Do Not Say We Have Nothing

One day, as Sparrow headed home from his job at the factory, the loudspeakers started to play non-revolutionary music for the first time in years. When he arrived home, he found Ai-Ming enchanted. In her moment of “exultation,” Sparrow thought Ai-Ming looked like Zhuli and it bothered him so much that he stopped the radio she had been listening to (305).

Ai-Ming loved having Big Mother Knife around since Ling had been assigned away from the family. In school, Ai-Ming was constantly teased about her family’s political associations, causing her to wonder how much it mattered if one was “a good revolutionary” (306). Big Mother Knife had Ai-Ming read to her from The Book of Records, starting a tradition Ai-Ming never wanted to stop. Big Mother Knife was often in contact with Wen and Swirl, but she still had not revealed to them that Zhuli was dead. Sometimes she blatantly lied about what Zhuli was doing, sometimes she modeled her stories about Zhuli on Ai-Ming; either way she adamantly refused to tell the truth. On the morning Mao died, Big Mother Knife finally let anger and sadness wash over her. She could not help but think about how many lives had been lost, how many “humiliations” Sparrow had been forced to suffer, all for the sake of this one man (309). She could tell Sparrow had turned his “rage” against the Party into rage against himself, and it crushed her (309).

When Ai-Ming was six, Jiang Kai came to visit Sparrow. He played Sparrow records that Sparrow had not heard in years and tried to convince Sparrow that things were about to change—soon, Sparrow would have his job back at the Conservatory. Sparrow was skeptical; he still could not legally see his brothers or father, so the idea that things might change still seemed distant. They talked for a moment about Zhuli but quickly moved on. Ai-Ming watched them from the shadows of the room, entranced by the music and their low-toned conversation. Eventually she fell asleep, only to wake up and find Jiang Kai gone but the record player he brought remaining. She asked her father to play it, which he did though she could tell the music disturbed him.

Sparrow nervously attended the Central Philharmonic concert Jiang Kai had invited him to. He hadn’t heard live music in years, and it felt overwhelming and dangerous. The concertgoers celebrated the rise of their new leader, Deng Xiaoping while Sparrow tried to drown the music out. He snapped to attention when Jiang Kai came out to play the piano though, unable to distract himself from the sound of the music.

That night they lay next to each other in the Philharmonic’s instrument room, drinking, playing some records and instruments, and talking. They discussed music and some of the horrors they had witnessed during the Cultural Revolution. Jiang Kai hoped that he would be permitted to go abroad, and Sparrow continued to reject the notion altogether.

Jiang Kai explained that others would perceive Sparrow’s refusal to join the Conservatory as selfish, but Sparrow held true to his decision and claimed he now preferred factory work to music. He believed “[r]epetition was an illusion” and that Jiang Kai’s attempts to go back in time were futile (325). He did not want to move somewhere where Zhuli had never existed, so he continued to reject Jiang Kai’s offer to help him escape.

Years later, Sparrow watched a symphony at the Shanghai Conservatory with Ai-Ming. He found a piano while they were there and played a little for her. He was surprised that he remembered how to play the symphony he had been composing before Zhuli died. Ai-Ming was surprised he knew how to play at all.

Ai-Ming knew she had wanted to be a computer scientist since the age of six, so it was pure joy when Chairmen Deng began allowing students to attend universities based on merit rather than on Party dedication. Ai-Ming studied day and night, but did not do well enough to travel to the universities her heart had been set on. Still, she was accepted into college, a first for anyone in her neighborhood.

At dinner with Ba Lute, Big Mother Knife, and her father, Ai-Ming asked her father why she should be “cautious,” unsure that his advice was actually useful (329). Then she and her father went outside to listen to records on the record player. She thought about how “frozen” her father was, how his fear of life rendered him almost dead (331). After a while, Sparrow turned to Ai-Ming and encouraged her to try again the following year to get into the universities she really wanted to attend. He explained that he had had their family’s residency changed to Beijing, exponentially raising her chances of getting into Beijing University because locals had precedence in the selection process. She teared up at the news and excitedly agreed to move.

Big Mother Knife could tell Sparrow had been drinking more, so she called him out for turning down good work. He told her she should move to Beijing with him and Ai-Ming, but she didn’t want to be “[s]urrounded by cadres and bureaucrats” (333). Sparrow took out some of The Book of Records and read to himself the part where Da-Wei and his wife search endlessly for their daughter.