There were groans but no words of complaint as students got up and slung packs over their shoulders. Lian adjusted the straps on her rucksack and fell into line, Meirong beside her. A laborer pushing a handbarrow came alongside them, the barrow’s single center wheel rumbling over the rough road. One side was stacked with crates marked “Lab Equipment—Agriculture Department,” the other side held a middle-aged woman with her arms around two sleepy children, legs dangling over the side. A professor’s family.

Behind them, someone had pulled out a harmonica. Lian recognized the tune after just a few notes. A spirited march would’ve been more suitable for their situation, but perhaps the musician was feeling sad. She never thought a harmonica could play the “Blue Danube Waltz” so wistfully.

And despite her best efforts to push it down, a childhood memory surfaced. From before Japan took over Manchuria and turned it into a puppet state. From a time when her family had lived there in Harbin, a city she remembered as lively, the streets noisy with voices speaking a dozen languages, the scent of baked bread and roasting chestnuts warming the icy air. From the days when she had taken happiness for granted.

LIAN WAS NOT quite eleven years old that winter night. Her parents had come back from ice skating and couldn’t stop laughing. Faces glowing pink from the cold, they sang at the top of their voices and waltzed through the courtyard of their home, gliding their feet as though still twirling on the frozen lake. Lian had been entranced. She stood with her amah, child and nursemaid equally bemused, giggling as they watched her parents spin.

Then her father ran over and swept her into his arms. “Your mother was the most beautiful woman and the best skater,” he said, kissing her. “Everyone on the ice, Chinese and foreign, they all stared to admire her.”

Whenever this memory of her parents surfaced, Lian could see their elegant figures dancing across the courtyard. She could see her mother’s head thrown back in laughter, but her father’s face was indistinct, a blur under the fur hat. She felt, rather than saw, his smile. The only way she could anchor his features in her mind was by looking at the framed photograph beside her mother’s bed. The lock of hair that fell across his forehead, the well-shaped nose and high forehead.

A month later, on her birthday, everything changed.

Their cook had made panfried dumplings for lunch, her favorite. Lian carefully cut and set aside a piece of cake for her father, who had been away all week, but would be returning later that night, after her bedtime. Her mother had been wiping cake crumbs off Lian’s chin, gently scolding her for making a mess, when the discreet jangle of bells told them the gatekeeper had let in a visitor.