Li Cunxin

The international bestselling memoir of a world-renowned artist''s defection from China to America. From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao''s cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice.

El último bailarín de Mao es la historia autobiográfica del bailarín Li Cunxin, desde su infancia marcada por la pobreza, hasta su edad adulta. Li Cunxin es uno de tantos millones de hijos de campesinos chinos que nacio durante la Revolucion de Mao Tse Tung (1893-1976) pero que consiguio cumplir su sueño de triunfar en el baile mas alla de las fronteras que le imponia el propio regimen comunista. El libro se convirtio en todo un best seller nada mas salir publicado primero en Australia y despues en mas paises.

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.

This is 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, this is a 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.