Compared Notes on the Yang-Lee Pact (Part One)

Unlike many scientists who came from poor backgrounds, Li Ziyi's family was considered extremely wealthy for the times.

Tsung-Dao Lee's family was, by the standards of the day, exceptionally well-off.

His great-grandfather, Li Ziyi, was a devout Christian and a well-known pastor and elder at the time.

Li Ziyi had deep ties to Cunyang Academy, Boxi Academy, and Soochow University (now Suzhou University). He was highly cultured, and his family was extremely prosperous.

Tsung-Dao Lee's father, Li Junkang, graduated from the middle school affiliated with Soochow University in 1915 and went on to enroll at the university. The following year, he transferred to the newly established College of Agriculture and Forestry at Nanjing University, the predecessor of today's Nanjing Agricultural University.

After graduating, he worked in Shanghai for a foreign trading firm, importing fertilizer. His business was equally successful.

Later, Li Junkang met and fell in love with Zhang Mingzhang. They soon started a family, joining two powerful households whose combined wealth was easy to imagine.

In a sense, Tsung-Dao Lee was the quintessential rich kid who could drop a fortune on someone.

But unlike many wealthy Shanghai housewives,

Zhang Mingzhang herself loved to cook. According to Tsung-Dao Lee's memoir, however, her cooking "wasn't very good, especially when she made stews. The broth bubbled away like something brewing in an alchemist's cauldron."

In modern parlance, Zhang Mingzhang had mastered the art of cooking truly bizarre dishes. She could probably have walked straight into Hogwarts and taken up a post as a Potions professor.

Except for

Shanghai-style smoked fish.

Perhaps because the recipe called for cooking the fish over a fairly high heat, Zhang Mingzhang seemed like a different person when she made it. Her smoked fish was crisp, fragrant, and delicious.

Tsung-Dao Lee's strongest memories of his mother were of