03 · WISDOM

Thought & Wisdom

How an old-school craftsman thought: eight recurrent, cross-situational mental models, ten generalizable decision heuristics, and the inner contradictions the biographies never confronted — but this site insists on preserving faithfully.

The mental models and decision heuristics on this page are analytical frameworks distilled from biographical materials by researchers, not a verbatim compilation of Chen Songru's own words — see the full Honest Boundary statement.

MENTAL MODELS

Eight Mental Models

Evidence strength labels: First-hand account Author’s autobiography or direct disciple testimony · Independent source Third-party media cross-verification · Biographical account Only found in the biography · Unverified Accounts diverge across sources · This page contains no physical-evidence tier entries.

Selected under the triple criterion of “cross-situational recurrence + generative power + exclusivity.” Each entry notes the source and limitations, avoiding the creation of a “flawless sage” narrative.

Neither Close Nor Distant, Neither Faint Nor Thick

In complex interpersonal/factional landscapes, take no side — judge solely by the rights and wrongs of the matter itself.

“Faced with such a complex mix of personnel, the attitude I adopted was neither close nor distant, neither faint nor thick — doing everything possible from a professional standpoint and deliberating carefully.” — On handling kitchen faction conflicts, Chapter 13, Section 1.¹ In another scene, when the Rebel Faction raided his home and demanded he stop the kitchen, he responded: “The guests tonight are mostly foreign dignitaries… Are you saying we shouldn’t serve the dishes?” — neither taking sides, nor confronting head-on, nor pandering, but appealing to the higher duty of hosting foreign guests, Chapter 9, Section 2.²

Limitation: All available evidence comes from defensive scenarios where he was under pressure; there are no cases of him proactively mediating conflicts between others. The sources also do not reveal whether this strategy ever failed, or whether he paid an extra price for adopting it.

The Dish Reveals the Person — Skill and Character Are Isomorphic

“A dish isn’t done till the heat is right; a heart isn’t sincere till the intent is true” — technical standards are ultimately a projection of moral standards.

The overnight re-cooking of Net-Oil Lantern Chicken (Sept 7, 1959) First-hand account³ — the strongest first-hand behavioral record supporting the judgment that “one’s level of dedication determines the quality of technique.” “Cooking is like being a person — you have to be earnest and responsible; you cannot cut corners. Only by cooking with your heart can you produce delicious food.” — Chapter 10, Section 2.⁴

Limitation: Easily slides into an idealist-style judgment that reduces objective technical problems to moral failings. It offers no clear standard for distinguishing “lack of skill” from “lack of care.”

Curatorial reading (conjecture, not a documented conclusion): on the day in 1992 when he received the “World Master Chef” title, association rules required each recipient to be filmed at work in the ceremonial jacket as a permanent record. The dish he cooked for the camera was mapo tofu — not a signature showpiece like oil-net lantern chicken, but the plainest of home dishes. Read alongside “a dish is like its cook”, it looks like a man who never showed off keeping to his ordinary work at the height of recognition. It must be said, though, that the account only records that he “began making mapo tofu”, without saying who chose the dish — he may have picked it himself, or the association or film crew may have specified it. This site marks the reading plainly as curatorial conjecture and does not treat it as evidence of character. The detail that seems to prove a person’s character is usually the one to resist embroidering.

III

Famous Dishes Are “Eaten” into Fame — Eater-Centrism

A dish’s — or a chef’s — reputation is ultimately conferred by the diners’ word of mouth and by history’s selection; it cannot be manufactured by self-promotion.

“As long as you can eat your fill and have the strength to work, I’m more than satisfied.” After receiving the highest honors, he still insisted, “This honor belongs not only to me personally, but to the entire Chinese culinary world.”

What the feedback loop actually looked like: the weakest part of this model used to be how diners’ reactions travelled back to the kitchen — a principle with no mechanism. A Beijing Xicheng District feature supplies one: Chen Yi regularly scored dishes, and the scores were not only given to the waiting staff but announced in the kitchen to the cooks (pineapple fermented rice 100, duck breast with soy dregs 98, dry-braised fish head 95). He also insisted that “a waiter is half a cook”, requiring staff to watch how fast guests were eating and to stay in contact with the kitchen. This mechanism was Chen Yi’s external requirement, not Chen Songru’s invention; what can be said is that he worked inside it for decades.

