Mou's last dancer

This is a book, it is written by Li Cunxin and is infact his memories put into an excelently written book. This book starts off with him as a child where he grew up in poverty in southern China. His mother- Niang is what he used to call her- and father-Dia as he used to call him- brought him up with six brothers (two older brothers and three younger). He ran around in the village and felt very free and alive, his soul burst out of him running in that village.

He then attended his first day of school. The chinese writing looked like grass to him, the maths took him ages to work out and the entire atmosphere of the classroom made him want to be free again and be able to run around in the village like he used to. A few months went buy and he was still making no progress. One of the days in that school people from the Mao dance academy came to rucruite people for the academy. He didnt have much interest but surprisingly... they chose him! They made him do flexibility tests wich snapped both his hamstrings but he didnt cry or make a sound. A few weeks later he was chosen to go to beijing where the dance academy was. He arrived at the academy and saw the tall buildings where he would live for the next 9 years, they walked towards the building and people escorted them to there rooms! they had hard training programs and had to be awake before 4:30 am each morning. He made excellent progress in his studies and the ballet. In that first year he met a teacher called teacher Xiao. Why wasnt he like the other tearchers? Li asked, he was just nicer! A few years went by and he carried on proggressing.

One day teacher Xiao had very important news. "Li you have been selected to go to America." He couldnt believe he was going to the west for the first time, no one in his family had ever gotten out of the village let alone to another continent, and none of them had never driven in a car or on an aeroplane. He arrived in america where he trained with a man named Ben, there were many different things and people in America compared to china, all he did in that time was eat and eat and surprisingly the more he asked for food, the more it came. he trained with ben for four months and then went back to china where teacher Xiao told him that him and one of his friends would be going to "the west" (America) for a permanent training program. He returned to America and lived there for the rest of his life where he found the love of his life, but the chinese goverment gave him problems with the marriage and so Li was taken into captivity. he was then freed and went back to his wife. Li carried on with his dancing career and that seperated him and his wife. A few years later he met someone new and had three beatiful children. Li's wife was american and taught ballet at a school.

It was a fantastically written book and i loved every moment of it! To my readers out there... if you are there, i would just like to say that you need to read this book, it has a mixture of love and passion and sadness aswell as happiness, please read it and let me know what you think!