Jiang Kai is the “kind but melancholy” father of Marie, with “dark brown” eyes, glasses, and a “handsome, ageless face” (3). Despite growing up in an impoverished country village and losing all of his family members to famine, he was “playful and virtuosic” with “an extraordinary memory” (122). He exuded confidence and talent and thus attracted the affection of both Zhuli and Sparrow.

In his later years, after Zhuli had died and Sparrow had refused the invitation to play in the Philharmonic, Jiang Kai’s joyous self disappeared, and he gave himself completely to the Red Guard and his music. At first resigned to a self-effacing lifestyle, he eventually decided to reach out to Sparrow, with tragic consequences that pushed him to suicide.

Marie is the “high achieving” narrator of this multi-generational tale (9). She is endlessly curious, saying, “I yearned to understand everything” (50). Furious over her father’s disappearance and suicide, and her mother’s death, she constantly searches for the meaning behind her father’s actions. She and grows into “a solitary young woman” (147), determined to bury herself in numbers and wanting to be, in G.H. Hardy’s words, “the most austere and the most remote” (192). Eventually, she reached out to people her father knew and started making new connections instead of isolating herself.