In the book Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine: the main character Li Ling was older and had her own job in mathematics and was writing her book on it. By this time Ai Ming had left and over the cold hard dance that life had played: Li Lings mother had grown sick. Soon however she received the call from the hospital that she had died. Soon after Li Ling decided to find out more about her father; her mothers death compelling her to find out the blank spaces of her fathers death.\
I came by chance to a small columbarium where, inside, four tiny tea cups and four red chopsticks lay waiting on a sheet of newspaper. Square niches, for holding urns and ashes, were mounted on walls. But some squares were empty (p. 196)
In this quote she described the cemetery in which her father wished to be lay in once his time came. However as she searched and searched she could not find her father among the frames of people among the wall who represented the dead. This could imply the chaos of the time Li Ling was in. Where rather that focusing the honor of the dead, the government of China was more pressed for time on modernizing and industrializing China.