kissed and hugged Elizabeth and told her that I loved her. I hugged and thanked Charles for saving my life. He was a man of great integrity. I couldn't have found a better human being—he had risked his reputation to save me.

I didn't want to say anything to the reporters but Charles knew they wouldn't leave me alone until I did. So at 5.30 p.m. in front of a sea of microphones, flashing lights and cameras, with Elizabeth by my side, I managed a few simple words: "I am very happy to be able to stay with my wife and in America. I would like to do nice things for China and American art in the future."

All I could see was a mass of people and endless flashing lights. I could hear the clicking sounds of cameras and reporters shouted questions at me from every direction. I held Elizabeth's hand tight. I could not think any more. I wanted to get away.

At first some of the reporters' cars followed us, trying for an exclusive. But Delworth drove his BMW very fast and managed to lose all the cars except one. That car followed us through every red light. Finally Delworth had had enough. He pulled over and took a gun from the glove compartment. I was weary of drama by that stage. I imagined another headline in the newspapers: Chinese defector in shooting incident.

But then two men got out of the other car and approached us. They flashed their FBI badges. "Mr Cooksin, the FBI would like to take you and your wife to a safe house for your protection. You are in a dangerous situation. The US government has an obligation to make sure you are safe. The Chinese government may well choose to retaliate. Do you understand?"

I shook my head. "What's safe house?" I asked.

The FBI man smiled. "It's a comfortable house in a secret location guarded by the FBI. There will be someone to serve you twenty-four hours a day. It's as safe as the White House. You'll like it."

"Thank you, but I don't want go to safe house. I have my freedom now. Please, leave me alone," I replied.

"You're taking a big chance," the FBI man warned.

"I know, but I cannot live my life in fear."

The FBI man handed me a telephone number to call if I found myself in any kind of danger. "Just a precautionary measure," he said. "The FBI will have trailers on you until we feel it is safe enough."

"No, I don't want you follow me," I said.

He smiled again. "Don't worry, you won't even notice."

And, true to his word, if they did have someone trail me in those next few months, not once did I notice.

After my release from the consulate my story was flashed all over the TV networks, the newspapers and the radio stations. I received a flood of requests—Hollywood movie offers, books, TV, radio and newspaper interviews, magazine story offers and job offers from ballet companies all over the world. There were even offers in the Chinese newspapers that promised me lavish overseas holidays to my choice of destination. Yes, well, I thought—any destination as long as it's in China.

The only offer I accepted was an interview on "Good Morning America". I wanted to explain my situation once and for all, to correct any false stories. I didn't want my reputation as a defector to overshadow my reputation as a dancer.

Elizabeth's mother had flown to Houston from Florida as soon as she'd heard that her daughter and new son-in-law were locked up at the Chinese consulate. Now it was all over, Elizabeth and her mother and I were planning to drive to Florida to start our new lives together there. We didn't really know what we were going to do. We were simply shell-shocked.

On the morning we were to leave, Ben called. "Li, I've spoken to the Chinese consulate. They're not objecting to you working with the Houston Ballet and the dancers' union has also given their permission. So I would still like to offer you that soloist contract."

I was overjoyed. I thought Ben would hate me for ever! I thought I'd never work with him again.

"What about you and China?" I asked. I still felt immense guilt.

"I don't know, the consulate is very cold towards me. You were the last person they ever suspected of defecting. There's nothing more that I can do to convince them that I wasn't involved."

"Will you ever forgive me?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, I can. I wouldn't offer you a contract if I couldn't forgive you," he replied.

So Elizabeth and I abandoned our Florida plan for the time being and I immediately joined the rehearsals for Ben's new creation of Peer Gynt. I was so happy. Everyone welcomed me back with open arms.

But even so, I didn't know another soul in America outside Houston. My English was still very poor and now I was cut off from my own family. Elizabeth and I had only her one-bedroom apartment until the lease expired a few months later.

We eventually rented a two-bedroom fourplex, close to the ballet studios, as our first real home together. It was a run-down place with a noisy, inefficient air-conditioner and no mosquito screens on the windows. But we were happy.

