mao last dancer

The novel ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’ by Li Cunxin explores various themes. Two of the main themes displayed are perseverance and self-discipline. Perseverance and self-discipline are significant themes in the novel because they were the attributes that enabled Cunxin to amount to great success.

The archer, a Chinese fable which inspired Li Cunxin to be determined and resilient. Mao’s Last Dancer is a film directed by Bruce Beresford which highlighted Li Cunxin’s journey to be a world class ballet dancer. During his ballet lesson at the Beijing dance academy, Cunxin overcame numerous challenges or obstacle that keeps him toward reaching his goals. His teacher, Xiao, helped him to be an advance ballet dancer than he was before. Teacher Chen has told him a Chinese fable, The Archer which inspired him to train harder.

Jonathan D. Spence's The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution is a work of narrative history first published in 1981. The date of Spence's publication is important for understanding the work: it was published only five years after the death of Mao Zedong. In a sense, then, the book intends to be a history of revolution in China through the twentieth century, culminating of course with Mao's revolution. But Spence's intention is to give the reader a more intimate feeling for this time period, by concentrating specifically on the lives and writings of various figures who may not have been central to the revolutionary movements per se, but who may be understood by the reader as being in some way representative. Spence's examinations of the lives of various Chinese writers from the turn of the twentieth century until the death of Mao Zedong gives an impression of how life was actually lived during the time period when major historical changes were taking place in China. But overall Spence also gives an accurate picture of the difficulty of uniting China during the revolutions of the twentieth century in particular, it is fascinating to see how the regional differences which have, at so many points, threatened to collapse China into separate independent provinces, or to degenerate into regional competition that destroys any concept of a united national entity, are played out within Spence's overall account.

1. How does Ji-li’s opinion about the Communist Party and its beloved leader, Mao Ze-dong, change over the course of her story? Name some of the most crucial events in the autobiography and explain how they change Ji-li's feelings about the party.

The method applied by Zedong focused on uniting China under one belief in order to implement communist ideas in the country, widely changing the country’s structure. (Doc 7). At his defense trial, Cuban revolution leader Fidel Castro appealed to those struggling in his country. He spoke to those who hoped for a brighter future and who have been betrayed by their country. By addressing their battle, Castro urged them to fight for a better Cuba. His relentless and undying commitment ultimately granted Castro his wish for a revolution. (Doc 8). An additional document consisting of a diary entry from a Chinese citizen during the communist revolution would create a clearer vision as to how convincing Mao Zedong truly was.

‘Mao’s Last Dancer’ is one of the finest inspirational films of the century, because the film shows the struggles of Li from his first lesson to his last performance, and the perseverance needed to go through with it. Poverty in the first years of his life shaped him to not waste the opportunity and taught him to be tough. The thought of never seeing his family in America pushed him to dance better. What would you do if you had Li’s opportunity. ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’ shows the struggles of Li from his first lesson to his last performance.

From the start the author portrays the strength and power of the communist ideology in a “concrete statue of Chairman Mao, at whose feet peasants were napping,” (Jin 5); the statues represent the ever lasting effect that Mao has on China’s ideology, incremented into the way of life and

Mao Zedong’s Red Treasured Book’s was like a guild on how to live your life. It showed Mao’s inner mind and his wisdom, so everyone thought. Especially his younger followers, with their young minds, not quite understanding the ways of the world.

Being one of the most well-known characters of Chinese modern history, Mao Zedong has been constantly debated in both Western and Eastern worlds. Like all historic figures, Mao Zedong has been seen in different light: sometimes under glorification and reverence, and sometimes as a devil that dragged China into one of its darkest eras. These contradicting opinions can be easily seen in the assigned readings of this course. While Mao Zedong is generally praised for his military accomplishments during the overturning of the former government of the Kuomintang and the war against Japanese invasion, opinions differ when his ruling of China after 1949 comes into discussion. In some readings, he is most

Li was born into a very poor family in Qingdao, a very small town in China, in the year 1961. Day by day his family struggled to stay alive, and it was hard to feed the family of nine. Li always wanted to do something to help his family. However, it wasn't until he got chose for Madame Mao’s dance academy that he realised that to save his family he first had to save himself. Li's autobiographical novel "Mao's Last Dancer" shows us that he has the ability to succeed due to his determination and resilience, which is seen when li attempts to do five pirouettes in one go and when he tried to get permission to go to America for the second time.

This presents to the audience the hardships he went through and the dictatorial regime that he was raised in whilst in China. The editing of Mao's Last Dancer has enabled those with and without the historical and sociocultural context to appreciate the

Cunxin and Kathy’s characters both centralise on their difficult upbringing and subsequent hope for a better future. In Mao’s Last Dancer, Cunxin’s poverty stricken childhood constructs a world of struggle and hardship. Although he insists that they were ‘luckier than the thirty million who starved to death’, Cunxin’s childhood shaped him as a person for the future. He longed to be the ‘frog’ that escaped the ‘well’. Cunxin’s ambition manifests in his unwillingness to give up when pleading with the Minister of Culture for permission to return to America. If Cunxin had not had the difficult upbringing he had, he probably would not have had the courage to persist. Similarly, whilst Ishiguro’s character, Kathy, also experienced hardship, it wasn’t financial destitution that disadvantaged her, but growing up at the sheltered

The novel “To Live” by Yu Hua is considered “one of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China”. The film adaptation of “To Live” directed by Zhang Yimou came out two years later is still banned. Presentation of life during the rise and rule of communism in the film was almost positive in comparison to the novel. In the novel Yu uses a folk song collector’s ten-year-old memory of Fugui reflecting on his life to set the tone of the novel as a depiction of one individual’s life. The most significant difference between the novel and the film is Zhang’s decision to omit the frame story from the film which shifts Fugui’s character from a passive conformist to an active one and closes the emotional distance between the audience and the characters.

The early twentieth century is viewed as a moment in time that had a profound impact on how literature is written until this very day. Events during this epoch such as the May Fourth Movement were viewed as the catalysts for many modern writers past and present to break the mould. This would enable an author to express their deepest thoughts without fearing the repercussions like it had in the past. Lu Xun was a renowned writer that was even considered by Mao Zedong to be ‘commander of China’s cultural revolution’ with reference to Lu Xun’s sophisticated and innovative stories illustrating the social unjust and inequality amongst the Chinese people. Thus, Lu Xun’s literature ranging from his short stories ‘Diary of A Madman’ and ‘New

The book opens on Jung Chang discussing the chaos her Grandmother’s experienced in stating, “At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China” (Chang 21). She describes these changes in a very objective way in order to relate back to the fact that her grandmother was viewed as more of an object than a person. Chang continues to report back on Chinese values at the time such as the importance of filial piety, which is the