The Violin in Homeseeking: A Symbol of Connection, Lost Love, and Enduring Memory

The Violin as a Physical Object and First Encounter (1938–1945)

The violin in Homeseeking is introduced as a European instrument that Haiwen Wang has played since age four, when he taught himself a G scale after picking up his brother's discarded instrument. When seven-year-old Suji (later Suchi) first hears it in 1938, she describes the sound as rounder and darker than an erhu, like a young woman singing. The instrument is physically too large for the six-year-old Haiwen, whose left arm strains to reach its length. His family's ability to afford the instrument and lessons with Mr. Portnoy, a Russian Jewish teacher, marks the Wangs as comparatively wealthy and cosmopolitan—a contrast that Suji's mother immediately notes with disapproval, believing Western things can only poison and weaken China.

The violin thus enters the novel as a marker of class and cultural difference. When Suji asks to learn it, her father responds with the story of Zheng He and China's historical isolation, using the instrument as a springboard to discuss how China's refusal to engage with the outside world left it vulnerable. The violin is not neutral: it carries connotations of foreignness, privilege, and the complex history of China's relationship with the West.

Despite these connotations, the violin becomes the primary channel of connection between Haiwen and Suchi. In 1945, when Suchi develops romantic feelings for Haiwen, she finds him listening to Sibelius's violin concerto on a gramophone. She imagines herself as the violin—the heroine of the story—dodging Japanese soldiers and finding sanctuary. This fantasy links the instrument to her own aspirations and to her sense of shared danger with Haiwen during the war.

The violin also becomes the site of their most intimate exchanges. Haiwen plays the folk song for Suchi and her sister Sulan in 1938, and later Massenet's piece, which Suchi finds one of the most beautiful things she has ever heard. The instrument gives Haiwen a voice he otherwise lacks; as he tells Suchi, he is always listening to music in his head, and the violin is how he externalizes that inner world.

The Violin as a Token of Sacrifice and Parting (1947)

The violin's most significant transformation occurs in April 1947, when Haiwen decides to enlist in the army in his brother Haiming's place. He leaves his violin case with Suchi, along with a note, and his mother confirms he has enlisted. The violin—the object that has defined his identity and his connection to Suchi—becomes a parting gift, a physical embodiment of everything he is giving up: his musical ambitions, his conservatory dreams, and his future with Suchi.

This act connects directly to the theme of sacrifice and duty versus personal fulfillment. Haiwen's violin lessons had contributed to his family's debts, and his decision to enlist is framed as a way to spare his brother. The violin he leaves behind is thus both a love token and a symbol of what duty costs him.

The Violin as a Container of Secrets (1953–1981)

In the years that follow, the violin case becomes a repository for things Suchi cannot speak aloud. In late 1953, when a letter arrives from Siau Zi offering to protect Suchi's parents if her sister Sulan returns to Shanghai to marry him, Suchi conceals the letter and hides it in the violin case. The instrument that once carried music now carries a dangerous secret—a decision that will shape the sisters' fates.

Decades later, in 1981, the violin case holds another secret: a gold ring that Haiwen's mother gave him for Suchi, which his wife Linyee discovers. The ring represents the marriage that never happened, the promise Haiwen could not keep. That the ring and the letter both find their way into the violin case suggests the instrument's role as a keeper of the past—a place where unresolved histories are stored, hidden, and occasionally discovered.

The Violin as Memory and Emotional Refuge (1975–2008)

For Haiwen, the violin is inseparable from memory. After the war, he loses his ability to recall music—the notes, colors, and textures leak away from his brain, leaving only the echo of the feelings they once evoked. When he later buys recordings of the pieces he has forgotten, the music floods back with the pain, terror, and homesickness of his wartime experience. The violin itself, however, retains what his conscious memory cannot: when he finally retrieves it from his closet in January 2008, his fingers miraculously remember the first notes of the folk song.