Lori and Delworth continued to love and care for Elizabeth and me. They often cooked for us: Delworth even attempted a Chinese stir-fry once. He used a lot of oyster sauce. After that I cooked some of my niang's dishes for them and Delworth didn't try to cook Chinese for me again. Instead he stuck to American culture, taking me to cowboy bars and nightclubs and generally treating me like a little brother. We had such good times together.

It took a while for Ben to feel comfortable with me again after the consulate incident. But now that I was a permanent member of the company he started to give me more soloist and principal roles. My dancing continued to improve. A few months after my defection, Ben cast me in the technically challenging Don Quixote pas de deux for a national tour.

So it wasn't until Christmas that Elizabeth and I finally drove to Florida for our first holiday since our marriage. We stayed with her mother in West Palm Beach and I met her father and his second wife.

I was sad to discover that Elizabeth's parents were divorced. Elizabeth had grown up in a comfortable, middle-class family. Her father had a small printing business and her mother was a receptionist at the West Palm Beach Ballet School. It was worlds apart from the kind of life I had known.

But although I had Elizabeth's love, my job with the Houston Ballet and my precious freedom, I couldn't shake off a nagging dark shadow across my heart. I began to have nightmares. My family and I were being shot against a wall, just like the people from my commune back home. I would shout violently and wake up sweating and find Elizabeth leaning over me saying, "It's all right. It's all right."

I feared for my family and friends back in China. I feared the worst. I hated myself for putting my loved ones in danger. The pain to even imagine that I would never see them again! Everywhere I was reminded of my family. The good food that I ate every day in America would remind me of my family's struggle for survival. Seeing Elizabeth's mother reminded me of my niang. Tears would flood my eyes. Seeing children playing in the parks would remind me of my own childhood and all the games I used to play with my friends and brothers. And when the rain came, I thought of my family and wondered if they still rushed around to collect the flakes of dried yams from the rooftops before they got wet. I was homesick and guilt-stricken and, without me realising it, Elizabeth became the victim of my emotional suffering. My only escape was to dance.

Throughout this time I made enormous progress with my dancing and Elizabeth worked hard as a scholarship student. But Ben never considered her a top prospect and she gradually became disillusioned. She was convinced Ben didn't like her because she had married me. She was torn between her own dance career and mine.

I felt so very sorry. Elizabeth was such a courageous girl. She was strong-minded and gregarious. We saw ourselves as Romeo and Juliet but we were convinced our story would have a happy ending. Yet no matter how hard we tried, life's intricacies always seemed to make our relationship worse. We avoided talking about the problem. We were afraid of hurting each other. I was still struggling to understand American culture, selfishly immersed in my own dancing world, arguing over unimportant things like unpaid bills and unwashed dishes.

One day, after a hard day's rehearsal, I walked into a dark apartment. "Hello, Liz?" I called out. No answer. She must be out, I thought. I turned on the lights—the dishes were still piled up in the sink after breakfast as usual. Anger started to simmer inside me. I looked to see if she had left me any messages and I found none. I took a beer from the fridge and sat on a cheap folding chair and felt sorry for myself. Where is my wife? Where is my dinner? Why didn't she leave me a message? Why didn't she wash the dishes, with all the time she has during the day? Hunger made me feel angrier. I broke a couple of eggs into a bowl and was about to make fried rice when I noticed the rice was still sitting in a pot on the stove. I'd told Elizabeth to put it in the fridge so it would keep longer. Should I wait for her perhaps? Yes, of course. According to my family tradition, the family meal together was a sacred time. I should keep this tradition going.

I waited for over an hour. I started to worry. Maybe she'd had an accident. I picked up the phone and called Keith, the British boy who'd stayed at Ben's place and who was a close friend of Elizabeth's at the time. No answer. Please don't let anything happen to Liz, I prayed. I paced around our apartment with my heart hanging in the air.

Elizabeth eventually came home, in a happy mood, around nine o'clock. "Hello, my darling, have you had your dinner yet?" she said.

My anger flared up immediately. "Where you been?"

"I went out with some friends and we had something to eat together. Why are you so angry?" she asked.

