Freedom vs. Repression Theme Analysis

“My son,” he said with a saddened heart, “your friend is right. I heard there is a much bigger world up there, with many more stars than we can see from here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it earlier?” the little frog asked.

“What’s the use? Your destiny is down here in the well. There is no way for you to get out of here,” the father frog replied.

The little frog said, “I can, I can get out of here. Let me show you!” […]

“No use, my son. I’ve tried all my life and so did your forefathers. Forget the world above. Be satisfied with what you have, or it will cause you such misery in life.”

[The] poor little frog spent his life trying to escape the well […] but he couldn’t. The big world above remained only a dream.

“Good, very good!” Teacher Song paused. She glanced over the class. “Yes, we want to wish Chairman Mao a long long life, because our great leader saved us. I’m sure your parents have told you many stories about the cruel life they lived under Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang regime. They were cold, dark days indeed. That government only cared for the rich. Children like you couldn’t even dream of sitting here, but Chairman Mao made it possible in China to have this privilege. Today, I’ll teach you how to write ‘Long, long live Chairman Mao, I love Chairman Mao, you love Chairman Mao, we all love Chairman Mao.’ I’ll now write them on the blackboard. Pay special attention to the sequence of the strokes.” She turned to the blackboard and wrote several lines with furious pace.

I was stunned. I didn’t get the sequence of the strokes at all!

I was always fascinated with birds when I was a child. I would watch them and daydream. I admired their gracefulness and envied their freedom. I wished for wings so I too could fly out of this harsh life. I wished to speak their language, to ask them what it felt like, flying so high. I wondered which god to ask or indeed if there was such a god who had the power to transform humans into animals. But then I also thought of the constant danger of being shot down by humans or eaten by larger animals. And the birds never seemed to have enough food to eat, either, because they were constantly nibbling on human feces. Without food, life as a bird might not have been much better than life as a human. And if I became a bird, I would not see my family again.

I told everyone that she was such a happy bird, because she chattered and sang all day and all night. She drove my whole family crazy, though. “She isn’t singing, she is crying, ‘Let me out, let me out!’” Cunfar said, acting as though he was the poor bird.

“Don’t be silly, she loves me. I’m her savior. Look at all the food she gets.”

But in reality she ate very little. After school one day that week, I rushed home with some worms in my hands and found my Beautiful River Treasure dead in her cage. I sobbed my heart out. I blamed every member of my family for her death. […] My heart was broken. Deep inside I knew I was responsible for her death. Instead of helping her, I had taken her freedom away, and I hated myself for it.

Everyone of all ages in China was encouraged to learn from [Lei Feng]. Everyone wanted to be a “Living Lei Feng.” […]

For a brief period some students stopped attending school or were late for classes because they said they were helping the elderly and the needy just like Lei Feng. But they were just being lazy, and the teachers soon found out. A moral, a “tonic story,” for these students were told in our class:

One day, Lei Feng was late for his military activity because he was carrying home an elderly lady with bound feet. The head of his army unit criticized him without knowing the real reason behind his tardiness. Lei Feng apologized and wrote in his diary that he should be able to do kind things for the needy as well as carrying out the normal required activities.

I couldn’t understand all the words but I could make out that the story was about a rich steel baron, in some place called Chicago, who fell in love with a young girl. […] Love stories were hard to find. I would have given anything to read the whole thing. But the Red Guards destroyed any books that contained even a hint of romance or western flavor. You would be jailed if such books were found in your house.

I kept those forty pages for a long time, locking them like a treasure in my personal drawer […]. I poured over the words. I wondered how the people in the story could have such freedom. It sounded too good to be true. But even after hearing years of fearful propaganda about America and the West, the book was enough to plant a seed of curiosity in my heart.

I watched a few of the students being tested before me, and they cried out and winced. One of the officials came over to me and bent both of my legs outward. Another official held my shoulders to stabilize me and a third pushed his knee against my lower back, at the same time pulling both my knees backward with great force to test the turnout of my hip joints. It was so painful it felt like everything would break at once. I wanted to scream as well, but for some reason I didn’t. I had a stubborn thought: I didn’t want to lose my dignity, I didn’t want to lose my pride. And I clenched my teeth.