Limitation: Strictly speaking, this is an inference synthesized by the biographer — the strength of first-hand evidence is weaker than for Models 1 and 2. The potential paradox that “popular taste can be vulgar or manipulated by marketing” is not further explored.

Those Who Copy Me Die; Those Who Resemble Me Live

True inheritance is not about replicating the master’s specific methods, but about internalizing the methodological core and forging one’s own path.

“You are you, and only then can you be considered Chen-style Sichuan cuisine.” This idea itself was inherited from his own teacher, Huang Shaoqing — spanning two generations and recurring in both receiving and transmitting directions.⁵

Limitation: There is a tension with “authenticity must not be lost” that lacks a clearly defined boundary (see “Contradiction 1” below). This model alone does not constitute a self-consistent framework for distinguishing “innovation” from “losing the essence.”

Prove Through Action, Not Words

To earn trust, opportunity, or recognition, demonstrate through sustained, concrete action — not verbal persuasion.

Five consecutive days of unpaid cleaning work won the shop owner’s willingness to take him in. When handling the Premier’s drinking issue, he did not try to talk him out of it verbally, but offered a workable plan: “Take this bowl of noodles out to the Premier, and quietly dilute his wine with a little plain water.”

Limitation: Highly dependent on having an opportunity to demonstrate action. Its applicability in scenarios with no direct contact at all (purely online, stranger social contexts) lacks sufficient supporting evidence.

Decision Calculus: Altruism and Self-Interest Combined

Major decisions that appear to be “pure self-sacrifice” in fact simultaneously satisfy personal survival/growth needs and the interests of the collective or others.

The dual motive for learning to cook — “so I could eat meat regularly” and “to learn a trade and support myself and my family.” The locust-feast incident solved his own family’s hunger while sharing food with famine victims.

Limitation: This is a structural pattern inferred retrospectively by the researcher. Chen Songru himself never explicitly articulated such a “trade-off.” When applying it, one should avoid reducing “indifference to fame and fortune” to “he was actually quite shrewd.” A counter-indication added in August 2026: a Ziyang local paper records that a childhood illness, brought on by long overwork and left untreated for lack of money, left him permanently lame and unable to do heavy farm work (single source). If true, taking up cooking was less a weighing of two benefits than a case of there not being many roads open — when the space of choice narrows to nearly one, talk of “calculation” is strained. The point tells against this model and is recorded here all the same.

VII

Legacy Through Craft, Not Through Words

Recognition and expectations for the next generation are not conveyed through emotional expression or preaching, but through the solemn delivery of a token, or by personally teaching one or two crucial skills — letting the “object” and the “craft” speak for themselves.

After eldest son Chen Tinglong decided to take up the mantle of “carrying the banner” for Sichuan cuisine, his mother Jiang Mingshu relayed the instructions his father had left during a visit home: she carefully preserved an old, worn apron and handed it to him — “This apron, Tinglong will need it sooner or later” (The Dragon Chef, Chapter 2, Section 2).⁶ After confirming that Chen Tinglong would accompany him to Beijing a second time to rebuild the Sichuan Restaurant, his father also took him specifically to the Jinniu Dam Guesthouse and personally taught him two signature dishes: Net-Oil Lantern Chicken and Plain-Boiled Cabbage (The Dragon Chef, Chapter 2, Section 8).⁷

Limitation: All evidence comes from Chen Tinglong’s own recollections decades later — a retrospective narrative from the “receiving” side alone. Post-hoc meaning-making and memory embellishment cannot be ruled out. Moreover, this model is only attested in the father-son relationship; there is no independent corroboration of him using the same approach with other apprentices, so it should not be generalized to all master-apprentice scenarios.

VIII

Write the Craft Down — Don’t Only Pass It to Those Nearby

Teaching a few dozen apprentices is one road; writing for hundreds of thousands of readers you will never meet is another. He took both.