"Why I am angry? Look at these, dirty dishes in sink, like pigs' home, rice out on stove. No dinner, no message. I'm worried, hungry and angry!"

"Oh, you want me to cook for you? Is that what you're angry about? Let me tell you, you didn't marry a cook! I hate cooking!"

"I work all day and come home, see dirt everywhere! You want me cook, clean, wash at seven o'clock? You have many more hours free, what you do?"

"You don't understand, do you? I want to dance, not cook! Dancing is something I've wanted to do since I was a little girl. It's the only thing I want to do. Your career is going from strength to strength and you are happy with your leading roles. You go to sleep with sweet dreams. What about me?" she said, and by now she was in tears.

In my anger I could see nothing of my own selfishness. Sweet dreams? Had she forgotten my nightmares so quickly? She had no idea what I was going through. "In night, I think of my family in China…" but I couldn't go on. How could I express all my sorrow and guilt? "You don't understand!" I said finally.

"We don't understand each other!" she shouted.

We were still fuming the next morning. I'd gone out the evening before to walk off my anger and Elizabeth had been asleep when I'd returned. My anger gradually gave in to remorse but we didn't speak for days.

That was the beginning of the end of our marriage. I wanted Elizabeth and Ben to get along. I hoped that he might accept her into the company. But eventually it was too agonising for her to socialise with Ben and she was convinced that as long as he was the artistic director of the Houston Ballet she would have no chance of getting a contract. I tried to teach her some of my techniques but with our close relationship and my poor English, our coaching sessions always ended in frustration. Our happiest moments were when we would dance together in our living room. I wished that I could give her this kind of happiness all the time, but I could see she was suffocating and I didn't know how to help. I encouraged her to continue her dancing career with other companies, but she thought I was pushing her away. She eventually tried the San Francisco Ballet and several other companies but no contracts were offered. She came back to Houston between tries and over the months we communicated with each other less and less.

About a year after we married, she was finally accepted as a dancer by a small contemporary dance company in Oklahoma. She immediately started work. She was excited at last. She loved her new dancing opportunities. She loved performing. She was happy and alive.

Then one evening she phoned me from Oklahoma. "Li, I want a divorce."

I was shocked but not totally surprised. "If this is what you want, okay," I murmured sadly.

"I'll be back to get my stuff soon," she said shakily. "I'm sorry, Li, I really loved you."

I didn't blame Elizabeth for our failed marriage. I blamed myself. I had let Elizabeth down. I had failed as a husband. I didn't understand love in Western culture and I shrank back into my own protective cocoon, withdrawing from many of my friends. I felt hopeless. I doubted that a marriage between East and West could ever work. Hadn't Consul Zhang told me this, that night at the consulate? What could I have done to have saved our marriage? We loved each other. We had each other, and now we had lost each other. I blamed fate. Fate had pulled a dirty trick on me. I thought of my parents' successful marriage and felt only more grief and shame.

Now there was no way back. I had no home to go to now, so I poured myself into my dance even more. Ballet was the only thing

I knew how to do. It was my salvation as I tried to survive on my own in the Western world.

After our divorce, to help me pay my rent, I shared an apartment with another student for that first year. The second year I moved into a one-bedroom unit and I finally had my own space.

By now it was May 1982, the year I would go to London for the very first time. Ben had choreographed a pas de deux using Vivaldi's Four Seasons and he had especially created it for Janie Parker and me to perform at the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet gala.

Janie had joined the Houston Ballet in 1976. She'd fallen in love with Ben's choreography and artistry and, despite the outrage of George Balanchine and the artistic director of her company in Geneva, she'd followed Ben to Houston.

Janie had the most beautiful long legs and pretty feet. When she stood on pointe her legs seemed to stretch on and on. She was very lyrical in her dancing and, like me, she loved the romantic ballets.

This was going to be our first partnership and I was very apprehensive. She was one of the top two principal dancers of the Houston Ballet. In reality I was a little too short for her when she stood on pointe, but I made sure that I was strong enough and went through a physical strengthening program to make absolutely certain.

I couldn't wait to get to London. I longed to see it. London, Paris, Washington DC—the symbolic capitals of the Western world. I had seen some pictures of London but to be there in person, to experience the mood of this great city, would be awesome.

