Now an adult, Li-ling reflects on when she was only 10 years old and her father, Jiang Kai, commits suicide. While he was alive, Li-ling knew her father as a quiet, withdrawn man but after his death discovers that in China, he was a renowned pianist. He leaves her and her mother alone in cold Canada, and, after his death, her mother becomes obsessed with looking through the many documents he left behind. One day, Li-ling’s mother receives a long letter from China. It is from Ling, a family friend and the wife of Kai’s former music teacher, who requests that Li-ling’s mother host her daughter, Ai-ming, who is in Canada and has nowhere to go. Ai-ming is 19, and she was involved in the Tiananmen Square riots in China, which is why she needs to seek political refuge in Canada. Ai-ming stays with Li-ling and her mother for three months, and she and Li-ling become very close. One day, Ai-ming discovers in the pile of documents under the dining table The Book of Records, a piece of writing passed down through her family for generations. Ai-ming begins to read the book to Li-ling. In it, they read the stories of Big Mother Knife and Swirl, two sisters who, during the Chinese Civil War, are young women who make their living by singing and performing in different towns across the countryside. Swirl sings so beautifully that she is wooed by Wen the Dreamer, the youngest child of a wealthy family of landowners in rural China. Wen woos Swirl, in fact, by sending her chapters of The Book of Records, which is a captivating novel about two lovers who lose touch with each other after the Communist Revolution. The book ends in the middle of a chapter, though, and Wen and Swirl finally meet in person when they are both at a bookstore—owned by Ling’s aunt, the Old Cat—looking for the next chapter of The Book of Records. Meanwhile, Big Mother Knife, once the war ends, returns to her husband, Ba Lute, who fought in the Communist resistance and has returned a revolutionary hero. Although she ideologically disagrees with Ba Lute on many things—she doesn’t have as much faith in Communism as he does—Big Mother Knife has three sons with her husband: Sparrow, Da Shan, and Flying Bear. Back in Canada, outside of The Book of Records, it is time for Ai-ming to try to cross over to the United States: there, she has heard that she can get asylum as a Chinese student. Li-ling’s mother makes the drive with Ai-ming one day to the border, and sees Ai-ming onto the bus to San Francisco.
Back in Vancouver, Li-ling continues reading The Book of Records. She learns that Swirl and Wen the Dreamer suffer greatly under Land Reform: Wen’s family has always been wealthy in his village and, because of this, the people publicly humiliate and execute some member of Wen’s family in the name of Land Reform. Wen and Swirl are sent to live with their young daughter, Zhuli, in a hut on the outskirts of town. Kicked out of the village school, Zhuli spends her days wandering, and one day goes down a trapdoor in her family’s old property. There, she discovers a hidden library full of books and musical instruments. She discovers her love of music. But one day, a neighborhood kid sees her going through the trapdoor, and the other villagers soon discover the hiding place. They punish Wen the Dreamer and Swirl for having hidden stashes of wealth from the village by sending them to re-education camps in the Northwest region of the country. Zhuli, only six years old, is sent to live with her aunt, Big Mother Knife, and her family in Shanghai. There, Zhuli has the opportunity to hone her love for music. She plays violin very well and becomes a student at the Shanghai Conservatory, where Sparrow, her cousin, is a teacher, and He Luting is the program director, infamous for continuing to teach Western composers even though the government deems them counter-revolutionary.
After suffering for many years at the re-education camp and almost dying of starvation, Swirl is released and moves to Shanghai to live with Big Mother Knife and her family. One day, Sparrow opens to door to an impoverished boy who hands him a mysterious letter. It is from Wen the Dreamer, in which he sends his greetings to Zhuli and Swirl but does not reveal his location.
Meanwhile at the Conservatory, Zhuli, Sparrow, and a student named Jiang Kai form a group of friends. Kai is romantically involved with Zhuli and Sparrow; neither knows that the other has this kind of intimacy with their mutual friend. Kai is the son of poor, rural revolutionaries who died during the famine that immediately followed the Communist Revolution. Because of his “exemplary class background,” Kai is popular among the students of the Conservatory. In spite of his revolutionary background, Kai is involved with underground, counter-culture groups. One day, he takes Sparrow and Zhuli to an underground meeting where a group, led by Old Cat, reads books that have been deemed counter-revolutionary. Soon, Kai and Sparrow receive the opportunity to travel to rural China to collect folk songs to play with the conservatory. Before he left, Ba Lute had asked Sparrow to meet up with a former fellow Communist revolutionary, Comrade Glass Eye, who he thinks might know something about Wen the Dreamer’s whereabouts. Kai and Sparrow are able to meet Comrade Glass Eye on their trip, and from him learn that Wen the Dreamer has escaped the re-education camps and is wandering through China, using stolen identity cards to get by.
