Li Cunxin is the seventh child of a Chinese family (the family seems to address each other by their numbers “Hello sixth brother,” “Come here, second son,” etc.), living in an obscure farming village in the early 1980s. One day he is plucked out of his classroom and sent to Beijing to study ballet at age 10 or so. Over the next ten years, he becomes one of the top dancers at the school.

When the director of the Houston Ballet Company (evidently a highly respected company, with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush as one of the patrons) visits Beijing with his principal dancers, Li catches his eye. He offers to take Li back to the United States. After some initial hesitation by the people in charge of the Chinese dancers (they fear that Li might not be sufficiently orthodox to resist the lure of the decadent West), they agree to send Li to Houston.

Of course Li soon finds out that the backward, decadent, suffering West is nothing like what he was taught in school. He becomes an even better dancer (“In China I could dance pretty good, but here I can dance my best,” he says), falls in love with another member of the dance troupe, and faces a difficult decision when the Chinese order him to come home.

This is not a black and white movie. For example, the head of the Houston Ballet is very much in favor of Li going back to China (if he defects, it ruins any chance of other Chinese dancers being allowed to come to America). And the consequences for Li’s family of defecting could be dire. The movie ends on a happy note, but even so, we (or at least I) are not quite sure that Li makes the right choice.

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