He shook his head. "I've tried so hard to convince them both about Tibet and my marriage. They don't want to lose another labourer in our family." He rolled another cigarette, then continued, as though he was talking to himself. "I dived into the dam on the Northern Hill one day last summer. I thought of staying under the water and never coming up. Maybe I will have a better life in another world." He sighed. "Why do we have to live in this world? There is no colour in this life! I wake up early every morning before the sun is up, I go and work in the fields. Under the burning sun, in the pouring rain, in the freezing snow and with an empty stomach, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, no Sundays off, no free days. I only come home to sleep. My dreams are the only comfort I have and most of those are nightmares. Often I am too tired even to remember my dreams. I'm twenty-four years old! There is no end to this suffering!"

I crouched beside him and listened in shock and with an ever more saddened heart. I wished I'd had a magic cure for all his problems but I knew there was none. Millions of young people were going through the same agony and despair all over China.

"Let's not talk about my situation any more," he said at last. "How are you coping at the academy? Are you happier there this past year?"

"It's getting better. But I still miss home. I even miss the harsh part of life sometimes," I replied.

"But surely there is nothing here you would miss! I'd give anything to be in your position."

"Why don't we swap?" I teased, trying to cheer him up.

"The Beijing Dance Academy would laugh their teeth off if they saw my bowed legs! But to see Beijing would be a great privilege. Go back and work hard. You have the opportunity of a lifetime. Your brothers can only dream of it." After a brief pause, he asked, "Do you still like cricket fights?"

I nodded. Why, suddenly, would he ask me about cricket fights?

"Remember how great you feel when your cricket is victorious. Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of the losing cricket?"

I shook my head.

"Sometimes I feel like I am the losing cricket and I cannot escape. Life is the victorious cricket, chasing me around until it hunts me down and slowly chews me up. Did you ever have this feeling?"

Again I shook my head.

"I always imagined that as long as I could fight, I would be able to find a way out, but I'm not sure any more. I'm fighting against life, the life I was given, but not the life I desire."

I was speechless, silenced by his despair.

We arrived at the station and soon the rattling train slowly rolled towards our platform. A couple of my friends popped their heads out of the windows looking for me, and my brother passed my bag in to them.

It was time to part. We just stood there and looked at each other. There was still much that I wanted to say. I wanted to hug him but I couldn't possibly-it wasn't the thing to do for the opposite sex in China, let alone the same sex. "I'm going now," was all I said as we stiffly shook hands.

As the train moved away I could see him wiping tears from his face. I stuck my head out the window and waved. He just stood there, like a statue, until we moved out of sight.

I squeezed onto the bench seat beside my friends. I answered my friends' questions about my holidays, but my brother's aching voice kept echoing in my ears. Suddenly I remembered the parcel he'd given me. I took it out and untied the brownish strings. It was a box of sorghum sweets with a note attached, roughly written. "These are for your friend Chong Xiongjun's family," Cunyuan had written. "They represent your six brothers' mountain- weight of gratitude and our sincere thanks for their kindness in looking after you… Please forgive me for the last two days. What I want in life can only remain a distant dream. I beg you to forget it…"

I lost control then. I tried to stop the tears but the harder I tried the more they welled up and I covered my face with my handkerchief.

"What's wrong?" Several of my classmates became very concerned.

I didn't know what to tell them. "I just want to be left alone," I said.

I found myself trying to answer Cunyuan's unanswerable questions. I thought of the dying cricket trying to escape from his tormentor with neither the will nor the physical condition to do so. I felt sick. I felt an enormous swell of compassion for my poor, trapped brother.

My grief for Cunyuan continued to overwhelm me all through my journey back to Beijing. "There has to be a solution! There has to be a solution!" I kept telling myself. But I knew there was none. Poverty itself was his problem and I began to realise how enormously privileged I was to have got out of Qingdao. For my brothers it wouldn't matter how hard they worked or how long they persisted, little would change in the end. They would most likely be in the same situation, twenty, thirty or fifty years from now.

When the sun set and the stars began to appear I felt exhaustion overwhelm me. I asked my friend Fu Xijun to swap seats with me so I could sit against the window.

I knew now, with sudden shock, that I could never go back to the life I used to have. I would always miss my parents' love and my brothers' company, but I knew deep in my heart that my future now lay ahead, not behind. This trip home had once and for all stripped off the fantasy of the ideal countryside life I'd always thought was possible. What my second brother was going through in his mind was far worse than the lack of food, the starvation. His soul was dying. If I hadn't got out I too would have faced the same fate.

I fell in and out of sleep throughout that trip back to Beijing. We kept swapping seats so each of us could have a turn leaning against the window, but for the last three hours of the trip I was wide awake. I thought about the year ahead. I was looking forward to facing the challenges. A mysterious voice sounded in my ears: "Cunxin, you are privileged. You are lucky. Go forward. Don't be afraid and don't look back. There is nothing back there, only your family's unconditional love and that will always propel you forwards."

But now, for the first time, this voice wasn't my brother's voice. It wasn't my dia's. It wasn't even my beloved niang's. This voice was my own.

In the spring of 1974, when I was thirteen, the Beijing Dance Academy was invited to go to Tiananmen Square to hear our beloved Chairman Mao speak.

This was an opportunity beyond my wildest dreams! I was so excited I didn't sleep at all the night before. I'd only ever heard Chairman Mao's voice over a loudspeaker in our commune or on a radio at the academy. I had memorised so many of his sayings from his Red Book and I had four large volumes of his communist theories by my bedside, the guiding principles of my life. I was so lucky to be born in the time of Chairman Mao, our living god, and now I was going to see and hear him in person!

Suddenly a sense of shame overwhelmed me. I hadn't been good enough to deserve this honour! I twisted and turned all night. I kept repeating in my head the first words I had ever learned at school. "Long, long live Chairman Mao." When I was a little boy I truly believed he would have goddesses accompanying him and there would be clouds surrounding him, just like a real god.

I woke up very early on the morning of the rally. I had extra energy. I was dressed in my best Mao jacket and ready to leave by six o'clock.

The bus journey to Tiananmen Square took us nearly an hour. No motion sickness for me that day. We could hear an extraordinary noise as we got close-loud drums, cymbals, trumpets, instruments of all kinds mixed in with the exuberant, feverish shouting of propaganda slogans. We were led by security guards, wading through a sea of red banners, an ocean of people. It was like an enormous carnival. A joyous celebration.