When they return from the trip, Swirl learns that her husband is free, and she decides to go and look for Wen. She diligently copies chapters of The Book of Records, altering the language such that they encode the location of Notes from the Underground, a plant and flower clinic run by Swirl’s friend, Lady Dostoevsky, who saved her from starvation at the re-education camps. She and Big Mother Knife decide they will distribute these chapters throughout the Northwest of the country, in the hopes that Wen will find a copy and know to meet Swirl at the plant and flower clinic.
Meanwhile, the Cultural Revolution is underway, and Kai becomes part of the Red Guard—a student militia—almost by default, due to his revolutionary background. He persecutes the students at the Conservatory who have been labelled rightists or the children of rightists, including Zhuli, whose parents have been labelled anti-revolutionaries. One day, a mob of students tries to attack her as she leaves the Conservatory, but she is able to escape thanks to the help of Tofu Liu, one of her classmates whose parents have also been labelled rightists. Still, in spite of Tofu’s help, Zhuli is targeted again by her classmates, who show up at her house to bring her to the Conservatory, where they torture her. Kai is present and denounces Zhuli for playing Western music. After this day, Zhuli imagines that her peers could one day break her hands while torturing her. She is so afraid of living without being able to play the violin that she commits suicide in the Conservatory. Sparrow finds her body and brings it home. He runs into Ling in the street on the way, and she comforts him, walking with him. When he arrives at home, he sees that Ba Lute has encouraged his Da Shan and Flying Bear to denounce Zhuli, for fear that the whole family will be persecuted by the Red Guards. Da Shan and Flying Bear seem to really believe the propaganda that Ba Lute has forced them to write as a performance: they tell Sparrow that Zhuli must be guilty if she killed herself. For years, Big Mother Knife will keep Zhuli’s suicide a secret from Swirl and Wen the Dreamer, who have escaped China across the Mongolia border and communicate with her via letter. Big Mother Knife lies that Zhuli is a successful musician.
In Canada, the adult Li-ling has lost her mother to cancer. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to the study of mathematics and become a professor. Still, she longs to discover what happened with her family: why her father committed suicide, and where Ai-ming has gone. Since going to the United States, Ai-ming has sent letters and called occasionally, but in recent years, Li-ling has heard nothing. Li-ling’s curiosity about her family’s past leads her to China. There, she requests the police file on her father’s death, and, when she learns where the apartment is that Kai committed suicide, she goes to visit it, though she can’t bring herself to physically enter the building.
After Zhuli’s death, Sparrow is sent to work in a factory producing radios in the South. He no longer plays music. There, he marries Ling and they have a daughter named Ai-ming. One day at his factory, Sparrow’s faction of workers is called to watch something on television: it is a televised questioning of He Luting, who has been captured by Red Guards and is being interrogated for being a rightist. However, He Luting denies all of the allegations against him and shames the Red Guards—many of whom are his former students—for lying. In the middle of the questioning, the screening stops. A few years later, Kai pays Sparrow a visit. Kai is now playing with a professional orchestra and gifts Sparrow with tickets to see him play, as well as a record player. Sparrow has given up on playing music, but after he sees Kai perform, he feels inspired to begin composing again. When she is older, Ai-ming dreams of studying computer science at Beijing University, and she studies hard for the entrance exams. She doesn’t pass on her first try, but Sparrow commits to relocating to Beijing so that she has a better shot. Once in Beijing, Ai-ming meets Yiwen, her neighbor and a university student. Yiwen gets Ai-ming involved in the Tiananmen Square riots, which are sweeping the city. Ai-ming and Yiwen regularly sleep in Tiananmen Square, protesting for freedom of speech. Even Sparrow gets involved, joining a battalion with his workforce. When one of Sparrow’s coworkers is injured during the army’s invasion of Beijing, he goes into the streets to help the coworker and is killed by soldiers. After the army invades the city, the Tiananmen Square riots are over, and Ling learns that if Ai-ming is to study in Beijing University, she will need to pass a “political background check.” Knowing that Ai-ming’s involvement in the Tiananmen Square riots will render her unfit to study at Beijing University, Ling arranges for Ai-ming to go and live with Li-ling and her family in Canada—since Sparrow and Kai were so close, she knows that Li-ling’s mother will do her this favor. She sends Ai-ming to meet up with Swirl and Wen the Dreamer, who live as nomads in the desert. They help her cross the border to Mongolia, and set her up with someone who will help her get on a plane to Canada.
Li-ling travels to Shanghai in 2016 to try to piece together remnants of her family’s past. She meets Tofu Liu, who plays a recording of Kai playing the piano for her. He also connects her with Yiwen, with whom she makes several copies of The Book of Records. She includes hints about her own location and leaves copies online and in major Beijing cities, hoping that Ai-ming will find the book and get into contact with her.
