Jan Liseiwicz Leaves China and Entrusts Jinzhen’s Future to Young Lillie marks both a departure and a transfer of responsibility: as he left China, Jan Liseiwicz asked Young Lillie to guide the seriously ill Rong Jinzhen toward artificial intelligence research, a field Liseiwicz believed uniquely suited to him. The farewell arrives not as a face-to-face parting but as a letter left among two enormous boxes on a rain-lashed summer morning. Its proposal joins confidence in Jinzhen’s abilities to a warning about the human consequences of scientific work—and to a disclosure of the ambition Liseiwicz himself had been forced to relinquish.

The Farewell on a Rainy Morning

Early in the summer of 1950, rain battered the roof through the night, its changing force audible in the wind and the rattling window frames. Young Lillie had slept badly and woke with a headache and swollen eyes. A motor-car seemed to have stopped downstairs, but he remained in bed until dawn. Then, moving carefully and almost silently, he went down to the front door without knowing why. The old man’s unsteady progress through the house makes the arrival of the letter feel less like an appointment than an interruption he has been drawn toward.

Two enormous cardboard boxes filled the small courtyard. One blocked the outer door; the other had soaked up rain and was too heavy for Young Lillie to shift. After covering it with oiled paper, he saw a letter held in place on top by the stone usually used to prop the door open. It was from Jan Liseiwicz. Young Lillie sat on a box to read it, while wind lifted the pages and rain spattered them. The physical burden of the boxes and the precarious letter make the departure tangible before its reasons are fully explained.

What Liseiwicz Asks of Young Lillie

Liseiwicz explained that he was leaving and had chosen a letter rather than a personal farewell because he did not want to put anyone to trouble. His central concern was Rong Jinzhen: he hoped Jinzhen would recover, and asked Young Lillie to make the best arrangements for his future so that humanity could benefit as fully as possible from his talent. This was not simply a recommendation for a promising scholar. Liseiwicz placed the decision in terms of what should be done with an exceptional ability, and of who might bear responsibility for directing it.

He considered both pure mathematics and research with practical applications. An extensive theoretical problem, he argued, might best suit Jinzhen’s gifts, but he feared a world increasingly focused on short-term, concrete returns would undervalue such work. Technical research could offer a more immediate chain of results and a sense of progress, yet its eventual uses might escape the intentions of its creator. To make that danger concrete, Liseiwicz invoked Oppenheimer’s reported regret over his work on the first nuclear bomb. A creation could bring great benefit or great harm; once released into the world, it could not simply be recalled. His case for practical research therefore came with an account of the loss of control it could entail.

Artificial Intelligence and Jinzhen’s Calling

Liseiwicz proposed artificial intelligence as the technical field most worth considering. He pictured the creation of machines that could imitate aspects of the human mind and, eventually, robots capable of doing work then performed by people in inhuman conditions. Computers already carried out calculations, he observed, and he treated that achievement as an early step toward understanding other aspects of intelligence. In his view, research into artificial intelligence could have substantial practical value; it might also contribute to confronting humanity’s persistent problems, including the prospect of further war and the dangers of increasingly destructive weapons.

The proposal was inseparable from Liseiwicz’s estimate of Rong Jinzhen. He insisted that Young Lillie could not undertake the project without him, and that if Jinzhen died of his illness, Young Lillie should abandon it: he was too old to pursue the work alone. If Jinzhen survived, Liseiwicz believed that Young Lillie might live to see artificial intelligence solve one of humanity’s great mysteries. He regarded Jinzhen as the person born for that task, linking the young man’s lifelong experience of dreams to the study of intelligence. Since childhood, Jinzhen had faced dreams day and night and developed remarkable skill in interpreting them. Liseiwicz understood this history, even if Jinzhen did not, as preparation for investigating the human mind.

The Ambition Liseiwicz Had Given Up

The letter’s recommendation also exposes a choice in Liseiwicz’s own past. He disclosed that he had once intended to devote the rest of his life to artificial intelligence, but had abandoned the ambition before properly beginning. He said that this was not because of a technical obstacle or lack of ability, but at the express command of the Jewish people; in recent years, he had instead worked on something important on their behalf. He offered this explanation as a way to pique Young Lillie’s interest, not as a full account of that work. The parallel is pointed: the field he urges Young Lillie to entrust to Jinzhen is the very one Liseiwicz once hoped to pursue himself.

A later interview with Master Rong gives the immediate background to the departure: Liseiwicz decided to leave after his father-in-law was almost executed as a war criminal. The interview also describes how settled Liseiwicz had seemed before this change. Although Western universities and research institutes had repeatedly invited him to join them, he had shown no intention of leaving; he had brought back a large wooden case of books, bought the house in Sanyuan Lane where he had lived, and then acquired the whole courtyard. He was working hard at Chinese and announced that he would apply for Chinese citizenship, though the application was never followed up. Against that record, the departure is a sharp reversal, and its stated catalyst is a threat to his family rather than an unfulfilled professional opportunity.

Young Lillie’s Response and the Letter’s Terms

Liseiwicz did not leave the proposed research as an unconditional instruction. He asked Young Lillie to pursue it only if both Young Lillie and God agreed that Jinzhen was meant to develop artificial intelligence. If either opposed the course, the letter was to go to the university library as a memento of Liseiwicz’s twelve happy years working there. The alternative preserves the letter as a record of the life he was leaving, even if its scientific proposal came to nothing. His final hope was that Jinzhen would recover.

Young Lillie read the letter straight through and then sat quietly for a long time, looking into space. At last he turned toward the wind and rain and wished Jan a good journey. That brief spoken farewell closes the scene without resolving Jinzhen’s illness or the future of the research. The letter leaves Young Lillie with a conditional charge: protect Jinzhen’s prospects, consider the use of his gifts, and recognize that any powerful creation may exceed its maker’s control. Its departure is therefore also a handover, but one whose outcome remains uncertain.