Mao's Last Dancer

Based on Mao's Last Dancer, a runaway international bestseller in Australia with over 100,000 copies sold.

The true story of a poor Chinese peasant boy who, plucked unsuspectingly at the age of ten from millions of others across the land to be trained as a ballet dancer, turned the situation to his advantage to become one of the world's greatest ballet stars. 
Simply told, with charm, humour and compassion and at times, great drama. His childhood, despite the terrible hardships, is drawn with love and affection and contrasts starkly with the seven lonely years of gruelling training at the Peking Dance Academy. At the age of l8, Li performs at the Houston Ballet school in the US, which leads to his dramatic defection. 
This is a condensed edition, specially for younger readers, and has an Afterword especially for children.

Li Cunxin was born in 1961 near the city of Qingdao on the coast of north-east China. The sixth of seven sons in a poor rual family Li's peasant life in Chairman Mao's communist china changed dramatically when he was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural advisers to become a student at the Beijing Dance Academy. Li went on to become one of the best male dancers in the world. He now lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and family.

Li Cunxin

Raised in a desperately poor village during the height of China's Cultural Revolution, Li Cunxin's childhood revolved around the commune, his family and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. 
 
Until, that is, Madame Mao's cultural delegates came in search of young peasants to study ballet at the academy in Beijing and he was thrust into a completely unfamiliar world. 
 
When a trip to Texas as part of a rare cultural exchange opened his eyes to life and love beyond China's borders, he defected to the United States in an extraordinary and dramatic tale of Cold War intrigue. 
 
Told in his own distinctive voice, this is Li's inspirational story of how he came to be Mao's last dancer, and one of the world's greatest ballet dancers.

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