The Liseiwicz Family Leaves China for Country X

Jan Liseiwicz’s departure for Country X followed an extraordinary exchange that saved his father-in-law from execution, but it also opened a possible future for Rong Jinzhen that the Korean War would close. The episode joins private loyalty to state-level negotiation: Jan Liseiwicz’s family left China soon after the release, while his later letters urged Rong Jinzhen to follow him into a newly emerging field of research. Rong Jinzhen stayed, and the letter he sent in response fixed one possible life path into the past.

Appeals and the danger facing Jan Liseiwicz’s father-in-law

In the run-up to the appointed date, Jan Liseiwicz appealed to professors and students, including Young Lillie and the narrator, hoping they would sign a joint letter to the government and save his father-in-law. They refused, not because they wanted him to suffer, but because they believed that public protest could not change the outcome. Young Lillie nevertheless went to speak to the mayor. The answer he received was that only Chairman Mao himself could save the man, an indication of how remote any ordinary intervention seemed.

The account places the case within a broader policy: the People’s Government was targeting men who had abused their local power and made life miserable for residents. Jan Liseiwicz, the narrator observes, did not understand that political situation. His efforts therefore exposed him to painful refusals from people who felt they had no effective means to help. What followed overturned their expectation that his father-in-law’s fate was settled.

The exchange and the family’s departure

Jan Liseiwicz ultimately secured help from Country X. A special envoy travelled to Beijing to discuss the case with the Chinese government, and the matter reached the highest political level; the narrator can only speculate that the final decision came from someone at the top of the Politburo, perhaps Chairman Mao or Zhou Enlai. The intervention succeeded: Jan Liseiwicz’s father-in-law was released.

The release formed part of an exchange. Country X allowed two Chinese scientists who had been barred from leaving to return home, while the arrangement secured the old man’s freedom. The narrator sees an ironic reversal in this outcome: a man regarded at home as deserving punishment had, through Jan Liseiwicz’s efforts, become the subject of a negotiation between countries. Yet the account suggests that the father-in-law himself was not what Country X wanted. Its interest was Jan Liseiwicz, and the narrator cannot determine whether his international reputation as a mathematician fully explains that interest or whether there was some further reason.

Shortly after his father-in-law was released from prison, Jan Liseiwicz and his entire family departed for Country X. The family’s departure was therefore both the consequence of a successful diplomatic bargain and the beginning of a separation from the people Jan Liseiwicz had been trying to help. Rong Jinzhen was still hospitalized when Jan Liseiwicz left.

Letters from abroad and a new field

Jan Liseiwicz remained in contact with Young Lillie three times after reaching Country X. First came a picture postcard showing a landscape, with a brief greeting and a return address that identified his home but gave no clue to his workplace. A letter followed in response to Young Lillie’s reply. Jan Liseiwicz was glad to hear that Rong Jinzhen was improving, but offered only a vague account of his own employment: he was at a research institute, without saying which one or what he was doing. The reticence left the impression that he might not be free to disclose those details.

The third message, written on Christmas Eve and arriving just before Chinese New Year, carried a more consequential report. A friend had told Jan Liseiwicz that Princeton University had combined several independent research units into an institute devoted to artificial intelligence, directed by the mathematician Paul Samuelson. Jan Liseiwicz took this development as evidence that the field’s importance was recognized beyond his own circle; as far as he knew, it was the first group anywhere working on the subject. He hoped that Rong Jinzhen, nearly recovered, would be able to enter the field too.

Jan Liseiwicz argued that if Rong Jinzhen could not conduct artificial-intelligence research in China, he should leave for a place where he could. He warned Young Lillie not to let short-term difficulties prevent Rong Jinzhen from doing what he was capable of, and invoked the saying that a fine sword should not be used for chopping firewood. His case was practical as well as aspirational: Country X had facilities that would make the work easier. The letters thus turned the family’s departure into an invitation, and made Rong Jinzhen’s recovery seem to offer a renewed opportunity.

War, refusal, and the life not taken

Young Lillie did not answer Jan Liseiwicz directly. Instead, he brought Jan Liseiwicz’s letter and two newspapers reporting battles between the American Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in Korea to Rong Jinzhen, and asked him to write back. He advised him to thank Jan Liseiwicz but explain that he could not leave because of the Korean War. Young Lillie acknowledged that the outcome would sadden both of them, while stressing that Rong Jinzhen stood to lose the most.

When Rong Jinzhen later showed Young Lillie his draft, the older man’s response complicated his earlier advice. He crossed out about half of the text, removing much of its expressed regret and disappointment, and told Rong Jinzhen to enclose newspaper clippings. The decision was not presented as a lack of interest in Jan Liseiwicz’s proposal: the war was the obstacle, and the reports would make that obstacle visible to the distant correspondent. The exchange of letters gave a political circumstance a personal form, without making it less decisive.

In spring 1951, after Chinese New Year, Rong Jinzhen returned to class at N University. He went neither to Stanford nor to Princeton. By posting the carefully worded letter and the newspaper reports, he confined one possible future to history. Young Lillie’s observation that some letters record history while others make it captures the event’s consequence: the departure separated Jan Liseiwicz’s family from China, but the correspondence also became the instrument through which Rong Jinzhen’s own course was set.