Applause, for any performing artist, is surely the sweetest of sounds, especially if it rises into the hallowed heights of Carnegie Hall. But for Tian Jiang, one of the first virtuoso pianists to emerge from the People’s Republic of China, the applause that night of his debut recital in April, 1989, signified more than the customary announcement of yet another promising young artist. For him this was the culmination of years of struggle and an unwavering belief in himself. “It was April Fool’s Day,” he recalls now, “and as I arose from the piano the irony suddenly struck me: I’m bowing in Carnegie Hall where I’ve just performed music I’d been forbidden to even hear let alone play as a child growing up in China. At that moment I understood the wisdom of the Tao: to accept the yin and the yang of life, to ride its tides. It was like a wave falling upon the shore, thunderous!” Indeed the bold technique and luminous tone in the great works of the Western repertoire, soon to be celebrated in glowing notices and a subsequent feature on a major television news magazine show, had begun years before, an ocean and a continent away – in secret. Born in Shanghai in 1963, Tian Jiang was only a year old when Chairman Mao and his wife, Chiang Ching, launched the Cultural Revolution, one of the most devastating social movements of modern times, a national tragedy that would result in the depletion of the country’s artistic and intellectual class, and the disappearance and deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. “Most Westerners think the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1964, was a revolt of intellectuals against society,” Tian explains. “But it was really a revolution of those beneath, the peasants, against the thinking classes. I was only two years old when the Red Guard burst into our home and turned everything upside down looking for Western materials – books, music, records, art, clothing and family photographs, anything from life before 1949 when Mao took over. They found most of what we had and took it away.” At that moment the tide of their lives went out. Condemned as “reactionaries” by the Red Guard, his father, a renowned singer in the Shanghai Opera, and his mother, a dentist, suffered such discrimination and ostracism as to render them nearly unable to support themselves within a rigid, highly controlled social hierarchy. But though forbidden to sing “reactionary” Western music, Tian’s father nonetheless taught his young son to play it on one of the few state-owned pianos allowed in private use. “My father taught me, in the beginning, and later when I had lessons, he would sit with me while I practiced. It wasn’t a matter of discipline because I loved to practice; he was just there with me, so important for a young child.” That they had nothing was very good for him, he says, because it made him work. “I put all my hope and imagination into the music. My first teacher gave me some Thompson piano study books she’d hidden from the Red Guard. They were illustrated with little drawings of Western children, and they fascinated me. I’d study them by the hour and try to imagine what these people and this far away place were really like. They became a strange, beautiful world to me, one I could enter through the music. Practicing took me there every day.” He met the first emissaries from his beloved fantasy world when he was admitted to the local Children’s Palace for gifted children, where he studied from age seven to age ten. It was here that he built a strong foundation as a stage performer; the school had him perform to audiences of as many as 500 people once a week. “I was a prodigy so they would trot me out in this showcase presented especially for visiting Westerners who came in by bus,” he recalls. “I was so fascinated by their strange faces and perfume that I forgot to be nervous! By age eleven he had progressed so rapidly that the local authorities had no choice but to overlook his parents’ troublesome status and admit him to the “5.7”, short for the “May Seventh Music Talent School,” named for the date of the conclusion of the deflated Cultural Revolution. “Ironically it was Mao’s wife, the very woman who had destroyed all the Western art and classical music during the Cultural Revolution, who founded the school,” he observes. “Realizing she was defeated, she wanted to be a part of building a whole new generation of stars in what later became the Shanghai Conservatory. But at first we were still not allowed to perform classical music – only traditional Chinese music.” Thus began the serious training he had craved through his childhood. His five years at this school, he says, were the most precious and enjoyable of his life. “It was a very protected, sheltered place, about 45 minutes by bicycle outside of the city, near a river. Though my studies were very focused and supervised, I still found a lot of mental freedom. We had little practice rooms located at the edge of a large garden area, and after lunch, I’d go there and take a nap, smell the flowers. I would walk by the river often, especially at dusk when I could hear flocks of birds singing, settling into the trees. Moments like these gave me so much joy, they took my mind off all the propaganda we had to listen to all day. It was also release from practicing, which I loved to do but I felt so driven to be the best, to succeed.” In due course the school began teaching Western classical music again, though it had long had a strong presence in the country. Introduced to China early in the 20th century, classical music and its instruments quickly found popularity among educated Chinese eager to adopt Western tastes and art forms. Mao initiated warm relations with the Soviet Union when he came to power in 1949, and over the next ten years encouraged emulation of all things Russian, including their demand for musical excellence. “Most of my teachers studied in Russia,” Tian explains. “Even today you’ll find most of the scores in China’s music libraries are Russian editions. Later, everything I performed - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven - I played from Russian scores bought before the Cultural Revolution when China was friendly with the Soviet Union. My father had hidden them from the Red Guard. We also had recordings − Gilels, Richter, Hofmann, Horowitz, Rubinstein, Cortot – because my father had connections with people who had hidden them. My conservatory teacher, a wonderful pianist, had Russian scores and she’d say, ‘Don’t tell anybody I have this music!’ In fact, my favorite piece, Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, was so old it fell apart in my hands. She had these scores because she’s studied in Russia, but it was a big secret. When she moved to Hong Kong ten years later the government refused to let her take them out of the country so she gave them to me, saying ‘You are my favorite student so I give you my treasure.’” Though he excelled, he knew little of the world beyond the conservatory’s very proscribed study. He dreamed of becoming a great pianist, but within the confines of China. “We had no idea what life was like in the West,” he says. “We had no access to books, magazines, movies, or anything like that. In some ways we were more closed off than the Soviet Union. My perception of America then was very blurred because there was so much propaganda about how bad America was, how wonderful China was, even though most Chinese people lived in poverty! We were not allowed to learn English; even to speak it was dangerous. Relatives visiting from Hong Kong would bring Western goods, like chocolates and cookies, and I would study the designs and lettering on the packages; these were my clues to this mysterious West.” Suddenly the tide reversed, pulling westward, after Nixon’s visit to China in 1972; within a few years the country opened up to receive throngs of foreign visitors. Not long after he graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory, in the summer of 1980, Tian was selected to play for Vladimir Ashkenazy during the Russian virtuoso’s first visit to China with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Their immediate rapport ripened into friendship as they worked together during several master classes. “Ashkenazy influenced me a lot, in fact, he really taught me how to perform,” Tian recalls. “He talked about how Pollini plays. He said, ‘You know, Tian, when Pollini plays, the fingers are almost not moving, yet so much comes out, subtlety and color. The magic is in the fingertips. Every note has to go down through the key, so you don’t have to move very much.’ It’s very interesting because Ashkenazy is of the ‘Russian School,’ and most Russian pianists raise their fingers very high, but he doesn’t. He plays deep into the keys, fingers low, and that influenced me very much. If the fingers are high, then you’re really hitting the keys, but the music is in the lowest 1/8 inch of the key bed.” The two worked so well together that Tian was later included in “Ashkenazy in China,” a BBC documentary about his historic visit. A year later the tide brought the American violinist Isaac Stern, then serving as goodwill ambassador from the United States. Stern was so impressed with Tian’s talent that he made arrangements with the Chinese government for Tian to study at the San Francisco Conservatory in the US. At first, though, the experience of sudden and total immersion in American life proved almost more than he could handle. “These were pivotal years in my life,” he recalls. “I was so totally overwhelmed by America that I became very emotional; sometimes I just cried. I remember looking at a Coca-Cola can in a soft drink machine and thinking, what is this? And how do you get it out of there? In China if you wanted a drink, you gave money to a person who simply gave you the drink in a cup. Here it comes out automatically, in a can? I couldn’t believe this! I loved San Francisco, the streets, the cable cars, the food, the stores, and of course, television and pop music were everywhere and I grew to like it. I loved everything about America, and I became so passionate about it that I almost wanted to convert myself and be an American!” Quickly discerning that too much freedom is not such a good thing, he describes what he calls his defining moment. “One day on 1982 I was sitting on the sofa and realized, ‘Tian, you cannot be who or what you want to be under Communist rule; everything is controlled. Now in America you have freedom, you can do anything you want, be anything you want. But can you handle this?’ And I knew I had to learn how to use my freedom better. Some things I shouldn’t do, some things I should be more disciplined about.” The struggle to find a balance was good for his music, he says. “Only through struggle can you get to the meaning, but you can’t let it hold you back. You have to release yourself from it enough to let it guide you. My teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory was not famous, but he was so wise and good. He told me, ‘Tian, every time you touch the keyboard, that is when you’re speaking. The honesty is in your fingers, your piano – that is your soul.’ So if my heart is in it, I will say it, and if my heart is not in it, I cannot speak. I must speak to every note, every voice, as though I am struggling for it. Because if everything comes to you easy, then everything washes away – nobody hears anything.” Sometime in 1983 the tide turned again, back to the East, when he learned the exchange program would be interrupted and he would have to go back to China. A Chinese tennis player had defected, so the Beijing government, deciding it could risk no further embarrassment, called all Chinese students living abroad home. But returning is the motion of the Tao, Tian says, yielding the way. “I cried into the ocean. I loved the U.S., I loved San Francisco, and I knew that if I went back to China, I might not ever return to America. So that I walked everywhere, touched everything, tried to absorb every detail of this country - the streets, the sights and sounds; my feet didn’t touch the ground. I felt such urgency, even tragedy, because I knew the year was ending and all my beautiful dreams would end.” That morning when he went back, “Mayor Dianne Feinstein and officials from the U.S. consulate were there at the airport to say goodbye, and to officially hand me back to the Chinese government. Everyone was straight-faced, very serious, like in a movie, but inside I was laughing: ‘Hey, you guys, don’t worry! I’ll be back!’” —Part One from 'Shanghai Dreaming'