This scene is the culmination of the violin's role as a memory device. Haiwen plays the song for his daughters, and the act of playing restores a connection to his past that his conscious mind has lost. The violin is not merely a symbol of memory; it is a technology of memory, a physical object that holds what the mind cannot.

In April 1975, after Chiang Kai-shek's death, Haiwen's daughter Yijun brings him his violin when he breaks down crying. He plays a long series of pieces—the folk song, Massenet's piece, Paganini, Sibelius, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, then the popular songs Suchi loved, then nursery rhymes and lullabies. The violin becomes a way of processing grief that language cannot reach. The instrument seems to breathe as he plays, the notes chasing the notes in his head, each one confirming its own existence. The evidence describes the violin as an extension of himself, an extra limb, a true voice.

The Violin's Return and the Persistence of Connection (1966)

When Suchi and Haiwen reunite in Hong Kong in March 1966, Suchi reveals she has kept his violin all these years and returns it to him. This act is double-edged: it confirms that she has never forgotten him, but it also signals her decision to marry Lam Saikeung. Returning the violin is a way of letting go—of acknowledging that the life they might have had together is past.

The violin's journey—from Haiwen to Suchi, back to Haiwen, and finally into his old age—mirrors the novel's larger meditation on the unreachable past and the impossibility of return. The instrument survives every displacement: Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Los Angeles. It is battered, worn, its leather peeling, but it still plays. Like the characters' memories of each other, it persists across decades and continents.

Character and Theme Connections

The violin connects to nearly every major character. For Suchi, it is the sound that first draws her to Haiwen, the token he leaves behind, and the object she keeps for nineteen years. For Haiwen, it is his voice, his memory, and his refuge. For Linyee, it is the container of a secret that reveals her husband's unresolved past. For Yijun, it is a way to reach her father in his grief. Even Sulan is present at the first violin performance, witnessing the connection that will define her sister's life.

Thematically, the violin embodies music as memory and emotional refuge, forgetting as survival versus remembering as healing, and sacrifice and duty versus personal fulfillment. It is also tied to displacement and multilingual identity in the diaspora, as the instrument travels across borders and carries different meanings in each place it lands.

Study Questions

1. How does the violin's meaning shift from Haiwen's childhood to his old age?

In childhood, the violin is a marker of class privilege and a private world of sound that Haiwen inhabits. By 1947, it becomes a token of sacrifice when he leaves it with Suchi before enlisting. In his later years, it becomes a technology of memory: when his conscious recall of music fails, his fingers still remember the folk song. The violin moves from being an extension of his identity to being a repository of everything he has lost and survived.

2. Why does Suchi keep the violin for nineteen years, and what does returning it signify?

Suchi keeps the violin as a physical connection to Haiwen after he enlists. She hides the letter from Siau Zi in its case, making it a container for secrets she cannot share. When she returns it in 1966, she is both acknowledging that she has never forgotten him and signaling that she is choosing to move forward with her marriage to Lam Saikeung. The return is an act of closure—a way of saying goodbye while confirming the connection's persistence.

3. How does the violin function as a container for secrets across the novel?

The violin case holds two significant secrets: the letter from Siau Zi that Suchi conceals in the 1950s, and the gold ring that Linyee discovers in 1981. Both objects represent choices that were never fully made or spoken—Suchi's decision about her sister's fate, and Haiwen's unfulfilled promise to Suchi. The violin's role as a hiding place suggests that the past is never fully buried; it surfaces when least expected.

4. What does the recurrence of the folk song reveal about memory and connection?

The folk song is the first piece Haiwen plays for Suchi in 1938, and it is the song his fingers remember when he retrieves the violin in 2008. Its recurrence across sixty years suggests that certain melodies function as anchors for memory—they survive when other details fade. The song also connects Haiwen's past and present: he plays it for his daughters, linking the love he once felt for Suchi to the love he has for his family. The song is the thread that ties the novel's disparate moments together.

For a broader view of how this symbol operates across the novel, return to the main study guide.