Mao’s last dancer – Li Cunxin
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.
Black Beauty starts life on a farm with his mother Duchess where he is broken in and sold for hunting and carriage driving. He has a fine life but he and his friends Ginger and Merrylegs are sold when the family moves. Beauty and Ginger are sold together but poor Ginger has trouble accepting the tight bearing rein which holds her head high. She is sold off. A boy named Joe Green looks after Beauty at this time and sometimes gets his treatment wrong as he is only learning, so Beauty gets a chill and is very ill. Later in life Beauty becomes a cab horse and the London family are utterly dependent on him for a living. He works six days a week but some horses worked seven. The winter nights see Beauty standing outside a house where a card party is in place, waiting and waiting for their customer. Rich people gave no thought to anyone serving them.
At 15 years old, Ally Queen is uprooted from her comfortable city existence and dumped in a small town. Her mother, witness to a hit-and-run, is suffering from post-traumatic stress, and the quiet country life is supposed to improve her emotional state. Instead, the move just seems to make things worse—for Mom, for Ally, for everyone. Ally misses the way things used to be; she misses playing with her dad and little brother. But she’s a teenager now, and teenage girls don’t go fishing even if they really like it. When Ally meets Rel, she feels like she’s hit rock bottom, but first impressions can be deceptive. As she starts to relax into herself, Ally finds life doesn’t need to be as hard as she makes it.
Fict.it.ious 