Twenty years of steady contributions across media: the Workers’ Daily (1981); China Cuisine, Sichuan Civilisation and Food Science and Technology (1982); Food News and China Pictorial (1983, with a foreign-language edition distributed abroad); China Cuisine, Liaoning Health and the Economic Daily (1984); China Cuisine (1985); China Food News and China Cuisine (1986); through to China News and China Radio International in 1989. On 21 January 1984 he wrote for the “Home Cooking” column of the Beijing Evening News — not state banquets, but food readers could make at home. Add to that two books, the Sichuan Restaurant Cookbook (1989) and 160 Kinds of Authentic Sichuan Cooking (1991), and a 37-page manuscript in his own hand from around 1980.

Limits: This pattern is inferred here from the frequency of the behaviour; Chen Songru never articulated anything like “the craft should be made public”. The list of publications comes from remarks relayed at his centenary symposium in 2021 (posted to an online forum): years and titles of periodicals only, no article names, and not verified item by item — “nearly fifty” was said at the meeting and should not be taken as an exact count. A second reading is equally available: publicity assignments from one’s work unit were common in that period, and not all of this need have been his own initiative.

HEURISTICS

Ten Decision Heuristics

Expressible as “if… then…” quick-judgment rules, each supported by concrete cases and generalizable to new situations.

1. When material temptation conflicts with established duties, choose to stay at your post, even at great financial cost.
In 1981, declined a lucrative offer from the Beijing International Hotel; in 1986, refused to lend his name for a fee.

2. When torn between “authentic method” and “catering to tastes,” first preserve the authentic core; peripheral details may be flexibly adjusted.
In his autobiography, Chen Songru relates that Zhu De once set a rule: “If you eat Twice-Cooked Pork, don’t put in chili — you can have Stir-Fried Pork with Sauce instead, tell him I said so.” First-hand account⁸ — he would not accept “Twice-Cooked Pork without chili” as that would shake the core, but he accepted peripheral adjustments like reducing heat and adding milky richness, or customizing curry chicken.

3. When private engagements conflict with national/organizational duties, prioritize serving the larger public.
Declined private banquets despite steady demand, and joined the army munitions factory mess hall and field medical kitchens without compensation.

4. Between an apprentice of “dubious character but outstanding talent” and one “upright character but temporarily clumsy,” prioritize character.
Apprenticeship principle: “I value character and attitude more.”

5. When facing injustice or political pressure, do not confront head-on; defuse it using a higher rule the other party also recognizes — and do not dwell on it afterward.
Used “it affects the reception of foreign guests” to defuse conflict with the Rebel Faction.

6. When innovation clashes with tradition, ask: “Does this change erase the dish’s essential flavor/core?”
Lacks objective, quantifiable criteria — relies entirely on personal experience

7. If a new technique or tool makes a key step more controllable and reproducible, adopt it; if it sacrifices quality for convenience, reject it.
Introduced meat slicers and timers to standardize processes.

8. When ingredients are scarce or too costly, find affordable substitutes that simulate the experience, rather than abandoning the dish or serving it only to a few.
Pig brain in place of shark fin; sweet potato starch to mimic bird’s nest.

9. When unwell but on duty, tend to downplay the discomfort and see the task through.
Anti-pattern — should not be emulated. Ultimately led to a fatal heart attack.

10. When faced with an unexpected request at the banquet, first stabilize the situation, respond positively with a concrete plan, and explain your reasoning afterward.
“Making a grand banquet relies not only on skill; experience is even more important — but this kind of ability can only be grasped intuitively; it is hard to transmit through words alone.”

VALUES

Value Hierarchy & Explicit Rejections

What He Pursued (ordered by evidence strength)

1. Authentic inheritance > Personal innovation & expression — but inheritance meant “preserve the core, innovate at the periphery”
2. Collective/national interest > Personal financial gain
3. Character/sincerity > Talent/skill
4. Real feedback from diners/recipients > Self-promotion or peer titles
5. Sustained action > Verbal declarations

What He Explicitly Rejected

Blind imitation that suppresses individuality (he opposed disciples becoming “little Chen Songrus”)
Profit above all else, lending one’s name for money
Forming factions, fiefdom politics in the kitchen
Rushing through work, cutting corners
Stubborn adherence to old ways, standing still
(Implicit) Resting on one’s laurels and arrogance

CONTRADICTIONS

What He Himself Never Quite Resolved — Inner Contradictions

Preserved in full — un-reconciled, un-embellished. The real complexity of a human being lies precisely in these details the biographies never confronted.

