Evidence of the Sound of the Piano

Midsummer 1985, Tainan fishing village. Eighteen-year-old Lin Yuqing dug out an old letter in her adoptive mother's funeral hall - the letter contained an address and a name: Lin Tianyou, the dean of the private Guanghua Conservatory of Music in Taipei. That was her grandfather, a leading figure in Taiwan's classical music industry. She took half of the yellowed sheet of music to the north to meet her relatives, but what greeted her was a cold bet: "After winning the Taiwan Piano Competition in three months, we will discuss her last name." What's even more fatal is that the little finger of her left hand is naturally crooked, and all the teachers have judged that she "will never become a professional piano player in this life." My aunt sneered in public: "Does a girl with crippled fingers deserve the surname Lin?" No one in Taipei dared to teach her. She drew piano keys on cardboard and practiced silently in the storage room at four o'clock in the morning; she tied her little finger with tape and practiced the incompleteness into a unique technique. Three months later, she stood on the final stage of the national competition and played "Give Me My Daughter in Twenty Years" - the last piece left by her father before his disappearance. The whole audience stood up. She won more than just a trophy. She won back her father's name and the life that had been stolen from her.