mao's last dancer and franklin township library

In 1981 when it came time to return to china, he refused to go home.

In 1980 he was successful and returned to Texas to study Ballet for 1 year. Although he was required to return home, he later began a campaign to retun to the USA to stuy for 1 year. While he was in Texas he realised that Mao Zedong has essentially lied to the 1 bllion chinese people. 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. 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. He was sent to a ballet school from the age of 11, where he spent the next 7 years learning ballet. This compelling memoir includes photos documenting Li's extraordinary life.This is the story of a Chinese man who grew up in China in 1961, during the time of Mao Zedong. This inspiring story of passion, resilience, and a family's love captures the harsh reality of life in Mao's communist China and the exciting world of professional dance. Ultimately, he defected to the west in a dramatic media storm, and went on to dance with the Houston Ballet for sixteen years. was nothing like his communist indoctrination had led him to believe.

From one hardship to another, Cunxin demonstrated perseverance and an appetite for success that led him to be chosen as one of the first two people to leave Mao's China and go to American to dance on a special cultural exchange.

Having known bitter poverty in his rural China home, ballet would be his family's best chance for a better future. At the age of eleven, Li Cunxin was one of the privileged few selected to serve in Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution by studying at the Beijing Dance Academy. The young reader edition of the international bestseller now a major motion picture.

Mao's last dancer and franklin township library