Arts & Culture
Chinese officials release dancer detained after he wed U.S. girl
Ballet dancer Li Cunxin was detained for 20 hours in 1981 at the Chinese consulate after marrying an American.
This story ran in the Houston Chronicle on April 30, 1981. The headlines and words are reprinted.
The following story is based on information gathered by Burke Watson, Ann Holmes, Jim Barlow, Mike Snyder and Joha Onoda and was written by Watson.
Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin, wearing a lapel button reading “Don’t let the turkeys get you down,” was released from the Chinese consulate, where he had been detained for more than 20 hours after telling consular officials he had married an American woman.
Looking worn from their ordeal, the 20-year-old dancer and his new wife, the former Elizabeth Mackey, 18, emerged from the consulate at 3417 Montrose Blvd. Wednesday afternoon and quickly were hustled away by friends in a sports car.
Li’s attorney, Charles Foster, said the dancer was kept so long at the consulate “because this (the marriage) came as a surprise and they (Chinese officials) wanted to get all the facts.
“They were a little disappointed because he’s a great artist and they need people like that. But they said they will abide by his decision,” Foster said.
Foster and officials of the Houston Ballet, with whom Li performs, stressed that Li’s decision was not a defection and that he intends to return to China for visits.
Before leaving, the softspoken Li told reporters, “I am very happy to be able to stay with my wife. I hope to do something very nice for China and America to create better relations.”
Li’s release apparently ended a confusing chain of events which began Monday morning when he and Miss Mackey, a student at the Houston Ballet Academy and originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., were wed in a civil ceremony here.
Her mother, Janet Mackey, said Miss Mackey had met Li in November 1979, when the Houston Ballet was in Florida.
Li, an exchange student from Tsingtao, China, has been dancing with the Houston Ballet for 18 months and has won praise both in Houston and most recently in New York.
Mrs. Mackey said she had flown here Sunday because she knew of the wedding plans, but she did not attend the wedding, because of “the many complexities” her daughter feared could lead to diplomatic snarls.
“They all felt it would be safer and more quiet if a few people as possible were involved in the wedding,” she said, “But they had my blessing.”
Mrs. Mackey, who works with a ballet theater in West Palm Beach, said the only witness to the wedding was a friend of her daughter, but denied that it was an elopement.
“To elope, I think you have to be running away from somebody,” she said. “Who would they elope from? I knew they were going to get married.”
At the urging of Houston Ballet Foundation officials, Li went to the People’s Republic of China consulate Tuesday night to inform officials there of his marriage and his wish to remain in the United States for the time being, Foster said.
Li had been due to return to China on Wednesday.
With his wife, attorney and several friends, including Houston Ballet artistic director Ben Stevenson, Li went to the consulate instead of attending a farewell party for himself and another Chinese
dancer. In a petition filed in U.S. district court Wednesday, before Li’s release, Foster said Zhang Zeongxu, the second-ranking consular official, had assured Li that he could leave after discussing his decision. Instead, Foster’s petition said, Li was forcibly seized by three men and taken to another room for questioning. Zhang reportedly told Li’s companions he was “required to persuade Li to return to (China) and that he (Li) was not able to depart the premises of the consulate general either alone or in the company of his wife, Elizabeth,” the petition said. Some of the companions decided to stay, including Li’s wife; ballet foundation Chairman John D. Kirkland; former board member Jack Carter and wife, Marcia; foundation President-elect John D. Curtin Jr.; and ballet academy director Clara Duncan.
Foster left to file the petition and take other action, and was not allowed to re-enter the consulate until shortly before Li’s release. He had told consular officials that the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., already had said Li was “free to leave at any time,” but the consular officials had still detained Li.
Moments before Li finally was released his companion walked out of the metal gates of the five-story brick building and blamed the whole matter on a “misunderstanding.”
Still dressed in tuxedos from a Tuesday night party, Carter, Kirkland and Curtin said Li had been “well treated” by the consular officials.
“They were just concerned because in China men may not marry until they are 22,” Kirkland said. “They wanted to make sure he fully understood his decision and that it was in his best interests. We talked and reasoned and learned from a great nation.”
The misunderstanding, Kirkland said, was “caused, first and foremost, by a pretty girl in Texas and a young boy who fell in love.”
He added that the Chinese officials indicated they want to continue the cultural exchange program through which Li came here in 1979. Stevenson plans to take 11 dancers, including Gwen Verdon, to Peking in June to teach and perform.
A new group of dancers from the People’s Republic is scheduled to arrive here soon for scholarship work at the ballet academy.
For hours Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Mackey had waited outside the consulate for a chance to see her daughter and son-in-law.
“He’s part of my family now and I want him out,” she said as she nervously smoked cigarettes and sipped soft drinks.
In the crush of news reporters and friends of Li and his bride, Mrs. Mackey was unable to get close to her petite, brown-haired daughter when the couple finally walked out. But as Elizabeth was getting into the sports car to begin her belated honeymoon, she waved to her mother and said, “Everything’s OK.”
Once the crowd and the reporters had left, Mrs. Mackey realized she had no means of transportation, and finally walked the several miles back to her daughter’s west Houston apartment.
The international incident that Li Cunxin later came to characterize as his defection from China may have been the most dramatic moment of his life — and the history of Houston Ballet. But it was just one of the fascinating stories he would share in his warm-hearted, best-selling 2003 memoir “Mao’s Last Dancer,” which director Bruce Beresford later adapted as a film in 2009.
Li grew up in abject poverty with six siblings and their parents in a village near Qingdao before he was plucked from the fields to attend Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy at 11. In his late teens, he won one of Houston Ballet Academy’s first international scholarships.
Artistic director Ben Stevenson, furious that Li had imperiled Houston Ballet’s delicate relationship with the Chinese by refusing to go home, nonetheless helped mold him into one of the company’s first international stars. Li performed with Houston Ballet for 16 years, until 1995.
His marriage to Mackey ended in 1987, when he married his true soulmate, the Australian ballerina Mary McKendry, with whom he has three children. Li finished his stage career in his late 30s with the Australian Ballet. He worked more than a decade as a stock broker before dance called again. Since 2012, he has been the artistic director of Brisbane’s Queensland Ballet.