“After this war, China will be different,” Jenmei said. “Farmland and homes like this will belong to all the people. The Chinese Communist Party will make sure no one lives in luxury while others starve. Come to a Communist Students Club meeting, Liu Shaoming. Just one.”

Shao shook his head. “You know my family. I could never join any Communist group.” He smiled pleasantly as he said this. Minghua 123 was a small community and they had months on the road ahead of them. There was no need to create an uncomfortable situation. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

He left the bamboo garden to look for Sparrow. He needed that button sewn back on.

SHAO’S MEMORIES OF his early childhood were vague, his days an interchangeable series of games and meals, of being put to bed by Amah Fu. Until the day Sparrow walked into his room. What Shao could recall was that he had been crying, throwing a tantrum over some now-forgotten indignity, when a small girl appeared at the nursery door. She walked straight to Shao, which startled him so much he stopped crying. He rubbed the tears from his eyes to take a better look, at her pale skin and wide-set eyes, her birdlike frame. Shao had been too young to explain to himself, let alone to an adult, how the sight of Sparrow affected him. It was as though his real life had begun and that Sparrow was part of the journey.

The Liu household’s younger children mixed freely, masters and servants. All of them ran back and forth between the houses, all part of a single huge estate. They played together, seemingly heedless of the difference in their parents’ positions until they were old enough for school. The Liu children attended private school. The servants’ children did not.

Shao learned before then, however, that Sparrow was not his equal. His parents had been hosting relatives from Changchow and he had refused to play with his cousins, preferring Sparrow’s company. For this, he’d been scolded by his mother. It was the first time his mother had ever raised her voice to him.

“You shouldn’t spend so much time with the lower classes,” she said, an angry frown marring her perfect features. “She’s just a servant. Play with your cousins. You are their host.”

As a child, Shao always assumed Sparrow’s parents were family retainers, servants whose own ancestors had served the Liu clan for generations, their lives and well-being tied to their masters’ prosperity. They counted on the Lius to arrange their marriages and funerals, to provide jobs in Liu family businesses. But Sparrow, he learned, was an orphan.