Contradiction 1 · Authenticity vs. Bold Innovation

“Don’t lose the flavor” and “Don’t imitate me exactly” coexisted as demands. The biography never clearly draws the boundary between them — what counts as “innovative inheritance” versus “losing the flavor” always comes down to personal experience and authoritative judgment.

Contradiction 2 · The Embellishment in the “Indifference to Fame” Narrative

Twice refusing high pay is portrayed as an unwavering moral exemplar. Yet the book never once portrays him “wavering” or “hesitating” — a stark contrast in narrative depth with the clearly described “inner struggle” over his second trip to Beijing.

Contradiction 3 · Dedication That Succeeded — Health Management That Failed

“Retired but not resting” and “working while sick” were framed positively in the biography as dedication, but in hindsight directly led to his sudden death: lingering cold → refusal to undergo a CT scan → insistence on working → fatal heart attack. The biography never reflects on this from such an angle. This site should not unconditionally encourage the behavioral pattern of “ignoring health signals and working oneself to the end.”

Contradiction 4 · Refusing Medical Care vs. the Gentle and Humble Image

Confronted with his family’s worry, his response was: “There’s nothing wrong — just a little cold. There’s no need for you to make a fuss.” — impatient in tone, refusing to communicate — in stark contrast to the gentleness and consideration he showed in other situations.

Contradiction 5 · Family Costs Are Acknowledged, Yet Still Subordinated to the “Sacrifice the Small Family for the Big” Narrative

When he brought his family to Beijing, his wife and second son were left behind in Chengdu — a fact the biography uncharacteristically calls “a lifelong regret for the couple.” Still, the price of family separation is always placed under a grand narrative, never deeply examined for its concrete negative impact on family relationships and the children’s upbringing.⁹

CURATORIAL SIMULATION · Speculative Dialogue

Chen Songru Holds Forth (Curatorial Simulation, Not His Actual Words)

In the voice of the old master chef, this site simulates how he might comment on some of the recurring debates in Sichuan cuisine — an extension of his known mental models, not Chen Songru’s actual statements.

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Important note: this is an inferential role-play based on biographical sources, not Chen Songru’s actual words. Chen Songru passed away in 1993; the following content is speculative writing extrapolated by this site from his known mental models, decision heuristics, and biographical facts. It does not represent his actual views. See About This Site for details.

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

That makes me happy. My whole life, if you think about it, ran backwards — from a poor family’s stove to the state-banquet stove, but the scale I carry in my heart never changed. Back at the arsenal factory canteen, cooking for wounded soldiers at the front, all I wanted was for the men to eat their fill and have the strength to work — there was no time to fuss over presentation. Later, when I wrote those two books, I wrote out all twenty-four flavor profiles, the heat and the measurements, clearly and in detail, precisely so that ordinary households and home cooks could follow along and learn — not keeping something back just for the banquet hall, hoarding it in secret. For Sichuan cuisine to make it onto ordinary people’s tables, I think there are two things that matter: first, the flavor can’t be lost — the twenty-four flavor profiles aren’t there for show; home-style flavor, fish-fragrant flavor, these grew up out of ordinary people’s stoves to begin with, the state banquet didn’t lend them any extra shine. Second, the craft has to be teachable and learnable — you can’t just wave people off with “a secret family recipe” and call it a day. That’s not passing something on, that’s hoarding it for yourself. The moments I’ve felt most satisfied were never when some important person praised me — they were the faces of ordinary people in front of the stove, full and happy with a good meal. That’s true whether you’re cooking a state banquet or cooking dinner for the neighbors when you get home.

