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Violin Stories Across Three Generations
Music saw my family through loss and adversity
Much as I wish we possessed a Stradivarius to pass down as a family heirloom, this story features three inexpensive violins acquired at different times and in different locales. Much as I appreciate my formal training as a pianist, violin intonation has been the sound that most effortlessly overcomes me with nostalgia while providing an anchor in my nomadic life.
My family’s entanglement with this intricate but portable musical instrument began long before I was born. At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, my grandparents who were among the founding fathers (and mothers) of modern China, who came from privilege but had been inspired by the Enlightenment and French Revolution to devote their idealistic selves to lifting compatriots out of poverty and war, were “sent down” to one of the infamous Cadre Schools, where they endured the party line drilled into them day in, day out, sometimes by way of arduous manual labor.
Following their departure, my father, a teenager at the time, was forced to abandon his sheltered existence in the urban capital. He joined the ranks of the “rusticated youths,” transported en masse to remote rural areas, where they lived with country folks and were “re-educated.” Dad landed in the northeastern tip…
