Rong Xiaolai Takes Jinzhen into His Family and Renames Him Rong Jinzhen

Rong Xiaolai Takes Jinzhen into His Family and Renames Him Rong Jinzhen marks the transition from a child passed between caretakers to a member of Rong Xiaolai’s household. It begins with a plea from the dying Mr Auslander and unfolds through wartime displacement, a new name, and the loss that finally makes room for Jinzhen in the family. The change is not a simple restoration of blood ties: it depends on acts of care, education, and recognition.

Background and the request for a guardian

Jinzhen’s beginnings had already entangled him with the Rong family before Rong Xiaolai took him in. His mother, a woman from outside the province, had arrived at the Rong home pregnant and claimed the child was the Killer’s. After the family turned her away, she sought help from Rong Zilai at N University. He took her in and sent Rong Xiaolai with her to Tongzhen. A few months later, she died after giving birth. The child’s resemblance to the Killer made his paternity impossible for the family to ignore, while his resemblance to his grandmother, Rong Youying, helped save him from being abandoned. Yet he was not accepted as a Rong: people called him the Grim Reaper, and he was cared for by an elderly servant couple.

Mr Auslander eventually took the child into the Pear Garden. On the boy’s third birthday, the eighty-year-old man climbed a pear tree to hang a swing for him. Duckling’s first attempt to call anyone Daddy came as Mr Auslander seemed to be dying; hearing the child call him, the old man opened his eyes. He took Duckling to live with him that same day, and the child grew up among the pear blossoms. The bond that followed made Mr Auslander’s approaching death a practical crisis as well as a personal loss: the boy needed another guardian.

In a letter dated 8 June 1944, written from Tongzhen, Mr Auslander asked Rong Xiaolai to take over. He argued that Rong Xiaolai and Rong Zilai had made the boy’s birth possible by sheltering his mother, that the child belonged to the Rong family through his lineage, and that his grandmother had been the person Rong Zilai loved and admired most. Mr Auslander also described Duckling as exceptionally intelligent, despite his cold and misanthropic manner, and as resembling his grandmother in both ability and appearance. Nearly twelve, the boy needed a home, love, education, and, above all, a name. Mr Auslander presented the request as his final testament and made clear that he was entrusting the child’s future to Rong Xiaolai.

Wartime departure and recognition of his ability

The letter reached Rong Xiaolai in a city under severe strain. In 1944, C City and N University had endured frontline fighting and the rule of the Nanjing puppet government. The government had offered Rong Xiaolai the university chancellorship, but he publicly rejected the appointment, refusing to betray his country. He had already considered withdrawing to Tongzhen; Mr Auslander’s appeal hastened that departure. When he arrived, he asked after the old man and then went to find Duckling.

The meeting made the abstract request immediate. The boy gave Rong Xiaolai a paper parcel Mr Auslander had left for him, delivering the message that Daddy had said to give it to him when he came. The parcel’s contents are not specified, but the handoff connected the dying guardian’s trust to the man now being asked to assume it. As Rong Xiaolai spent time with the child, he recognized the force of his intelligence. The boy’s recitation of multiplication left Rong Xiaolai uncertain and deeply impressed; he concluded that he could not leave such a gifted child behind. When a telegram called him back to N University for the autumn term, he decided he would return with a new student rather than simply resume his former responsibilities.

Choosing a name and beginning again

On the return journey to C City, Rong Xiaolai wrestled with what to call the boy. He considered two names associated with Tongzhen: Jinzhen, meaning Golden Sincerity, and Tongzhen, meaning Childlike Sincerity. Duckling showed little interest in choosing. Rong Xiaolai then changed the character in Jinzhen’s name, privately following a local custom that used a feminine element in a boy’s name to balance yin and yang. Rather than explain the superstition, he told the child that he would be called Jinzhen, with the character zhen meaning pearl.

Rong Xiaolai arranged a place for him at a primary school near C City’s West Gate, where Cheng was headmaster. He asked for the shed where he and his wife had once sheltered during the fighting to be made available to the boy, and introduced Jinzhen as Cheng’s new student. From then on, people called him Jinzhen rather than Duckling. The name thus accompanied a concrete change of place and prospects: he left the life he had known in Tongzhen and began life in the city, with schooling and Rong Xiaolai’s protection ahead of him.

Joining the household

At first, Rong Xiaolai kept the boy’s existence from his wife and daughters, and Jinzhen lived under Cheng’s care. The family learned of him only after one of the daughters died at seventeen. When Rong Xiaolai explained the child’s misfortunes, intelligence, and Mr Auslander's request, his wife, grieving her daughter, urged him to bring the boy home because he needed a family. Her response turned the private arrangement into a household decision: Jinzhen joined them as a younger brother, known within the family by the nickname Zhendi.

The family’s forms of address did not match a neat genealogical order. Rong Xiaolai’s daughter called him Zhendi, as did her mother; he called her mother Mummy, Rong Xiaolai Professor, and the daughter Sis, although the family tree would have made her an aunt by generation. Rong Xiaolai continued to call him Jinzhen. These names register the difference between ancestry and lived kinship. Jinzhen was already connected to the family by birth, but the household was built through his reception, daily relationships, and education.

Significance of the transition

The event reverses the child’s earlier exclusion without erasing the circumstances that produced it. His connection to Rong Youying had once helped keep him alive, but lineage alone had not made him a recognized family member. Mr Auslander’s appeal gives that connection renewed force, while Rong Xiaolai’s actions turn obligation into care: he retrieves the boy, arranges his schooling, chooses a name, and ultimately brings him into the household. The move from Duckling to Jinzhen marks the end of his connection with Tongzhen and the beginning of his life in C City. The eventual family welcome, prompted by bereavement, gives that new identity a home as well as a name.