Paul Binder - East Joins West

 

One of my dreams as founder and artistic director of the Big Apple Circus was to be the first circus in America to feature acts from China. And in 1986, I had the good fortune at the Paris Circus Festival to be introduced to Madame Zhu from the China Performing Arts Agency. My grandmother used to say, "If good fortune knocks on the door, invite her in. Give her a seat at the table." [audience chuckles] Well, the China Performing Arts Agency represented Chinese artists around the world. You have to remember this was during the Cold War. So, relations between the US and the People's Republic of China was, how shall we say, a bit chilly.

 

The Chinese government didn't want its people traveling to the US for fear that they might get a taste of democracy. And the US Government was happy to not have the Chinese travelers in the US, because surely, they would have a communist agenda. So, if I wanted to get visas for Chinese artists to come to the Big Apple Circus, I would have to deal with some major government agencies, and the China Performing Arts Agency was one of those. I felt like I had the balance of power of the world in my hands. I could hear my grandmother's voice, "Oi." [audience laughter] 

 

Well, I didn't want just one act from China. I wanted an entire troupe. I had this idea for a show called the Big Apple Circus meets the Monkey King. Who's the Monkey King? He's a classic character out of Chinese folklore. A mischievous, magical, acrobatic character, sort of a cross between the cat and the hat and Mary Lou Retton. [audience laughter] What surprised me was within six months, Madame Zhu invited me to come to China to visit four cities, acrobatic troupes in four cities. Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing. And believe me, I was not disappointed. 

 

Chinese acrobatics is 5,000 years old. And before I left China, in the offices of the Ministry of Culture, I signed a contract to bring the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe to the Big Apple Circus. Well, in August of 1988, they arrived at JFK Airport. 21 acrobats, one Monkey King, one troupe leader, and a young interpreter about 30 years old, a woman from the China Performing Arts Agency. We counted heads one time, and then everybody got into vans, and headed out of John F. Kennedy Airport. I watched as their noses were pressed up against the windows of the vans, because they could see the sparkling lights of Manhattan in the distance, and they couldn't wait to get there. 

 

But that's not where they were going. [audience chuckles] They were going instead to the land of my birth, deep Brooklyn, to an airfield, a disused airfield that was run by the National Park Service with cracked runways and leaky hangars. It was also our rehearsal and storage facility. And that's where they experienced their second round of culture shock. We introduced them to their housing that they would be in for the better part of the next nine months. RVs, recreational vehicles, travel trailers, think orange and gold terry cloth curtains. Well, amazingly, they adapted wonderfully.

 

The Big Apple Circus meets the Monkey King was an enormous success that year at Lincoln Center, both as a circus and as an international cooperation. As the beginning of January rolled around, we celebrated the end of our season. We then were faced with the beginning of our spring and summer tour. And the acrobats were as spectacular as ever. But we sensed something strange. I remember feeling, what's going on here? They're very watchful. I think that's the word I used. But TV and the newspapers told us what they weren't telling us. There was trouble back home in China. Escalating democracy protests in April led to martial law being declared in May. And in early June, it all came to a head in a place called Tiananmen Square. As there was very little, we could do about what was happening in China, we went on with a tour. 

 

And on the last day of the tour, in Shelburne, Vermont, after the last show, when the bleachers were coming out and the tent was coming down, four acrobats from the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe disappeared into the night. Now, I have my suspicions, but to this day, I don't know how they got away or where they went to. Well, the troupe leader, Lu Yi, frantically came up to me and said, "We've got to stop this move and investigate what's happening here." I almost laughed. Nothing stops a circus move. Not rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor gloom of night, nor the frantic pleadings of a lifetime bureaucrat. I calmed him and reassured him that we would meet again in Brooklyn and we could discuss the matter.

 

I climbed into my pickup truck pulling a 42-foot recreational vehicle, and I headed down the road. Well, about an hour and a half later, I got on a payphone. You all remember payphones. [audience laughter] I called back to the circus lot to find out how things were going, expecting the usual, "Oh, everything's fine." Well, it wasn't. All hell had broken loose. The troupe leader, Lu Yi and the Monkey King, Yang Xiaodi, had grabbed the interpreter, taken her under arrest, and locked her in the mini home, the Tioga Mini home, accusing her of complicity in the disappearance of the acrobats. And they were on the road about a half an hour behind me.

