Rong Jinzhen’s Renal Failure

Rong Jinzhen’s renal failure overturned the future that had just opened before him: an offer of funded study at Stanford became medical expenses, and a planned departure from China gave way to a long, uncertain recovery. The illness came close to killing him, but it also made visible the practical labor of keeping him alive and the selfless regard Liseiwicz had shown in trying to secure his future.

The interrupted journey

A scholarship place at Stanford had been arranged through Liseiwicz’s advocacy. He had written to Dr Gábor Szegő, head of Stanford University’s Department of Mathematics, and the response included both acceptance and a $110 money order for Jinzhen’s travel. Jinzhen was preparing for his final summer at the university before leaving to study abroad when he became gravely ill. The account identifies renal failure as the decisive reason he would spend the rest of his life in China.

The change was not simply a postponement. The travel money was redirected to medical costs, while the scholarship, diploma, and imagined student life receded as the family faced the immediate demands of the illness. The Rong family’s finances offered no realistic means to replace the $110. What had seemed a route into an academic future abroad was absorbed by the struggle to survive in the present.

A prolonged medical crisis

The first prognosis was stark: the doctor expected Jinzhen to die, estimating that he might have six months at most. His condition involved severe swelling even as his body weight continued to fall. The narrative describes the illness as a prolonged ordeal rather than a single crisis, and reports that doctors regarded his survival as miraculous. He remained in hospital for close to two years, during which time the struggle to live wore him down.

Salt became a particularly consequential part of his treatment. He was forbidden to eat it in hospital, and during convalescence even the permitted amount had to be introduced with extreme care: initially it was measured in micrograms, then gradually increased. Too much risked a relapse; too little could delay his recovery. His sensitivity to salt therefore turned an ordinary ingredient into a tightly controlled part of medical care.

Care after hospital

When Jinzhen was eventually considered out of immediate danger, the hospital accepted his request to continue recovering at home, partly because medical bills were mounting. On the day he left, Master Rong and her mother came to collect him. The doctor explained that his condition was stable but that a full recovery would require more than a year of special treatment. For the next twelve months, he would need to be cared for with the attentiveness given to a baby, or he could suffer a relapse.

That instruction became a demanding routine. Jinzhen needed five meals a day, and his food had to provide enough salt for recovery without exceeding the tiny amount he could tolerate. His caregiver could not find scales accurate enough to measure it, so she began by relying on careful judgment. She later took different dishes to the hospital for the doctors to assess, noting how much salt each contained. At home, she put on her spectacles and counted individual grains into his food. The account emphasizes both the minuteness of this work and its stakes: each adjustment was part of keeping him safe while he regained strength.

What the illness revealed

The lost opportunity also altered how Liseiwicz’s earlier actions were understood. Those who had depended on him, including Young Lillie, had suspected him of the worst motives. Yet Liseiwicz had used his own persuasive effort to obtain a funded place that would take Jinzhen away from his immediate research environment and toward an independent future. The account treats that choice as proof that his regard for his student was genuine: he believed Jinzhen to be an exceptional mathematical talent and wanted him to flourish, even when that meant helping him leave.

The illness made the consequences of that commitment painful and plain. Liseiwicz’s work had secured the opportunity, but neither advocacy nor scholarship could protect Jinzhen from the medical crisis that erased it. Jinzhen survived, yet the life the funding was meant to begin did not come to pass. In June 1966, the narrative records another serious illness: after breakfast, Jinzhen lost consciousness in a hallway and was admitted to the hospital attached to Unit 701, where doctors found that a stomach problem had caused the collapse. This later hospitalization is described as a separate medical episode, not as a recurrence of renal failure; it nevertheless shows that illness continued to interrupt his life even after the earlier recovery.