In late 1973, I decided to leave the University of California, Berkeley. C. Berkeley) for nearly two years of teaching, all the belongings stuffed into the trunk of the car, the front of the antenna pole, tied a branch of flowers, that is, the previous night friends at the farewell party sent more than a thousand flowers, it with the Bay Area friends to give me heartfelt wishes, accompanied me all the way to the east. It just so happened that a friend in Berkeley was going to stop by the East Coast, and I didn't have any constraints on time, so I spent nine days calmly crossing the United States. The car went around the Grand Canyon, through Yellowstone National Park, along the way to camp out, watch the moon, and drove the car home into Manhattan, New York. Since then, I have become a "New Yorker", and I have no chance to see the most abundant, deeply imprinted, and most special stronghold that has influenced the trajectory of my life - Berkeley.
Since 1971, I often perform in the eastern United States, and I always find opportunities to go to New York to watch various art events and take modern dance classes of different systems. Every time I stayed in New York for a short time, I was fascinated and lingered, and I was deeply attracted by the city's artistic environment, strong vitality and huge energy. I confirmed in my heart that to truly learn modern dance, I must go to the Center for Modern Art in New York. At first, with this idea, I also hesitated to worry, it was not easy to settle down in Berkeley, everything has to start again, what will the future be? But another thought also reminds me that when I left everything behind, I did not pursue stability in life, I experienced the aura of "big star" in the past, and it was clear that "Vanity Fair" was just a passing cloud. Is it just for the sake of the stability of life, and give up the goals in your mind? I have crossed the Pacific Ocean, left the land I knew and the "home" on it, and now, in a strange country, from California on the West Coast to New York on the East Coast, what is the difference? What are you afraid of? In recent years, due to the frequent touring, I have become accustomed to carrying boxes from side to place, and everywhere I go is the same - where the boxes are, where is my "home". The thought of this makes one hesitate any longer. Although I was only offered by MIT to be a resident Artist for a month after leaving California, I made the decision to move my "home" to New York with a suitcase. At the end of 2018, on my trip back to New York from Hong Kong, I decided to stop in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit old friends. Asked by the owners, Helen Tu and Andrew Chen, "What do you want to do in the Bay Area these days?" Seemingly without thinking, he blurted out: "Want to revisit Berkeley!" ”
In 2018, Jiang Qing was in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
On December 27, 2018, a group of five of us drove down the road from San Francisco in the sunshine. It has been forty-five years since I left Berkeley, and the moment the car crossed the Bay Bridge and entered its destination, the picture of life in the past flashed through my mind like an upside-down. I became anxious and eager to return to the old place and confirm the campus, but I could not help but feel timid.
Xiao Yiyu's old wooden house on Spruce Street in Berkeley is still preserved. The house next to the campus was all too familiar to me, still hidden behind the tree, but the big tree in front of the door became a giant tree. As soon as I stepped into the house, the whole memory formed was like melting ice on the frozen sea, and large and small ice cubes began to float and collide in my mind. This used to be her and Tu Weiming's love nest, when I began teaching in the Third World Art Department at Berkeley, Xiao Yiyu was working in the Department of East Asia, and Tu Weiming was a professor of history, and soon became friends with the enthusiastic couple who were the "golden children" of Tunghai University. In the kitchen, I seem to see the beautiful hostess Xiao Yiyu in charge of the kitchen; the living room is as old as ever, the talkative host, Tu Weiming, is smiling and making a fire for the fireplace; the paintings on the wall are as old as ever, and the artist's friends Zhuang Zhe, Ma Hao, Linda Young... The youngest son, Eugene, who is less than ten years old, looks as weak as his mother, and usually hides quietly upstairs to work hard.
Walking toward the campus, passing the main street Telegraph Ave., I suddenly smelled the smell of cannabis floating in the air, which was my deepest impression of Berkeley more than forty years ago, and at the age of twenty-six, I smelled this deceptive "aroma", and in an instant, I flipped back to the early seventies like a fog, and every little bit of the old place was vividly remembered, and every little bit flashed in front of my eyes like a real illusion.
Jiang Qing at Berkeley Gate, December 27, 2018
In the spring of 1972, I unexpectedly received a letter from the Berkeley Department of Third World Art. The content was: The department sent someone to watch my Chinese dance demonstration performance at the Long Beach school of California, admired it, and asked me if I was interested in applying for the position of dance teacher in the department. The accident made me excited, but I hesitated, how can I cope with the work of teaching dance at the university with my English? However, the job search was eager, so he had to carry this English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary in his arms to break through the "pass". When I applied, I put the dictionary down on my desk and said straight to the point: "I would love to get this chair, but there is a big language barrier, if you don't mind, you can allow me to bring the dictionary to the church like today, I am willing to try." The few people who interviewed me looked at me sincerely and cheerfully, and couldn't help but laugh out loud, saying: According to their performance on the stage, I believe that I will perform equally well in the classroom.
On the first day of school in the spring of 1972, I entered the classroom with a dictionary, and the first class opened: "I teach you to dance, you teach me English." "After the opening of the class, I found that learning dance in American universities is a free course, and among dozens of male and female students, there are people of all disciplines, departments, ages, and colors. Most people who come to learn Chinese dance are purely as a knowledge to understand. I carefully prepared the movement plus style of physical training materials, completely for the training of professional dancers, and when I took the class, I found that the teaching materials were basically bull's head and wrong horse's mouth. Therefore, in addition to simplifying physical training, the textbook adds a brief introduction to the history of Chinese dance, as well as the basic knowledge of Chinese folk dance: the distribution of various ethnic dances, the form of activities, the characteristics of movements, and so on. I had never studied this knowledge myself, so I went to the library to look it up, but fortunately, the materials that could be found in the East Asian Library of Berkeley and Stanford University were very rich, and I asked my colleagues to help take pictures of the slideshows with pictures and texts. In the preparation of new teaching materials, I enriched my dance knowledge and benefited a lot.
