck would see a kind person find and care for her daughter. Second brother was in an arranged marriage and always blamed Niang and Dia for his unhappiness. Adultery was a real no-no in China and an unwanted pregnancy was a disaster for the mother. Cunyuan had been caught between the old traditions and the new regime. He and his wife cared for and loved the baby girl as their own two daughters – but what a start for the little toddler I now saw before me. And it had not been easy. Just weeks before we arrived, she had pulled a pot of hot soup onto her face. One side of her perfect face had been burnt and blistered. I feared she would be scarred for life. However, she was still the cutest thing I’d ever seen!
Finally it was time to say farewell. I had fallen in love with Li’s family. I was so sad to say goodbye and I could see Li’s sorrow too. Thanks to some manoeuvring by the brothers, we eventually got our passports and return tickets a couple of days before our scheduled departure to Beijing. I suspected many packets of cigarettes had changed hands.
We bid a teary farewell to Niang and Dia at home while the rest of the family came to the airport. His younger brother and his bride would come with us to Beijing for their honeymoon. All the brothers, wives and children cried and everyone was very emotional. We had no idea when we would be allowed to come back again. Li’s brothers were all in Dia’s mould – strong, proud, dignified and loving men. And it was clear how much they loved each other.
As I looked back at their teary faces through the glass departure door, the tears started to roll down my face. I turned to Li and he was crying, too. We held hands and walked slowly to the plane, glancing back one last time to catch a final glimpse of the family.
7
Back in Houston we were enjoying making our house a home. Li got stuck into the garden and we renovated the garage apartment for his friend John Grensback and his new wife, Megan, to rent. While they were living there, Megan became pregnant. Li and I had talked about having children ourselves. We both knew it was something we wanted, but we hadn’t made any firm plans. We were simply too busy with our ballet careers, and we both knew that children did not really fit into performers’ lives. However, after some agonising discussions, we finally agreed that there was never a perfect time to have a child and decided to bite the bullet and go for it. But as fate would have it, we had to put this plan on hold for a while after all.
Christopher Bruce was returning to Houston Ballet to create a new ballet. Li and I were amazed and honoured when we learned that he wanted to choreograph it using the two of us as leads. The ballet would be based on the life of Buddha, with the possibility of filming it in India. Here was yet another exciting new opportunity – India and a film! I was thrilled to be cast as Buddha’s wife, and Li was Buddha.
‘I’d really like to do this ballet, Li, so let’s think about a baby later on,’ I told him.
‘Fine, darling. Whatever you want. It will be wonderful for us to work with Christopher, and to go to India!’
Christopher was coming in a few weeks’ time, but in the meantime we had to rehearse for Ben’s Swan Lake. He had invited his good friend Dame Margot Fonteyn – one of the world’s greatest ballerinas – to coach us. Unbeknown to me at that time, Dame Margot had been diagnosed with cancer. She had shared with Ben that she was coming to Houston for treatment at the city’s world-famous MD Anderson Cancer Center. She was a graceful and elegant woman. She was so knowledgeable and quite straightforward, which I loved. She was around seventy and still very beautiful. She had a wonderful aura, an inner radiance and calm. You felt quite at ease in her rehearsals. I had met her when she performed Afternoon of a Faun with Rudolf at London Festival Ballet. I’d had the privilege of being one of the five fauns and been able to watch her perform at close quarters. Now she was coaching me as a principal dancer, along with Li, Janie and Ken. It was such an honour.
Margot adored Li. She had actually spent quite a lot of her youth in China – living in Tianjin for a year when she was nine, then Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her early experiences had given her a familiarity and fascination with China, so she was very interested in Li and his story. It was in Shanghai that she’d started ballet lessons with Vera Volkova, who had herself studied directly under renowned Russian dancer and teacher Agrippina Vaganova. She was considered one of the greatest ballet teachers in the world and the famous ballet academy I’d visited in Saint Petersburg was named after her.
I was dancing the Swan Queen once again. Margot helped me discover more about the nuances of the enchanting Tchaikovsky score. Something of Margot’s essence just slipped into me. Simplicity and music were the focus of her coaching. She pushed us to deliver on artistic interpretation and technique, even in the studio. The role of Swan Queen was huge, requiring a great deal of stamina and strength. I felt Margot was pleased with my improvements, and I really enjoyed the performances as a result of her coaching.
After Swan Lake, Christopher arrived and it was time to start choreographing Gautama Buddha immediately. It sounded exciting but it could be a slow process. Christopher began with an idea of what he wanted to explore, but he wouldn’t be able to finalise the choreography until he saw us move, and move together. It could be a magical experience when things came nicely together, but it could also be frustrating if he didn’t get exactly what he was after. It was a privilege to have a whole new ballet choreographed on Li and me, only so recently married, felt like a dream come true.