Cunxin Li

This book is so good, so inspiring.
The story follows Li Cunxin's journey from desperately poor peasant boy to the darling of the west as he is chosen from among hundreds of children to join Madame Mao's dance school and learn the artform of ballet.
Despite the subject matter, I loved this story. Cunxin is a natural born story teller. It goes along at it's own pace but it's never boring or repetitive. There wasn't anything I really disliked about this book except the sadness the circumstances evoked. Some of the stories Cunxin told are absoloutely hilarious (it'll take me a while before I can see a muffin as food!)
Anyone who is in the depths of despair should read this book. You'll feel instantly better (& you'll never look at a sweet potato the same way again)… (mehr)

SPOILERS

This is the story of a Chinese man who grew up in China in 1961, during the time of Mao Zedong. He was sent to a ballet school from the age of 11, where he spent the next 7 years learning ballet. He describes how Mao Zedong had always told the chinese people that Americans were evil, they were poor, they slept on the streets and they enslaved those people of colour.

This author finally won a scholarship to dance in Texas and in 1979 off he went to Texas for 6 weeks, to study the great western ballets which he had never previously known. While he was in Texas he realised that Mao Zedong has essentially lied to the 1 bllion chinese people. Although he was required to return home, he later began a campaign to retun to the USA to stuy for 1 year. In 1980 he was successful and returned to Texas to study Ballet for 1 year.

In 1981 when it came time to return to china, he refused to go home. He was held prisoner at the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas for several hours until he was finally released and allowed to stay in america as long as she did not wrote about his life in China. Fast forward 20 years and he decided that it was time to tell his story. He now lives in Australia. And there was a movie about his life story released around 2009.… (mehr)