ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LI CUNXIN was born in 1961, in the New Village, Li Commune, near the city of Qingdao on the coast of northeast China. The sixth of seven sons in a poor rural family, Li’s peasant life in Chairman Mao’s communist China changed dramatically when, at the age of eleven, he was chosen by Madame Mao’s cultural advisers to become a student at the Beijing Dance Academy. After summer school in America, for which he was one of only two students chosen, he defected to the West and became a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet.

 

Li went on to become one of the best male dancers in the world. He is now a senior manager in a major stockbroking firm and lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife, Mary, and their three children, Sophie, Tom and Bridie.