In 1972, Jiang Qing taught dance at the University of Berkeley
On the Berkeley campus, I truly enjoyed the California "sunshine," with plenty of heat and energy emanating from every corner of the campus. Each bulletin board is lined with large and small pieces of paper, with all kinds of contents: human rights thematic discussions, anti-war protests, political rallies, film appreciation, women's liberation, gay demonstrations, yoga class admissions, moving auctions, finding roommates to live with... In addition to the opportunity to meet all kinds of people on campus, you can also hear all kinds of sounds and music, participate in various activities, and take various classes.
I used my teaching position to take free modern dance classes in college that I had never been exposed to, and when I first came into contact with modern dance, a new and unknown dance world appeared in front of me: the laws of movement, the subject matter of creation, the choreography techniques, and the overall artistic concept were very different from the dances I was familiar with before. Since discovering the dance "New World", I have felt incredibly fresh and excited, and I still remember that I liked to lie on the green and thick grass of the campus, greedily absorbing the warmth of the sun thousands of miles away, looking up with my pillow arms, I felt that the sky was open and clear...
In addition to work and study, almost all the time is occupied by the "Defense of Diaoyutai Movement". Since the 1970s, the "bao fishing" with Taiwanese students as the main people staying in the country and patriotic nationalism as the appeal has swept in vigorously. In the United States, the major colleges and universities "fishing" people and horses, as if the male and mighty are in a big series, defecting to the Base Camp of Berkeley, the poor students need to stay when they defect, and the busy master is turning over on his horse. For the first time, I came into contact with my compatriots who dared to care about the fate of the nation, dared to hold public assemblies and discussions, and dared to march on the streets... Naturally, I was caught up in the fiery frenzy of infection. At that time, everyone still had the impression that I had been a "big star", so I was repeatedly asked to volunteer to do fundraising performances for "bao fishing", and I was obliged to gladly agree. I remember that the talented Liu Daren, Guo Songdi, Li Yu, Fu Yunchu, etc., who were studying in Berkeley at that time, were enthusiastic about "fishing" because of their sleep and forgetfulness, and preferred to give up their doctorate and their doctoral supervisor, Professor Chen Shijun, was so angry that he almost vomited blood. There are also some active- thinking, radical-minded, age-like friends, who are out of school and unemployed for "fishing", and as a result, for their livelihood, they sell Chinese food around the campus, and early in the morning, they go to Chinatown wholesale takeaway to sell on campus, all of which are char siu buns, spring rolls, fried rice... A type that foreigners love to eat. There is a gap in the time between my class and class, and I often like to walk around the campus, and as soon as I am caught by the "vendor" who knows me, he asks me to temporarily "replace the class", and the almost cookie-cutter reason is "internal urgency". Later, the number of "substitution shifts" became more and more frequent, and the time became longer and longer. The most memorable one was that once, the female comrade of the fishing fishing handed over the child to me to manage, that day I was still wearing a tight exercise suit "substitute shift", and then, the day was getting late, the attention was getting more and more, the people were getting colder, and the heart was getting more and more anxious, and it turned out that she had forgotten me earlier, and it was a date that stole the soul. As a result, this pair of absurd and romantic "comrades" ends in comedy - lovers eventually become dependents.
Flag hanging on a lamppost "One Hundred and Fifty Years of Glory"
I waddled around the campus, wanting to verify the impression that remained in my mind, and when I was passing through, because of my nostalgic mood, I had to pay attention to the grass, wall, flower, and door of a tree. On the occasion of Berkeley's 150th anniversary, the campus was "dressed up" to decorate the façade, with flags hanging on each lamppost, each with a different message, but proudly written at the bottom: 150 years of Light. One of them touched me deeply, and my experience was truly true, with the flag reading: The pavement of Sather Gate throbs to the beat of the campus, and few who enter through those Portals escape the fascination of Berkeley）。 Coinciding with the annual leave, the campus is cold and quiet, the festive atmosphere carries a kind of loneliness that has fallen into displeasure, and see Berkeley, is it joy or sorrow for me? Or is it sorrow with joy? Under doubt, I can't help but sigh infinitely: people are old and trees are tall. It is still recognizable that the entrance to durant hall, where I used to work every day, the thick lawn that often basked in the afternoon sun, the Sproul Plaza, a gathering square known for its student movement, was crowded with people, and I acted as a "hawker" standing on the street selling food...
Most of the Berkeley "fishing" friends I mentioned above served in the United Nations after China joined the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, and now they are retired like me, and when they have the opportunity to meet, they often think of the years when Berkeley was "fascinated" by the vigorous people. At that time, Berkeley colleagues are now often in contact with old friends Liu Daren and Li Jieying, husband and wife enjoy garden life, big pen cultivation, in 2010 published a novel with the theme of fishing as the theme of "Wind and Thunder in the Distance", he gave me a souvenir. In the epilogue of the book he writes: "The reason I want to write is, of course, closely related to my own life experience. Through my own experience and reflection, I feel that I understand them. Their ambitions, their destinies, their sorrows, their wavering disillusionment and pursuit, I understand. After I met Berkeley again this time, this text could not be as he wrote: "I understand", but at least I reflected on the situation and state of mind of this group of Chinese intellectuals at that time. It is fitting that the famous Berkeley rock singer Tim Armstrong has a song called "Sad but True."