The numbers, our political heads explained, referred to 7 May 1970, when Madame Mao delivered a famous speech to the arts and education communities, using Chairman Mao’s philosophies to encourage all intellectuals to engage, both physically and mentally, with the three classes: peasants, workers, and soldiers. They were golden words to the Ministry of Culture, so they proposed that Madame Mao should be the artistic director of this new university, and that it should be located in the heart of the communes, where future artists could learn and work among the peasants every day. In such an isolated site, surrounded by communes and fields, students would be protected from any negative influences from the city. Madame Mao supported this idea, and the project quickly received the central government’s backing.

“Keep your knee straight!” He pushed my knee down on the barre. “Now I want you to bend your body forward and try to touch your toes with your head. Stay down there! Don’t’ get up until I tell you to do so!” Gao ordered.

The pain was excruciating and was increasing at an alarming rate.

“Didn’t you hear me, keep your knees straight!” Gao shouted at Zhu Yaoping […]. “Keep your head down!” he told Fu Xijun […].

My right leg was now in such pain that I had trouble even lifting it off the barre. I quickly glanced at the other students. I wasn’t the only one suffering.

When I lifted my other leg onto the barre, I knew what to expect this time. So I started to count. I wondered if I was the only one […] until I heard the boy next to me counting too.

But in truth I didn’t really believe that playing with the birds would have caused any harm to Chairman Mao’s revolution at all. In truth I felt humiliated. I’d never had to do this in my old school.

My self-criticism passed the test easily, and my teacher and classmates burst into laughter when I read that last line. I also had to stand outside the classroom for a whole hour afterwards. “Cunxin, have you fed the poor birds yet?” the boys teased as they walked past, and my face burned with humiliation.

I hadn’t meant what I’d written. I hadn’t learned anything about serving Chairman Mao. All it made me realize was just how much freedom I was being denied. I would never be able to play with my beloved birds again. Now I was a bird trapped in a cage where even my feet had to conform to the rules.

There were no foreign books and almost all of the books were picture books—stories about foreign children written by Chinese authors, and the stories were always sad and tragic. Most of them were about struggling colored children in America and how the whites mistreated them, or they were about the struggle between good and evil. The good characters were always beautiful and handsome. The evil characters always had big crooked noses and fat ugly faces. They were Chaing Kaishek’s Guomindang officers and spies, or foreign enemies. I hated the evil guys and felt so sad for those impoverished colored children. I often shed sympathetic tears and I felt even more grateful for the heavenly life that Chairman Mao had given us. If our life was heavenly, then these poor children’s lives in America must be hell indeed.

“We can’t match the food you had in Beijing, but I hope you still like my dumplings,” my niang said as she set a bowl of steaming hot dumplings in front of me.

“This was all I’d dream about, but we did have dumplings all the time at the academy,” I lied. I pushed the bowl in front of my dia, because I knew there wouldn’t be enough for everyone.

“Liuga, can you count how many times you ate meat there?” Jing Tring asked.

“Nearly every day!” I replied.

Cunsang was wide-eyed with disbelief.

I nodded. There was silence.

“Madame Mao wouldn’t let her students starve, would she?” Niang finally said.

I limbered my legs on the barre and started to practice. After a number of fruitless tries I suddenly discovered something. Even before I started jumping into the split, my hands were already subconsciously preparing to protect me. My lack of self-confidence didn’t give my body a chance. So I tried putting hands behind my head when jumping into the split. My body kept falling to the side, so I turned my front leg out and my balance was corrected. Next I turned my attention to bouncing up from the split position without using my hands. This was far more difficult to overcome.

[…]I held onto the barre with both hands and did my split jumps underneath. At first, I used my arms to pull me up from the split position. Eventually […] I discovered which muscles in my legs were useful […] I had made my breakthrough.

“You can tell this ballet was designed by a capitalist,” our political head said. “He has glorified the rich and portrayed the peasants as whores. What a contrast to our model ballets! Our three classes of people are our heroes!”

We were all Mao’s faithful children and we all wholeheartedly agreed […] but I couldn’t help quietly admiring Albrecht’s brilliant dancing […].

During the Cultural Revolution almost every new creation in art was a joint project. […New] works had to have a Communist Party leader as one of the main creators […]. There would normally be more than one choreographer, set designer, lighting designer, and composer […]. Individualism was firmly discouraged. The Red Detachment of Women, which we’d performed for Madame Mao, was one of those ballets, and it took eight years to complete. But once I’d seen the beautiful Giselle I began to doubt The Red Detachment of Women was quite so artistically brilliant.