Like my first experience of America, I was shocked with what I saw in London. I'd guessed that the Chinese government would probably have lied to us about England too, but I was still overawed by its wealth and prosperity. The grandness of Buckingham Palace made me gasp with wonder. Where was the tragic poverty, the depressingly dark, unhappy London I had been told of in China? Britain should have made China look like heaven, but to my horror, it was the reverse.

It drizzled sporadically for the entire time we were in London but when the sun peeped out it was gloriously beautiful. The flowers in the meticulously maintained gardens, the café tables along the pathways, the wide busy streets. If only I could stay longer and enjoy all this! But our schedule was gruelling, and we spent most of our time in the hotel and the theatre. I did manage to see Piccadilly Circus, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and I marvelled at the glorious detail of Big Ben and Parliament House. The history fascinated me. Ben even introduced me to rich clotted cream for afternoon tea one day, and I remember sitting there in that café and thinking of the London Festival Ballet dancing in Beijing that time in 1979, so long ago now, it seemed.

Back in Houston, before my defection, Ben had been negotiating with the Chinese government to take some Houston Ballet dancers to China. This was one of Ben's great dreams, but after my defection everyone including Ben thought this possibility was dashed. But to everyone's surprise the Chinese Government allowed Ben to proceed with his plan. The Houston Ballet dancers were paired with the Chinese dancers and it was all a great success. As I had expected I wasn't allowed to go, nor would I have dared to return.

Ben's relationship with China mended after that trip and I was happy for him for that, but I still worried about the possible implications my defection might have had on my family and for several years I didn't write or call them, fearing I would get them into further trouble. When I eventually did dare to write, I received no reply and this just added even more worry to my already heavy heart.

It was now eighteen months since my defection and the Houston Ballet was to do a six-week tour through Europe: Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Luxembourg and Monaco. It would be my first look at the Continent.

I loved the places we performed at. Epernay was one of them: our impresario had booked us there for two performances and we were warned that the stage was small, uneven and raked.

During the afternoon rehearsal it became apparent that the stage was far too small to accommodate the entire cast of Etude. Ben had to take some dancers out of a couple of the larger scenes. I was one of the principals and had to find the smoothest part of the stage on which to perform my difficult turns. After the rehearsal, Ben gathered all the dancers together. "I know we are in the city where the best champagnes are made, but I hope you are disciplined and responsible enough not to drink any before the show," Ben warned.

The audience enthusiastically received our performance. But I did see a few wobbly legs that night. Maybe it was the raked stage, maybe it was the champagne, but right after the performance the British consul general, a distant cousin of Ben's, provided the whole company with Möet & Chandon and Taittinger, passed around in flowery handpainted glasses. It was consumed like water and the party lasted into the early hours of the following morning.

From Epernay we travelled to Nice, with its beautiful Mediterranean beaches and turquoise water, where I would brunch in a beach café and watch the boats passing back and forth. I visited the Matisse and Chagall collections and at night dined with the dancers and friends from the ballet, tasting red wines I had never even imagined and eating superb cuisine in even the smallest and shabbiest of cafés.

While touring in Italy we had a few days free. I went to Florence with three of my Houston Ballet friends. I was awe-struck by Florence. Endless monuments and sculptures, the history of the Medici family, masterpieces by Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, the Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Signoria. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited that I missed my lunch appointment with my friends and my hotel check-out time, and had to rush to the train station to catch my train to Venice.

Venice was the place all of us were eager to visit. A friend had once told me that "to discover romance and beauty in Venice one must walk and walk". Well, at least that's what I thought she'd said. So I walked and walked, from one historical site to another. I stood there, in total amazement at the striking of the bell in the Torre dell'Orologio, at the incredible paintings, at the rich Venetian colours. This was romance and beauty in its ultimate form, I thought. I saw decay everywhere, part of the true beauty of Venice and its rich history. But this ancient city also made me sad—I thought of China and all that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

In the middle of all this glamour, I remembered, as always, my family and friends back in China. How I wished I could share this food with them! How I wanted to show them what I saw! But for them I knew the Western world and its affluence would remain completely out of reach.