Communist China was very heavily influenced by the Soviet system, and they had been building a strong, unique ballet tradition beginning around 1954. Like the magnificent National Ballet of Cuba, a lot of the foundation of the training for it came from Russia.
As someone else here noted, ballet had long been one of the most celebrated arts in the Soviet Union (as well as other Eastern European communist countries). Having been one of the glories of the Russian arts world before the revolution, ballet fortunately was deemed worth preserving and supporting by the powers that led after the revolution (they might just as easily have condemned it as one of those aristocratic toys, not suitable to the revolution). They saw it as particularly useful as a tool for propaganda, and a prestige-builder for the USSR. It was already loved by the general population, and the government saw that they could nurture and tweak it, to better use it for their purposes (thus, many older ballets fell out of favor, or were reworked to fit the ideals of the Soviet system).
Later on in China, the same kind of thing happened, with big, epic ballets glorifying the officially sanctioned version of the 'brave and noble Chinese peasants' or the 'heroes of the red army.' So ballet was being used to further the government's agenda and help spiff up its image worldwide, and they needed the best dancers possible. Therefore, they sought out children with the physical and temperamental attributes and qualities most likely to make them good dancers. Experts can examine a child (particularly x-raying certain joints), his parents and other members of his family, and have a good idea of how he will develop physically. Apparently, Li and the others were judged to fit the bill. So off they went to study dance, and potentially to be lifted into a much more privileged life path than they would have had otherwise.
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alywin
13 years ago
Yes, everyone's equal, but some are more equal than others :)
It was a feature of a number of Communist countries around that time, but particularly the USSR, that they wanted to get prestige and admiration from the West, and they put a lot of effort (and government money) into spotting suitable children and training them to be future stars. I mean, we may not have agreed with them politically, but we certainly admired Russian ballet, say. And not only ballet, but a certain number of sports: gymnastics, skating and so on. It may not be happening in the former Soviet Union now, but you can still see it in China to this day, with the advances they're making in e.g. tennis, diving, gymnastics, athletics and so on, less so with ballet, I think.
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