Twenty students, including me, were selected to attend Ben Stevenson’s classes. Ben seemed to enjoy teaching at our academy and I was exhilarated with his approach. Compared to our restrictive training, his seemed so much easier and freer. He approached dance mainly from the artistic aspect, emphasizing relaxation and fluidity of movement rather than strict technique. I found him fascinating and inspiring, and my body felt good while I performed in his classes.

“I wish to propose two toasts. The first is to all of you for putting up with me for over five and a half years of shouting and carrying on. This may be our last gathering together. I’m proud to be your teacher and I wish you all the best of luck. You’re Chairman and Madame Mao’s last generation of dancers. You have studied under the most strict and disciplined rules imaginable, but this will give you an edge over the others. You’ll be the last dancers of the era.” Teacher Xiao stopped briefly to calm his emotions. “I’ll boldly make a prediction. Your dance training will never be duplicated. Your dancing will proudly stand high in Chinese ballet history.”

He paused again. “My second toast is to Cunxin’s American trip. I hope you will respect your past and charge toward the future. Perfect your art form. Make all of China proud.”

“Ohh…Li!” Ben started to sob. “I’m finished! I’ve lost everything! Consul Zhang at the consulate thinks I’ve masterminded this whole thing. They think it’s all my fault. You have ruined everything! I’ll never be allowed back to China now!”

“I’m sorry, Ben. What you want me say?” I asked.

“I want you to say that this is all a mistake and that you will go back to China. Nothing will change if you go back now. I have spoken to Consul Zhang. You’ll still be a hero if you go back to China now. You’ll still be allowed to come back.”

“If you want live in China, you go,” I said.

“Li, the least you can do for me is explain all this to the consulate! Tell them I had nothing to do with it. Can you do this for me?”

I didn’t regret what I had done. In a strange way I felt at peace with myself. […] But still I felt a strong sense of sorrow for my parents. I hadn’t even sent them a single dollar yet.

[…] My poor dear niang. She had suffered enough hardship already. I thought of her wrinkled face and the sorrow she would feel if she never saw me again. Oh, how much I loved her! She was the most innocent and loving niang on this earth. She had given me everything, yet I had nothing to give her in return. Would my niang ever recover from her despair at losing one of her beloved sons? This would surely kill her.

I thought too of my beloved teachers who had invested so much of their time and effort in me […]. Their hopes would be dashed.

Aside from the drugs, though, I did want to experiment with nearly everything the Western world had to offer. I discovered Western movies, especially the John Wayne ones. I liked the courage he portrayed. I also liked movies such as Star Trek and the 007 films. I went to operas, symphonies, pop concerts and plays. Through Ben I met some extraordinary people—people including Liza Minnelli, Cleo Laine, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and John Denver. I even went to discos, but I wasn’t too fond of them. Still, I was like a bird let out of its cage, and I could fly in any direction I chose.

By the time they were ready to leave, my parents had many suitcases full of gifts: watches for my brothers, clothes for my sisters-in-law, picture books and nylon jump ropes for the children, mugs and T-shirts with the Houston skyline on them for friends and relatives, a couple of bottles of Maotai for my grandfather and oldest uncle, and Ben’s sewing machine too. “We left China poor, but will return so rich!” my niang exclaimed on their last night in America. “I don’t mean the material things. It’s the richness I feel in my heart. How well you’re doing here and how much you’re loved and respected! We will savor this trip for the rest of our lives. We’re truly fortunate.”

“Mary, can you have six extra boys and give us one each?” another sister-in-law asked, and everyone laughed. Deep inside, however, I knew how they felt. Not producing a son to continue the family line was considered the worst betrayal of your ancestors […] I looked at my third brother’s beautiful daughter, Lulu, then looked at my nephew and my other nieces. I felt sad that they, like most of the next generation of children growing up in China, would have no brothers or sisters. We had survived through generations of dark and impoverished living because of this one strength, because of the unconditional love and unselfish care of each other within our family unit. It was all we’d had.

“I’m only one of millions of victims,” my brother explained to Mary. “I am, like so many people in China, still amazed at how badly I was manipulated and betrayed by Mao and the Gang of Four. The Red Guards of yesterday were the epitome of the communist spirit. Now we are searching for answers. We have to live with our injured pride and lost beliefs.”

I felt so much sorrow for Cuncia. I knew what he said was true—he had spent the best part of his youth pursuing nothing but propaganda. But the Cultural Revolution didn’t just rob him of his youth; it crushed and destroyed his spirit and his soul. His trust in society had vanished. Even his sacred family values had been called into question by Mao and the Cultural Revolution.