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Chapter 29: Back in My Village
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
A few days before Cunxin and Mary return to America, the family celebrates Jing Tring’s wedding. Some of the old traditions have gone, like stepping over the saddle and the bride’s three-day vigil. Others have been modified—now the bride and groom arrive in festively decorated cars instead of sedan chairs. There are new traditions, too, like picking up hard-boiled eggs with chopsticks, or the father of the groom giving a speech. But others, like the special foods and the dates and chestnuts tied to the chopsticks, remain the same from the days of Niang’s and Dia’s wedding.
The book begins with the wedding of Niang and Dia and ends with the wedding of their youngest son, quietly underlining the book's idea that the most valuable things in life—love, support, caring—come from one’s family. The catalogue of traditions suggests that some things will never change (like the importance of love) but others can—and will. The book thus holds out hope that changes will continue in China and that one day, everyone might enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that Cunxin got through a combination of his own hard work and lucky opportunities.
Themes
The family insists on celebrating Cunxin and Mary, too, since no one got to attend their American wedding. Fifty guests cram into the courtyard, sharing a happy feast and drinking until they can hardly stand up straight. At an uncle’s request, Cunxin and Mary perform a dance. Dia gives a speech. He tells the crowd how scared and uncertain he was at his own wedding, and how lucky he has been to have Niang by his side to teach him how to live. He talks about how their children—their seven sons—gave them strength and happiness in the bleakest times. He promises his sons that if they whole-heartedly love and treasure their wives and children, their lives will turn out well.
Dia’s words directly express something the book has been saying from the beginning: that the love and support of a family can help a person to survive unimaginable difficulty circumstances. He and Niang may not have much—if anything—in terms of worldly goods to leave their seven sons. But their legacy of love, kindness, and unstinting support ensured their sons’ survival and has allowed each son to find some measure of happiness and peace—even those, like Cuncia and Cunyuan, who still feel trapped in the well of rural poverty and Party oppression.
Themes
Cunxin soaks up as much time with friends and family as possible. Yang Ping organizes a class reunion where Cunxin sees Teacher Song—whose decision to point him out to the dance instructors so massively changed his life—again. Niang insists on sewing a quilt—the traditional gift for newlyweds—for him and Mary to take home. She wants them to have a long and happy marriage. She and Dia love Mary and her willingness to accommodate herself to their challenging commune life. For her part, Mary loves everything about her time in the village—everything except the outdoor toilet and a bad case of food poisoning near the end of the trip.
The reunion with Cunxin’s classmates points to the role of luck and opportunity in his success. Although much of the book has rightly focused on his own hard work and effort, he would still be in the village if it weren’t for Teacher Song pointing him out to Chen Leung all those years ago. Niang makes a quilt to symbolize long life and love for Cunxin and Mary—a wish that already seems to be coming true. Mary’s willingness to endure the challenges and discomforts of village life suggest both her own inner resilience and strength and the unbreakable bond she shares with Cunxin.
Themes
Finally, Cunxin and Mary bid farewell to Niang, Dia, and the rest of the family in the village. Jing Tring, the Bandit, Teacher Xiao, Fengtian, and Chong Xiongjun see them off at the Beijing airport. As the plane takes off, Cunxin gratefully reflects on how much better his brothers’ lives are now than when he first left for the Beijing Dance Academy so many years before. Still, he feels guilty that only he has had the opportunity to escape the impoverished and limited circumstances in which they grew up. As the plane flies on and Mary sleeps peacefully beside him, Cunxin’s guilt slowly turns to excitement. He could never have predicted where his life would lead, but his experiences have shown him that the world is full of possibilities. And his family’s love promises that he will never, ever face anything alone.
Just like on his last flight out of China—or on his childhood train rides from the village to Beijing—Cunxin has mixed feelings. On the one hand, he’s sad to leave his family behind because they mean so much to him. Relatedly, he’s sorry to leave behind his brothers like Cuncia and Cunyuan who want very badly to escape the narrow confines of their lives. But on the other hand, he realizes that he can only live his own life. And working to take advantage of the opportunities that life has handed him honors the family he loves so much. When he was a child, he couldn’t have predicted the changes that would happen in his life—or in China more broadly. And so he looks forward to discovering the unseen possibilities he believe the future has to offer him—and anyone else willing to work hard and love the people around them to the best of their ability.
Themes
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