Young Lillie Rejects the Wang Jingwei Government’s Appointment is a public refusal that turns an offer of power into a declaration of political loyalty. In 1944, the Nanjing puppet government tried to secure the famous acting vice-chancellor of N University by offering him its chancellorship. He tore up the brevet before witnesses and denounced betrayal; his answer was popular, but left him without an official position and hastened a departure he had already been contemplating.

Political Background

The appointment came during what the narrative describes as the worst year C City and N University had experienced. The city had first suffered at the battlefront and then under the Nanjing puppet government. Its rule had intensified disorder to the point of no return, transforming both the city’s appearance and its inhabitants’ hearts.

Young Lillie’s position at the university had already weakened. His father’s fortunes had collapsed, and the puppet government’s intransigence further damaged his standing. Yet the government considered him useful precisely because he was famous. It also believed that the Rong family’s suffering under the KMT government might make him receptive to its overtures. The offer was therefore more than a promotion: the authorities expected that appointing him chancellor would win his cooperation.

The Refusal

When the puppet government was first established, Young Lillie was serving only as acting vice-chancellor. Its generous offer of the chancellorship proved a miscalculation. In front of everyone, he tore up the brevet and proclaimed, ‘We Rongs would rather die than betray our country!’ The gesture made his rejection visible and irreversible: he did not simply decline the office but destroyed the document that embodied the offer.

His declaration gave public expression to a refusal already taking shape. Young Lillie had for some time been considering hiding in Tongzhen, both to escape what the narrative calls the puppet government’s repulsive overtures and to avoid the university’s ferocious internal infighting. His answer was widely popular, but that approval did not restore his institutional position. It ensured that he would not receive official office from the regime whose appointment he had repudiated.

Departure and Immediate Aftermath

Mr Auslander’s letter hastened Young Lillie’s departure. Still turning its contents over in his mind, he stepped off a paddle-steamer in Tongzhen and recognized the steward of the Rong mansion among the people gathered in the rain and wind. When the steward asked whether the journey had gone well, Young Lillie instead asked after Mr Auslander. Told that he had died some weeks earlier, Young Lillie felt his heart thump and immediately asked where the child was.

The arrival scene places the political refusal beside a private urgency. The letter did not create Young Lillie’s plan to withdraw from the government’s overtures and the university struggle, but it accelerated his journey; news of Mr Auslander’s death then redirected the conversation to the child. The passage thus makes his departure the consequence of intersecting pressures rather than a simple retreat from public life.

Significance

The episode turns a calculated attempt at political co-option into a costly act of dissent. The authorities mistook fame and the Rong family’s grievances against the KMT government for grounds to expect compliance. Young Lillie’s public answer overturned that calculation, while the consequences exposed the difference between popular approval and institutional power: the refusal was celebrated, yet it foreclosed official advancement under the new regime.

The torn brevet gives the decision its defining image. An appointment meant to bind a prominent university figure to the government becomes, in his hands, evidence of the boundary he will not cross. But the refusal does not settle the disorder around him. University factionalism and political pressure remain, and the letter from Mr Auslander draws him onward to Tongzhen, where the news of death and the question of the child open the next turn in his story.