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Chapter 11: The Pen
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mao’s Last Dancer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Opportunity, Hard Work, and Success
Love and Family
The Power of Stories
Freedom vs. Repression
Summary
Analysis
Cunxin’s second year at the academy is much easier because he now knows what to expect. When Madame Mao visits, he gets to participate in the performance. Still dissatisfied with the artistry of their dance, she orders additional martial arts classes and sends one student each from the Beijing Martial Arts School and the Beijing Acrobatics School to join the class. One of them, Wang Lujun (nicknamed the Bandit), quickly becomes friends with Cunxin. He struggles with dance, too, because he missed the foundational instruction and because his body is used to martial arts movements.
Being invited to participate in the academy’s demonstration shows that Cunxin’s hard work is beginning to pay off, albeit slowly. But Madame Mao’s visit also provides a reminder of one crucial limit to his success—Party interference. Madame Mao cares more about ideology then artistry. This doesn’t bode well for students like Cunxin, who continually respond to works of art with their emotions and who long for the freedom to express themselves.
Themes
The Bandit frequently purchases candy to share using the spending money his father sends him. Once, a political head catches him and orders him to write a self-criticism. He can’t figure out what he did wrong, but Cunxin, adept at playing the system, suggests some ideas. He suggests that the Bandit’s money could have been better spent feeding a starving person, reminding the Bandit that selfish actions corrupt the mind. Soon afterward, the Bandit asks Cunxin to become his blood brother in the old Kung Fu tradition. At first Cunxin refuses, afraid that he will disappoint the Bandit: he’s so used to taking his own siblings for granted that he doesn’t know how to be a good brother. But the Bandit insists that he loves Cunxin as he is, and Cunxin relents. Over a special meal, they mingle blood pricked from their fingers and compose a poem celebrating their friendship.
Despite the socialist premise that a society should share its resources equally, the book has thus far provided much evidence of inequality in China, from the rural-urban divide to the allocation of the 5-7 University’s best food for the dancers. But the authorities draw a line when it’s the students, not themselves, making choices about luxuries like candy. Although the money the Bandit uses is, in theory, his own, the school’s political heads’ response suggests otherwise. An expert by this point in pretending to conform, Cunxin helps the Bandit draft his self-criticism. The Bandit’s arrival marks an important turning point in Cunxin’s academy experience. Thus far, he has struggled to navigate the world outside of the loving, protective confines of his family. Now, he starts to create a support system of his own in Beijing, one that will give him the support and love he needs to truly succeed.
Themes
In Cunxin’s second year, the academy returns to its old location in the city. New dance teachers arrive, including Xiao Shuhua. He is a small, baby-faced man who loves ballet and wants his students to excel. He’s quick and effusive with both praise and correction. He drills the students interminably in pirouettes. Sometimes, Cunxin does so many spins in a day that he dreams of twirling at night, like the man in Teacher Xiao’s favorite story who falls asleep and dreams of success while waiting to eat a bowl of simple millet soup. The moral, Teacher Xiao reminds the students, is that great things don’t come easily. Initially, Xiao largely ignores the shy, underdeveloped Cunxin. But then he realizes that Cunxin can be a good student when he’s interested. Teacher Xiao nurtures Cunxin, and Cunxin begins to advance toward the top of the class.
Soon after Cunxin begins to build his friendship with the Bandit, he meets Teacher Xiao. He immediately likes the man, whose approach to teaching ballet is based in his passion for the art form and his affection for his students rather than in his political ideology or need to wield power over others. In contrast to Teacher Gao, he sees (and treats) Cunxin as a human being. Crucially, like Dia, Teacher Xiao relies on stories to inspire his students. The story of the millet dream and its moral of hard work and perseverance recalls the story of Brave Hero the fighting cricket. Both the stories and the man inspire Cunxin to work harder, and as he does so, he noticeably begins to improve.
Themes
Cunxin starts history and geography classes in his second year at the academy, which predictably focus on Chinese history and Communist Party ideology. But his favorite teacher second year is still Chen Yuen, the folk-dance instructor. Sadly, he disappears suddenly one day. The students later learn that he was outed as homosexual and the Party sent him to a pig farm for reeducation. Eventually he returns to the academy—as a carpenter. His sexuality cost him his reputation, his teaching job, his wife, and his position in society. He must write weekly self-criticisms. When he loses three fingers to a machine, he cannot afford medical treatment. Unable to hold a saw with his mangled hand, he is demoted again, this time to cleaning toilets.
