Rong Zilai (John Lillie)’s Aversion to the Taste of Salt

Rong Zilai (John Lillie)’s aversion to the taste of salt is a lasting consequence of his sea voyage and a practical obstacle to his expected place in the Rong family’s salt business. The affliction turns the family trade’s defining substance into something he cannot bear, and helps redirect the money left to him toward founding a school.

Cause and Symptoms

After seven years abroad, Rong Zilai returned home in the winter of 1880. During his voyage across the ocean, he had accidentally fallen into the sea and swallowed enough salt water to nearly die. The experience left him unable to tolerate salt’s smell. When it reached him at the harbour or in a shop, he would retch and sometimes vomit bile; while at sea, he had kept a tea leaf in his mouth to endure the exposure.

The aversion was one of several changes that made his return conspicuous to the inhabitants of Tongzhen. He had acquired the name John Lillie, wore a short jacket rather than a long silk gown, and spoke with unfamiliar expressions. His intolerance of salt, however, was especially striking: he was the son of salt merchants, yet could not bear the smell of the family’s trade.

Conflict with the Family Business

Rong Zilai explained that his condition began with the accident at sea, but an explanation did not resolve the problem. The family’s business depended on salt, and his inability to tolerate its smell cast doubt on how he could work in it. The account frames the difficulty in practical terms: a boss could not keep a mouthful of tea leaves in place all the time simply to manage the smell.

The contrast is sharper because the Rong family itself had changed little during his absence. Its salt merchants remained salt merchants, and its prosperity continued; it was the returning young man who had been altered by his time away. His aversion made that difference impossible to overlook and left his expected role in the family unsettled.

The Money’s New Use

Before Rong Zilai left to study abroad, Grandmother Rong had put in writing that, upon his return, he was to receive the silver kept behind the sliding panel in her room as a reward for his filial piety. The salt aversion made a future in the family business difficult, but this bequest gave him another use for his resources.

He used the silver to open Lillie’s Academy of Mathematics in C City, the provincial capital. The school became the predecessor of N University. In this way, a condition that obstructed his return to the inherited trade coincided with the establishment of an educational institution: the family’s wealth, rather than Rong Zilai’s participation in salt commerce, funded his next undertaking.