In order to understand many of the incidents in this novel, it is important to have some background on the Communist Revolution in China. Chairman Mao Zedong, whose picture, slogans, and policies constantly appear in the novel, was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, established in 1949. This was the communist regime in place during Sparrow, Zhuli, and Jiang Kai’s upbringing. Many of his ideas build on Marxism and Leninism, but his own theory of policy is Maoism.

Many of Chairman Mao’s policies directly affect the characters in this book. For example, Swirl, Wen, and many other supposed counter-revolutionaries end up in his re-education camps—internment camps meant to punish people through intensive labor. Sparrow and Jiang Kai lose their jobs at the Conservatory and hide their love for music during Mao’s Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s, which killed off anyone labeled an intellectual, capitalist, or critic of communism. During The Great Leap Forward, a horrifically failed economic policy started in 1958 that caused a massive famine, the novel’s characters must give up land. Later, they also endure Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a period from 1966 to 1976 that encouraged class warfare to weed the weak-minded out through so-called struggle sessions, or periods of torture and public shame.