Do Not Say We Have Nothing

In 2016, Marie visited Tofu Liu, Zhuli’s former admirer. He had been teaching successfully at the Conservatory for years. He treated Marie like family. She had been reading her father’s notebooks full of self-criticisms and thinking about how Zhuli was “the zero point” for her dad: Zhuli’s suicide marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one for Jiang Kai (297). Tofu Liu had been forced to work in a coal mine for six years before he escaped and found Professor Tan, who quickly found him work at the Conservatory. He had buried many “mementos” from the time he had known Zhuli and Marie’s father, and he played Marie a recording of them playing together (301). Marie started to cry, not having heard her father’s voice in years. Tofu Liu told her it was hard to explain “the pressure” he and Marie’s father had suffered through during that time (302). Marie gave him Tofu Liu one of Sparrow’s pieces of music and he gave her the recording of Jiang Kai and Zhuli singing, as well as a promise to set her up with piano lessons. He played Sparrow’s piece for her on the violin and she showed him a picture of