The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Xiao-Mei Zhu

Author:Xiao-Mei, Zhu [Xiao-Mei, Zhu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-03-05T23:00:00+00:00

As things slowly normalized in the educational sector, cultural and artistic circles also began to take advantage of the new spirit of openness.

Intellectuals, back from their Shang shan xia xiang—the labor camps—came together and published their writings, which often had double meanings. Huang Anlun introduced me to the publishing milieu, where I met Xiaoqin, a young editor, with whom I immediately became friends. She was a poet; she read her poems to me and came to hear me play. Through her, I met intellectuals who were working for democracy. At the time, she was very much in love with a French man; she wanted to marry him and move to France.

Western books slowly began to reappear. Based on the enthusiastic recommendation of a painter friend, I traded two years of piano lessons for a translation of Rodin’s Art. Rodin’s subject was the visual arts, but his writings corresponded exactly to my experience of music. When I transposed his meditations to the musical world, they spoke to me: “Really beautiful drawing and style are those that you do not even think of praising because you are so interested in what they express. The same is true of color. There is really no beautiful style, no beautiful drawing, no beautiful color. There is only one beauty, the beauty of truth revealing itself.”

Teng Wenji was working on his first film, The Sounds of Life, a courageous look at how music had suffered catastrophically under the influence of Mao’s wife. We saw each other often. He now had a son, a gentle little boy to whom I was giving piano lessons, just as he had wanted at Zhangjiakou. I often talked to Teng Wenji about my desire to leave China.

“Don’t go,” he told me. “There is so much to accomplish right here.”

My other friends said the same thing:

“You have to love your country. Stay here.”

I did love my country, but I felt like it didn’t love me.

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