 

Well, I was headed for the service area on the New York State Thruway, which we used as a checkpoint. In those days, before cell phones, we had checkpoints, so that we could keep track of the vehicles that were on the road. There was no way of texting, but I pulled into that service area and sure enough, within a half hour, in came the Tioga Mini home, and out stepped Lu Yi, the troupe leader, and Yang Xiaodi, the Monkey King. And they were furious. Well, I tried calming them down and I escorted them into the restaurant. 

 

We sat down, four of us, the fourth person being the associate artistic director. Now, it was an odd group, the associate artistic director with his perfectly French accented English, me with my Brooklyn-tinged patois, [audience chuckles] and two very angry Chinese men. But it was very evident what they were saying, that this woman had been in complicity with the escaped acrobats. Every time they said her name, they would point out the window toward the Tioga Mini home. And finally, one last time, the Monkey King, Yang Xiaodi, spat out her name and pointed toward the mini home and gasped. Right outside, no more than two feet away from the table that we were sitting at, there stood the interpreter, peering in, trying to figure out what was going on. 

 

Yang Xiaodi, the Monkey King, jumped to his feet, ran out the door. We were close behind him. As he got to her, he threw the interpreter to the ground. My associate artistic director said to me, "Monsieur Paul, if you ever believed in freedom, believe in it now." [audience laughter] Well, I walked over, I helped the interpreter to her feet, and I held out my hand. There'd be no more intimidation of this woman. Talk to the hand. [audience chuckles] So, I phoned ahead to alert the authorities. And then, I took the three combatants and asked the interpreter to sit in the front seat of my truck alongside of me, and in the backseat, the troupe leader, Lu Yi, and the Monkey King, Yang Xiaodi, with my associate director sitting between them. 

 

Well, most of the very small amount of conversation that took place as we headed down the thruway was in Mandarin, but vitriol knows no language barriers. [audience chuckles] We got to the airfield. And for the first time in the six years that we had been going to this place, there was actually a guard in the guard booth. He was a national park service policeman with a Smokey the Bear hat. He gestured that we bring the trailer up to the edge of one of the runways. I did it. And there, sitting on the runway, was a black sedan with the words Immigration and Naturalization Service written on it. And out stepped a man with a badge attached to his lapel. 

 

And they went, "Oh no.” I said, “Oh no. I'm the guy who signed for those visas. The circus is sure to be blamed. The world is coming to--" I broke into a cold sweat. The blood drained from my head. He was going to surely grill me. He totally ignored me, and walked right up to the interpreter, and he said, "Ma'am, we're from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. There are people from the Chinese consulate waiting at that hangar. Now, you're welcome to go there. But if you choose, you can go into that car," and he had opened the back door of the car. "You can go into that car and be under our protection." There was a long silence. I could only imagine what this woman was thinking, the gravity of the decision that she had to make in those few seconds. 

 

Finally, I whispered her name, “Lanrong.” She said, "I go," and she jumped out of the truck, ran to the backseat of the car. They slammed the door, and it zoomed off down the runway. [audience laughter] I might have felt sorry for the troupe leader, Lu Yi, and the Monkey King, Yang Xiaodi. After all, if it hadn't been for their intimidation of the interpreter-- There were people from the Chinese consulate waiting for them at the hangar and they had a lot to answer for.

 

So, we drove there. I stepped out of my truck. And sure enough, there were six members of the Chinese consulate, about an equal number of good old New York City cops. Someone from the consulate walked up to me, grabbed my arm, and said that his boss wanted to talk to me. "Hands off,” I said. “Hey, this ain't Tiananmen Square. This is Brooklyn." [audience laughter] With that, I walked over and hugged a New York City cop, [audience laughter] not realizing that to me he represented life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He wasn't exactly thrilled by my gesture. [audience laughter] 

 

And Lu Yi and Yang Xiaodi, the fierce defenders of Chinese communism, what happened to them? Well, today, Lu Yi is a respected circus arts instructor in San Francisco, [audience laughter] and Yang Xiaodi actually turned out to be a very sweet guy. He lives and works in New York City, sometimes for the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit in pediatric hospitals. And his son is a graduate of St. John's University. Curious, no? Well, one more thing. Just one more thing. [audience laughter] 

 

A few weeks later, a board member of the Big Apple Circus questioned my participation in this event. I thought for a moment and said, "Well, these people wanted their freedom. What was I supposed to do?" And then, I thought to myself, would I do it again? Well, I'm from deep Brooklyn, but I had a grandma who was from Vienna, and she escaped and found her freedom in America. You bet I would do it again.