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Chapter 3: A Commune Childhood
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 and his brothers grow up with strong emotional bonds. Their dia has an especially strong bond with his fourth-oldest brother, Cunxin’s Fourth Uncle, too. Because Fourth Uncle and his wife could not have children of their own, Niang and Dia let them adopt one of their sons, Cunmao, when he was a toddler. When Cunmao discovers the truth many years later, he confronts Niang. Cunxin overhears him demanding to know why he was separated from the family and begging to come home. Niang tells him to be grateful; his adoptive parents love him and, as their only son, he has far more to eat in their house than he would with his birth family. Without admitting what he heard, from that day forward, Cunxin considers Cunmao a brother, not a cousin.
Cunmao’s adoption marks a rupture of the all-important family bonds among the Lis. But paradoxically, it also demonstrates immense love. Niang and Dia love Fourth Uncle and Fourth Aunt enough to help them have a family of their own. And they love Cunmao enough to know that he will have a better life in a household with more resources to go around. This moment also recalls (and anticipates) times when other members of the family make sacrifices and efforts on behalf of others, like when Na-na saved Cunsang from dying of exposure and when Fourth Aunt saved Cunxin’s life by treating his infected burn.
Themes
Cunxin’s eldest brother, Cuncia, is 13 years older, and he leaves to work for Communist Party as it imposes Chinese culture in Tibet. Cunxin’s second-oldest brother, Cunyuan longs to follow his brother to Tibet, but the family needs his salary, and Niang needs a daughter-in-law to help with the housework. So, over Cunyuan’s objections, they arrange his marriage to a girl from a nearby village. Cunxin’s fourth-oldest brother, Cunsang is a kind-hearted, hard-working boy. His grades aren’t the best, likely due to the accident when he was a baby. Cunxin is closest to his fifth-oldest brother, Cunfar. Because he’s older, Cunfar always wins when they wrestle, but Cunxin usually wins when they race because Cunfar has asthma. Cunfar protects Cunxin from bullies, but also sometimes steals food from the family wok and blames it on the notoriously hungry Cunxin.
The Li boys all have responsibilities and roles to play, both in their immediate family and within the Chinese Communist Party. At this moment, it seems as if Cuncia has, unlike the little frog in the story, escaped the well of Qingdao; readers will have to wait until the very end to learn what he thinks about his experience in the Party. Cunyuan, however, cannot escape the claims of familial responsibility. Because they are significantly younger, Cunsang, Cunfar, and Cunxin have few responsibilities outside of school. But they take care of one another, providing love and support to survive a frequently hard life.
Themes
Cunxin grows up running and playing in the streets of the commune with his brothers and other boys. They roughhouse and play games with improvised equipment. Once, during a round of hide and seek, Cunxin topples from the courtyard wall into a pot of fermented millet chaff which the family keeps as pig food. Luckily, Cunsang looks out the window in time to see Cunxin’s feet waving from the pot and rescue him from suffocation. Cunxin roams outdoors all year round. He loves playing in the snow in the winter and swimming near the dam in the summer. One summer, he nearly drowns there, but luckily one of his older cousins saves him. Treats are rare; he once borrows money from Na-na for a popsicle, then sells scraps to repay what he used. He continues to sell scraps until he has enough to buy Niang fermented bean curd.
Apart from his family, what Cunxin seems to appreciate most about his childhood is the degree of freedom he enjoys roaming around the countryside, playing, and exploring with his friends. In lieu of material possessions, Cunxin still feels rich in experience, self-possession, and freedom. Throughout it all, he remains linked to his family, which provides him with emotional support and physical safety. And when he can, he repays their love as best he can, like when he treats Niang to special food.
Themes
On hot summer nights, adults like the Wuho Man entertain the children with stories. Cunxin’s favorite concerns a cricket. After an ancient emperor demands crickets from the whole empire, a boy named Brave Hero falls ill while searching for one in the woods. His parents find him unconscious with a tiny cricket in his hand. They bring both home, then offer the cricket—which they call Brave Hero after their unconscious son—to the emperor’s guards as tribute. The guards laugh at the underwhelming cricket, until it kills a rooster with one blow. Brave Hero quickly becomes the emperor’s favorite fighting cricket. Meanwhile, the boy lies, still breathing but still unconscious, in his family’s home. Then one day, the cricket mysteriously disappears from his cage at the imperial palace. Far away, the little boy miraculously recovers. He sent his fighting spirit into the cricket to save his family.
This section introduces another story and another important metaphor that Cunxin and his brothers will use to understand the world and their place in it. Cricket fighting provides inexpensive entertainment for the village children. It—and the story—also provides a pointed reminder that the world can be a harsh place and that a person needs a strong fighting spirit to survive. Although Cunxin is still very young at this point, the story of a “brave hero” leaving his family and then returning one day as if by a miracle provides a framework he will later use to understand events in his own life.
Themes
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But Cunxin’s life isn’t all fun and games; there are serious political upheavals afoot too. His three oldest brothers become involved with the Red Guards. People in the village—including its formerly respected leader—are accused of being counterrevolutionaries. Counterrevolutionaries are subjected to public humiliation, paraded through town in dunce’s caps with blackboards listing their crimes hanging around their necks. At these rallies, people jeer and shout propaganda slogans like “Knock down and kill the capitalists!” Cunxin attends many rallies and listens to the Red Guards brag about killing class enemies, intellectuals, and anyone else who might pose a threat to the Communist Party.
Cunxin’s childhood coincides with the Cultural Revolution, a period of social and political upheaval as the Chinese Communist Party worked to purge allegedly Western and capitalist elements of society and as Chairman Mao ousted his rivals within the Party. Primarily a youth-centered movement, it’s not surprising that Cunxin’s eldest brothers become involved. The public shaming involved in punishing so-called counterrevolutionaries points toward the social control and pressure to conform exerted by the Party. Those who failed to conform were ostracized, and their fate offered a stark warning to everyone else: conform or face serious consequences. Yet, it remains an open question what threat the respected village leader could possibly pose to the Party or its goals. Thus, the book suggests that the point of these rallies lies less in ideological purity than social control.
Themes
At one rally, Cunxin listens to Red Guards read out the sentences for 15 convicted landlords, factory owners, and counterrevolutionaries before loading them onto a truck. Despite the adults’ warnings, Cunxin and some of his friends follow the truck to a nearby field where the accused line up against a mud wall. Some of them scream out their innocence and beg for mercy while a voice counts to three. Then shots ring out, and all of the men fall to the ground, dead. Cunxin screams and runs home, wishing he had listened to the adults. The sight of the execution haunts his dreams for a long time afterward.
The public execution of Cunxin’s neighbors shows the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party and those it has enabled will go to ensure conformity to Party ideology. Historically, many of those executed during the Cultural Revolution were, in fact, convicted outside of the criminal court system and denied the right to defend themselves. The lesson Cunxin learns from the public execution is clear: only conformity and obedience can guarantee life and safety in communist China.
Themes
