KMT government

The KMT government appears in the story less through direct scenes than through the marks it leaves on the Rong family: a patriotic plaque whose original calligraphy becomes politically dangerous, a family history of unfair treatment, and a reputation that another government tries to exploit. Its role connects public power to private consequences, while the narrative distinguishes it from the later Nanjing puppet government and the People’s Government that follow in the Rongs’ history.

The plaque and its political afterlife

The connection begins with Old Lillie’s support for the Northern Expedition. When the National Revolutionary Army reached C City, he saw students collecting money for the cause and returned to Tongzhen that night. There he sold the docks and half the shops that formed part of the Rong family’s inherited business, using the proceeds to buy ammunition for the expedition. In recognition, the family received a plaque bearing the words Supporter of the Northern Expedition, written by a famous general.

That honor became complicated when the general was later wanted by the KMT government and went into hiding. The change in his political standing dimmed the plaque’s prestige, though the inscription itself remained unchanged. The government subsequently offered the Rongs a replacement with the same wording and gilding but different calligraphy. Old Lillie refused the exchange. The distinction mattered to him: the family’s attachment was not merely to an approved slogan, but to the particular object and the history embodied in its original writing. He insisted that it would be taken down only over his dead body.

After that refusal, the narrative says, the family encountered continuing trouble with the government and its business suffered. It does not specify each measure or establish exactly how every later difficulty was administered. It does show the plaque becoming a point where state authority and family memory met: the inscription could remain publicly legible while the political history of its author made it less acceptable.

A family’s grievance and a rival government’s calculation

The KMT government’s significance also appears in what the Rong family had suffered under its rule. When the Nanjing puppet government offered Young Lillie, then acting vice-chancellor of N University, the chancellorship, it regarded his fame as politically useful and expected the family’s experience at the hands of the KMT government to make him receptive. The offer therefore rested partly on a misreading: past injury did not make Young Lillie available for recruitment by a rival administration.

Young Lillie rejected the appointment publicly, tearing up the brevet and declaring that the Rongs would rather die than betray their country. His response made his political position unmistakable and left him without an official post under the puppet government. He had already considered going into hiding in Tongzhen to avoid its overtures and the infighting at the university; a letter from Mr Auslander accelerated his departure. The KMT government is not the speaker or immediate actor in this episode, but its earlier treatment of the family forms part of the political calculation behind the puppet government’s approach—and helps explain why that calculation failed.

Property, support, and the limits of attribution

The account later gives concrete measure to the Rongs’ diminished means. A few months before Liseiwicz questioned Young Lillie’s explanation for why Jinzhen could not study abroad, the remaining family property in Tongzhen had been seized in the Land Reform. That action belongs to a later political context and is not attributed to the KMT government. The family’s last commercial property in the provincial capital was also gone: Young Lillie presented it to the People’s Government of C City at a public welcome for the new mayor, with the recipients choosing the occasion to encourage other prominent and wealthy families to support the new government.

The narrative connects the family’s impoverishment to several causes, not to the KMT government alone. Old Lillie had already sold valuable property to support the Northern Expedition; other assets had been spent, ruined, divided, or given away. Young Lillie’s savings had also gone toward his daughter’s medical care, while his salary failed to keep pace with living costs and other income had disappeared. Thus, when Stanford accepted Jinzhen as a scholarship student and supplied a money order of $110 for travel, Young Lillie’s inability to help was real, not an excuse rooted in reluctance. The family’s earlier political history clarifies its circumstances, but does not account for every loss.

Narrative role

The KMT government’s presence is carried chiefly by objects, reputations, and remembered consequences rather than by an extended portrayal of its officials. The plaque preserves the tension between patriotic action and changing political legitimacy; the family’s reported mistreatment becomes a factor in how a later regime tries to enlist Young Lillie. At the same time, the narrative keeps distinct the KMT government, the Nanjing puppet government, and the People’s Government, whose actions belong to different episodes. This distinction prevents the Rongs’ changing fortunes from being reduced to one continuous political cause. The KMT government matters because its rule forms part of the family’s political memory, while the consequences of that memory are worked out through later choices about office, property, and loyalty.