During the Cultural Revolution, Zhu Xiao-mei, a budding pianist at the Beijing Music Conservatory was sent (along with some of her classmates) to a labor camp near Zhangjiakou, a small city about 100 miles northwest of Beijing. She would remain there for five years.
Life in the camp was brutal, but security was lax enough that she was able to escape for a time and make arrangements to have her piano secretly sent to the labor camp. With her beloved piano nearby, she was able to sneak off to practice, developing skills and using the piano as her means of coping with and healing from the brutality she suffered.
When the Cultural Revolution ended, she was allowed to return to the Conservatory to continue here studies. It soon became clear to her that there were no avenues in China to pursue her music, so she left for Hong Kong. From there she went to the US, and finally to France, where today she is an accomplished concert pianist.
Zhu Xiao-mei tells her story in the book The Secret Piano: From Mao’s Labor Camps to Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
I HIGHLY recommend it.
She has also just released a new CD called Bach: Goldberg Variations.
(photos: Amazon.com)
[…] It’s called The Secret Piano: From Mao’s Labor Camp to Bach’s Goldberg. I blogged about the book earlier in a post titled “Sneaking a Piano into a Labor Camp.” […]