Mao’s Last Dancer: Chapter 5: Na-na Summary & Analysis

One day when Cunxin is eight, he tries to cook lunch. While lifting the wok cover to check on the food, he stumbles from a stool, burning his face on the edge of the wok and smashing all six of the family’s new brand plates in the fall. He sneaks next door to Na-na’s house to ask for help. She promises to take care of the situation. After all, she says, he broke the plates trying to help, so he certainly doesn’t deserve to be punished for it. She tells him to stay at her house and eat her lunch while she goes next door to smooth things over. Later, Cunxin learns that she told Niang the whole story—but with herself as the culprit instead of him. He slips next door and plants a big kiss on her bony cheek to thank her.

One year later, Na-na dies. The family holds a traditional, three-day vigil over her body. When Cunxin asks why they do this, Cunmao says it’s in case she comes back to life, and he tells a story about an old couple whose disrespectful son and daughter-in-law cared for them poorly. When another relative snuck them hard-boiled eggs, the man ate his too quickly and choked. The son and daughter-in-law arranged a hasty and cheap burial for him after just one night of vigil. But when local tomb robbers dug up the old man’s coffin, having heard he was buried with precious jewelry, they discovered he wasn’t dead after all. And that’s why everybody waits three days to bury a body. Cunxin asks Cunyuan, too, who says the vigil allows distant relatives enough time to come to the funeral. Cunxin likes Cunmao’s story better, even if it leaves many questions unanswered.

Na-na firmly believed in an afterlife, so she asked Niang and Dia to make sure that she was properly—and traditionally—buried. The family commissions a carpenter to make a special coffin, carved with birds, flowers, trees, and waters, and youngest auntie’s husband paints it. But getting permission for a traditional burial is difficult because the Communist Party disdains burial traditions and other religious beliefs; they want people to be cremated. Family members lobby all levels of commune leadership. While no one wants to take responsibility for granting permission, no one says “no,” either. The funeral—the last traditional one the village will ever have—proceeds as Na-na wished.

Na-na’s daughters wash her body and dress her in the special clothes she made in preparation for the afterlife. The commune’s best calligrapher makes a paper nameplate to sit atop the coffin as a temporary marker so that Na-na’s spirit will always know where it belongs. The family make clay models of people, a horse, and a cow—representing food and servants for the afterlife—to place in the grave. On the first and second nights of the vigil and early on the morning of the third day, the family walks to a temporary temple (the Red Guards destroyed the old one) to ask the local god to grant Na-na a happy afterlife. On the day of the funeral, the male family members carry the body to the gravesite, while the women stay at home, weeping ceremonially and preparing the feast.

The funeral is very expensive, but it’s also very impressive. Relatives come from near and far to participate. Cunxin has never heard so much crying and has never seen Dia cry before this moment. Cunxin’s heart breaks as they begin to fill Na-na’s grave with dirt and he realizes he will never see her again. He and the rest of his family wear a scrap of white fabric, symbolizing mourning, for a full year afterward. Dia, Fourth Uncle, and other family members frequently visit Na-na’s grave with symbolic gifts.

One month after Na-na’s funeral, Niang suddenly falls ill. On the second night, Na-na appears in her dreams, accusing the family of failing to care for her body. Niang tells her sewing circle friends about the dream. One offers to perform a test to determine whether it was really Na-na or an evil spirit. When the test indicates that Na-na is, indeed, in trouble, Niang sends Cunxin and two of his brothers to check on the grave. They find that an animal has been digging at it, and they patch up the hole as best they can. Later, when Dia comes home, Niang sends him to make sure the grave is secure and to offer Na-na gifts. Once she’s sure Na-na has been appeased, she tells family about her dream, which becomes a frequent topic of discussion in the family.