“Ma, please, sing ‘A Bright Sunny Day.’” It was a song from the wildly popular movie The Story of Liubao, Yuan Feng’s favorite, about an early spring day filled with sunshine breaking through the end of winter’s gray. The lyrics and the tune were quite jolly, even leaning a bit towards flippancy, but there was something in Mother’s voice that weighed her down. Yuan Feng didn’t know then that it was Mother’s apology to the world for the sibling she couldn’t give her daughter, for the chipper home she couldn’t build, and for a dreary course of life she didn’t quite know how to avert.
