"Don't worry, Fifth Brother. I'm sure you'll find another champion next summer."

"You would have been so proud of him. He fought like a true warrior. His teeth were as sharp as knives. I'm sorry you didn't get to play with him."

I too was sad that the King was dead. From the look of him he'd been a strong cricket.

Later that afternoon, my second brother Cunyuan rode on the bike again to collect our dia from work. Jing Tring and I ran to the intersection at the edge of our village. I was excited to see my dia again, but I was anxious about my grades too and worried about his reaction. I saw them ride up and my dia hopped off in front of us. "You're back!" He smiled one of his rare smiles.

I nodded. That was all he said to me and all I had to reply. I loved my dia dearly and I knew he loved me as well.

My niang had already prepared a special dinner as a welcome treat by the time we arrived home. There was so much excitement! We all sat around the kang and again I explained what my life was like in Beijing and I tried hard to mention only the positive elements of the experience. "We can't match the food you had in Beijing but I hope you still like my dumplings," my niang said as she sat a bowl of steaming hot dumplings in front of me.

"This was all I'd dream about, but we did have dumplings all the time at the academy," I lied. I pushed the bowl in front of my dia, because I knew there wouldn't be enough for everyone."

Liuga, can you count how many times you ate meat there?" Jing Tring asked.

"Nearly every day!" I replied.

Cunsang was wide-eyed with disbelief.

I nodded. There was silence.

"Madame Mao wouldn't let her students starve, would she?" Niang said finally.

A few weeks before I arrived home Cunsang had been accepted by the Chinese navy and he was going to be a sailor on one of the battleships stationed in the Shandong Province area, so we talked about this as well. After dinner I took out the sweets which I had bought in Beijing and everyone tasted a piece. Our dia would keep the rest as gifts. Then I suggested playing our word-finding game, looking for words from the newspapers that covered our walls, and my brothers happily agreed. We had so much fun. It was just like old times.

Before bed, when I was alone with my parents and Jing Tring, I handed my dia the three yuan which I had saved.

"Why didn't you buy something for yourself in Beijing?" my dia asked.

"I thought this would help the family," I replied.

"Zhi zhi zhi!" my niang just sighed. She was sad that I'd felt the need to give back whatever I had to my family.

With my second brother now working in the commune, I could tell that my family's living conditions had improved, even if only slightly. They still ate the same kind of food but now there was a little more for my niang to cook with: limited rations of meat, fish, oil, soy sauce and coal, plenty of dried yams and, once a week, corn bread. And besides the New Year's special food, my niang had cooked me dumplings not once but a couple of times, because she knew they were my favourite. Even so, there was never enough for everyone, and the dumplings travelled from my bowl to my niang's, my niang's back to mine, and then I would pass one to my dia. But he'd move his bowl away and the dumpling would slip onto the wooden tray. Niang would sigh yet again. "Silly boy, just eat them! I know you have good food to eat in Beijing, but you won't be able to have my dumplings again for a whole year!"

I attracted attention wherever I went in my village now. I was a celebrity.

"Did you really see Madame Mao?" one peasant man asked me.

I nodded.

He suddenly grabbed my hands and shook them violently. "It's a privilege! Such a privilege!" he shouted ecstatically.

Many people stopped me like that and asked me about Beijing and university life. I knew they were expecting to hear about glorious, heartwarming experiences, so I found myself telling everyone only the best aspects of Beijing. Everyone wanted to know about the food. I had to glorify everything. They longed to hear something that would give them hope. Hope was all they had and I couldn't let them down.

One day, four of my old friends and I were playing our "hopping on one leg" game when one of them asked me to give them a dance lesson. "Teach us something we can perform in our school show!" he begged excitedly.

I hesitated. What could I possibly teach them?

"Please, please! Help your old friends!" they all persisted.

I knew they would be disappointed if I said no, so after dinner that night we gathered together in the same room where my na-na's dead body had once rested for three days. It was mid- February and still very cold. My friends wore their thick cotton jackets and pants and, under the low-wattage light, they looked just like four enormous cottonwool balls.

"I want to teach you a Beijing Opera Movement exercise," I began. "It will get your legs warmed up first. Otherwise you'll injure yourselves. Let's put your legs on the windowsills." This was the only place I could think of that was roughly the height of a barre.

My friends just looked at me with peculiar expressions.

"All right, let me show you." I put my right leg up on the windowsill.

"See. It's not too hard," I encouraged, and I helped them to put their legs onto the sill as well. But as soon as I'd helped the last friend's leg up the others had already lowered theirs.

"It's too high!" one of them complained.

"Can't we use the edge of the kang?" another suggested.

So we moved to the bedroom and used the hip-high edge of the kang, which was much easier.

"Okay, now straighten your legs and your hips," I told them as I pushed one of their legs straight.

"Ow!" they screamed.

"Now, let's change legs," I instructed.

They lifted their other legs up to the edge of the kang, but all they did was scream and groan. "Can't you teach us something less painful and more fun?"

I could see this was going to be a challenge. I couldn't think of anything that was fun, exciting and painless as well. Out of desperation, I showed them some relatively easy ballet positions.

"I don't know whether you can use them in your show or not, but they're not painful." I demonstrated first, second and fifth foot positions. "You can hold onto the edge of the kang," I told them. They all tried, but their feet caved in every time they straightened their knees.

"Is this all you have learned in the past year?" one of my friends asked.

I nodded.

"Surely it was more fun than this! Come on, teach us something easy so we can impress everyone at the show."

I didn't know how to answer him. Fun? I thought of Gao Dakun pushing our bodies onto our legs, putting the full force of his weight on us.

My friends didn't ask me to teach them any dance movements after that.

My month at home went by as fast as the blink of an eye. I dreaded going back to the rigid routine of the university.

On my last night home, after dinner, when everyone except me and my parents had gone to bed, my dia handed me eight yuan.

"It's too much," I protested.

"Take it. Things are more expensive now. Our lives are looking up with your second brother working." Then, completely unexpectedly, he handed me a sealed envelope. "I was going to get you some sorghum sweets, but I bought you this instead. I'm sorry I didn't have enough money to have it wrapped."

Inside the envelope I found the most beautiful fountain pen. It was deep royal blue, my favourite colour. I could tell it was an expensive one. It would have cost my dia at least two yuan.

"I hope you will use it every day," my dia said, "and every time you use it, you will remember your parents and our expectations of you. I don't know what grades your classmates have received, but I hope you will come home with better grades next year. Don't let us down. Let us be proud."