Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Five years after Ai-Ming had left, Marie picked up the phone to find a very joyous Ai-Ming on the line. Ai-Ming had finally reached the point in her immigration process where she could file for permanent residency in the United States. It was Marie’s 17th birthday, so Ai-Ming asked her several questions about her plans for the future. Marie ignored all of them and asked Ai-Ming to update her on her immigration status. Ai-Ming seemed to be hiding something, but said she felt she would get citizenship soon. Marie wondered about Ai-Ming’s life because Ai-Ming used to let her and her mother visit, but recently she had been full of excuses as to why they couldn’t come. Her worry was somewhat alleviated, however, when Ai-Ming requested Marie come to see her in New York City. Marie couldn’t visit because of financial straits, but the invitation made her feel more at ease.

That night, when they tried to call Ai-Ming back, the “line was disconnected” (145). It was a few weeks before they heard from her again, this time by letter. She was returning to China to visit her ill mother, so they should not “worry” about her (145).

As soon as they had the money, Marie and her mother went in search of Ai-Ming. Her roommate said Ai-Ming had gone to China despite several warnings that this could impair her ability to become an U. S. citizen. They visited the factory where Ai-Ming ostensibly worked, only to find out no one had seen her in “weeks” (146). They splurged and attended an expensive concert, then gave up and headed back to Canada.

Two years later, Marie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. Marie once again felt the anger she had felt when her father left. She became bitter and “solitary” when she saw how easy other students at her college had it compared to her (147). She devoted herself fully to school in hopes of surviving the crushing sadness that seemed to be chasing her down.

Her mother’s health deteriorated over the next two years. Marie spent all her time with her mom or doing schoolwork. They discussed many things that her mother never would have been willing to talk about in different circumstances. Her mother felt as if she had failed Ai-Ming. They searched for her and for her mother but always came up empty handed. Right before Marie’s mother died, she gave Marie a photo Ai-Ming had given her of Zhuli, Sparrow, and her father at the Conservatory when they were young.

15 years after her mother’s death, Marie does everything she can to try to remember her. She still writes to Ai-Ming even though it has been close to two decades since she last heard from her. She often thinks back to the story from The Book of Records, thinking about the night Sparrow told Swirl he had heard from Wen.

Swirl and Big Mother Knife set off on their trip. Shortly after, Sparrow and Jiang Kai also left on their research commission for the Conservatory. Ba Lute was full of “pride,”, whereas Zhuli was full of longing (152). When she had finally approached Sparrow about allowing her to travel with them, he had said no, that she needed to work on her music and nothing else.

Jiang Kai and Sparrow made the long, crowded journey to their destination, entertaining others with their music along the way. When they arrived, Jiang Kai told Sparrow that the village he grew up in was not far from where they were. It was like going back in time “a hundred years or more” (156): The village had so little contact with other communities that little had changed in many generations. Three traveling priests had started a school there—they were the reason he had learned to play and love music. The school still stands and Jiang Kai visits it annually, though where once he had found beauty, he now finds only another branch of the ruling Party. While the school was still there, his family and his favorite teacher were not. They had died in a famine, sacrificing themselves for his sake. In their absence, his music teacher sent him to Shanghai, where a friend educated and raised him. The bounty of Shanghai was unimaginably different compared to his destitute hometown. Even so, Shanghai was not as good as it gets—Jiang Kai believed that they deserved to play their music worldwide. Sparrow was struck by his audacity and explained that he wanted “[n]othing more” than to “write […] music” (160). This did not deter Jiang Kai, who could tell Sparrow wanted the same things he did even if he did not say them aloud. He then urged Sparrow to “speak what’s really” on his mind (160).

A few days later, they ran into an older man named Jian who had heard Sparrow playing on the bus on the way to Wuhan. Jian had a friend at the Conservatory; after a bit of conversation he invited them to lodge with him. Once they were comfortably inside Jian’s home, Sparrow played on an old violin. After the music ceased, Sparrow asked Jian if he had ever heard of Comrade Glass Eye. Jian pointed to his glass eye and told them he would try to set up a meeting between them and the man who had made his glass eye, since he thought that was the man they were probably looking for.

The next day, they climbed onto Jian’s moped and headed for Comrade Glass Eye’s. Glass Eye told them he had not been able to experiment with electricity since “the Great Leap Forward,” an initiative created by Chairman Mao that robbed citizens of the metal they owned so it could be melted down into (often unusable) steel (167). He also explained that not many people knew him as Comrade Glass Eye and asked them how they learned that name. After Sparrow revealed that Wen had referred to him as such, Comrade Glass Eye showed them his collection of glass eyes. Jian expressed his deep gratitude for Comrade Glass Eye—before getting a glass eye he felt as if he had been “cut in two” (168). Comrade Glass Eye invited them to stay with him for a few nights and they happily agreed.

That evening, they listened to the rain as it mixed with Jiang Kai’s harpsichord performance. After some wine and music, Sparrow and Jiang Kai fell asleep in each other’s arms, a sign of their ever-growing intimacy. The next morning they walked over to see the “furnace” where the city had melted all of the citizens’ metal (171). There, Comrade Glass Eye lowered his voice and cried as he told Sparrow that he had no idea where Wen was hiding. He had met Wen in 1958 during a famine imposed on them by the Party. They had worked together to steal food and supplies to survive. He had ended up in the re-education camps because of an effort he had made on behalf of his mother. When he was child, she had left China to live in Taiwan with her Nationalist lover. When he got older, he petitioned to have her officially forgiven so that she could return to China. On the day he thought his mother was going to return to him, he was led to a stage where he was beaten senseless and accused of possessing “sympathy for the enemy” (176). From there, he had been sent to a re-education camp where he was told he was “lucky” they had spared his life (177). He lived in a cave and often went days without eating. He and Wen always stuck together, but Wen would often go crazy from starvation. Wen talked to Swirl every night as if she were there and often called out for Zhuli. Wen would also often tell the story from The Book of Records, substituting details about the camp for the original ones in order to meld his life to the narrative.

In 1960, Comrade Glass Eye had been released from the camp because a friend of his mother’s had some power and a desire to help. He “abandon[ed]” Wen at the camp despite his promise not to, sure that Wen would soon die (179). Before he left the camp, Wen showed him a suitcase where he had written the names of all the men who had died in the camp. He planned to make them immortal by including them in The Book of Records. Sparrow asked where Comrade Glass Eye thought Wen might be, but Comrade Glass Eye had no idea.

Back in Shanghai, Zhuli lay awake worrying about her parents, something she had been doing since that awful day she had been discovered coming out of her parents’ underground basement. She had been hiding down there to play the qin. Within days of her being discovered, all the objects had been removed from the underground, their house had been graffitied, and her parents had been violently ripped from her side. She had spent three days alone, scavenging for food, before a woman put her on a bus to Big Mother Knife’s. She had thought she was going to see her mother, so it was disappointing when Sparrow had opened the door.

She grew to love Sparrow, who showed her a new world of music, saving her from the guilt she felt over causing her parents’ disappearance. He taught her to play violin and brought her to the Conservatory where she had started to work with her current teacher, Professor Tan. She felt distant from Swirl since her mother’s return from the camps, but tried to reassure herself that she should just be thankful they were both “alive” (190).