Chen Yeun’s sad fate graphically illustrates what happens when people are unwilling or unable to conform to Party ideology and expectations. Because homosexuality counts as a serious crime in Chairman Mao’s China, Chen Yuen faces stiff punishment for his transgressions, including both punitive labor and an ongoing loss of status. And his ongoing tribulations suggest that many of the Party’s punishments focus more on inculcating sense of shame than on truly rehabilitating the accused.
Themes
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Cunxin makes another friend, a Beijing native named Chong Xiongjun. Xiongjun invites Cunxin to visit his family. It takes three buses—costing two yuan—to make the trip to the Chongs’ simple, three-room apartment, where Cunxin immediately bonds with the family. Xiongjun’s father takes the boys to the glass factory where he works, giving Cunxin a whole pocketful of marbles as a gift. Xiongjun’s mother gives Cunxin a bag of dates and asks him to come back soon. Cunxin eagerly agrees that he will. But he cannot afford the bus fare. When he finally admits as much to Xiongjun, the Chongs insist on paying for his fare, and he starts going home with Xiongjun once a month. The Chongs become a second family to him.
Without his family nearby to support him, Cunxin floundered and struggled to find his footing at the academy. The school, its teachers, and its administrators consistently send the message that the students are only valuable for what they can contribute to Madame Mao and the communist cause. In contrast, the Chongs value Cunxin as a human being, not a tool to be used. They pay for his fare because they care about him and his wellbeing, regardless of what he can do for them in return. Thus, they illustrate the importance of emotional support to Cunxin’s—and by extension, everyone else’s—thriving.
Themes
When Cunxin returns to the village for the next Chinese New Year, not much has changed except that his brother Cunyuan has become far angrier and more resentful of Niang and Dia for forcing him to marry a girl not of his choosing and work in the commune. Taking Cunxin to the train station at the end of the visit, Cunyuan describes his despair. He longs for a sliver of happiness or opportunity, yet his parents cannot spare his labor and income. He says he has considered suicide. He feels hopeless, working seven days a week year-round with no break but his nighttime dreams—which he’s usually too tired to remember anyway. He compares Cuncia in Tibet and Cunxin in Beijing to lucky, winning crickets. He himself feels like a sickly loser in comparison. He says he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep fighting.
As Cunxin’s life continues to improve, Cunyuan’s gets worse and worse. No one in the family—and, by implication, in Chinese society generally—has the right to make independent choices about their own life. Those chosen to be dancers will be dancers. Those needed as peasant farmers will be peasant farmers. Everyone becomes, in this worldview, a tool for the Party. And Cunyuan’s despair suggests that Party propaganda isn’t convincing, at least not to him. Unlike Cunxin, he can’t tell himself that he’s part of a greater cause. His distress contributes directly to Cunxin’s growing unease and awareness of the essential injustice and inhumanity of elements of life in China.
Themes
As the train leaves the station, Cunxin opens a package from Cunyuan. It contains sorghum sweets as a gift and a note thanking the Chongs for their kindness to his little brother. Cunxin begins to weep uncontrollably. He wishes he could find a solution to Cunyuan’s problems, but he knows that he cannot pull his family from their deep poverty. Amid his tears, Cunxin realizes that he can never go back to his old life. He loves his family, but he sees how narrowly he has escaped the soul-killing despair of a peasant’s life. For the first time in his life, the voice in his head doesn’t belong to his niang or his dia or one of his brothers. It is his own, and it tells him he must take advantage of his luck. He must press onward.
Cunxin weeps inconsolably because he realizes how helpless he truly is to change Cunyuan’s circumstances. Cunyuan works just as hard as Cunxin does, maybe even harder. But without the same opportunities as his brother—the chance to go to Beijing and escape the well—Cunyuan has no hope of changing his life for the better. For the first time, Cunxin truly realizes how deep the well of rural poverty and limitation in which he grew up truly is. And he knows that if he’s going to survive, he cannot go back. This marks an important turning point for him. Now, he’s beginning to understand that escaping the well requires sacrifices, including the ongoing distance between himself and his family. Yet, desperate for a chance, he presses onward.
Themes