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

I like talking about these two dishes, because they draw the clearest line between “tricking people” and “real skill.” Yu-xiang — “fish-fragrant” — flavor has no fish in it at all. It’s built from pickled chilies, ginger, garlic, sugar and vinegar, blended to conjure up something that reminds you of fish. That’s a clever name — but clever or not, if you’re bold enough to call it “fish-fragrant,” the flavor had better be genuine enough that people taste it and believe the name. No cutting corners. Kaishui Baicai (cabbage in a clarified superior broth) is the same. It looks like a bowl of cabbage sitting in plain water, but underneath, that milky-white stock takes the better part of a day to make — chicken, duck, ham, lean pork, clarified layer by layer until it looks like plain hot water but tastes rich and deep. Back when the Premier said “Kaishui Baicai (cabbage in a clarified superior broth) is still best at the Sichuan Restaurant,” that was the shared craft of several chefs at the restaurant, not my achievement alone. These dishes make good stories because the name runs opposite to the reality, and that’s what hooks people’s appetite. But a story is a story — the real thing has to be carried by the invisible work at the stove: whether the heat was right, whether the stock was clarified all the way through. You can’t fool the tongue. What I fear most now is people who are all too happy to tell this “contrast” story, dressing it up while the real work in the pot hasn’t kept pace — that’s using the story as a fig leaf.

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

“Cultivation” — I’d say you train the heart first, the hands second. When I went to Chengdu at twelve to learn the trade, my master didn’t start me on a knife. He had me sweep the courtyard for a few days, wash clothes for a few days, watching whether I was honest, whether I could endure. He told me later, “The knife must be steady, the heart must be still, only then can you see a food’s true nature” — a restless, impatient person’s knife work is fast but chaotic, and they never see the food’s true flavor. That’s the first step: sit still, endure the tedium. The second step is solid, unglamorous practice — don’t look for shortcuts. Meat slicers, timers, tools like that — use them if they help you nail the heat and timing, I’ve got no objection to that. But if you use tools as an excuse to skip the knife work you should be practicing, the stock you should be simmering, then you’re only fooling yourself. The third step, and the hardest — once you’ve reached a certain level, you have to learn to step out of your master’s shadow. Back then I told my apprentices: don’t copy me, Chen Songru, stroke for stroke. However well you imitate me, you’ll never become me — and you’ll lose your own path in the trying. A craft that’s only learned by hand is dead; it only comes alive once it grows into you and finds its own flavor. Cultivation isn’t about earning praise for your skill. It’s enough that a diner tastes it and remembers.

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

There are three places people most often trip up on Kung Pao Chicken. One is taking the wrong approach. A lot of young cooks these days like to velvet-and-oil-pass the chicken — that’s a Northern method. Kung Pao Chicken belongs to the “quick pan-fry” school — hard, fast stir-frying is Sichuan cuisine’s signature move. Once the oil is hot, the chicken goes straight in, no oil-passing first. That’s the standard method; oil-passing isn’t. Another is the timing and rhythm — it has to be fast. Start to finish, one wok of this dish takes maybe twenty-some seconds: the dried chilies hit the oil and change color almost instantly, releasing that chili aroma; the chicken goes in and gets tossed a couple of times; the seasonings and sauce go in — that sauce is the lychee flavor you mentioned; and finally, a handful of peanuts thrown in at the very end, and it’s done. Hesitate for even a moment and either the chilies scorch or the chicken toughens, and the dish is ruined. Then there’s the ratio of the sauce. With the lychee-flavor style, sweet, sour, spicy and salty all have to be in careful balance, and the sauce needs to cling to the ingredients evenly — not reduced so far that it turns dry and tough, not so thin that it’s watery and shapeless. There’s no fixed number for that ratio that works forever; you find it again and again through hands-on experience. This dish looks homey, but done properly it takes more care than plenty of grander dishes — that idea that “anyone can just stir-fry this at home” is usually exactly where people come apart at these very points.The distinction between quick pan-frying and oil-passing, confirmed via Chen Tinglong’s 2026 oral account

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

I’ve said this before, and my view hasn’t changed — spice alone can’t carry the weight of the words “Sichuan cuisine.” Here’s how I see it: heat is easy to learn. Braise everything in mala and it papers over whatever’s wrong with the ingredients — that’s the laziest road there is. But fish-fragrant, home-style, strange-flavor, scorched-chili — every one of those flavor profiles has to be tuned by feel, calibrated through real skill. I said earlier that cultivation starts with the heart — the same logic applies to flavor profiles. Giving up the hard ones and grabbing the easy one — what is that, if not a craft in decline? I’m not fixated on rejecting spice. I’ve toned down the heat when cooking for foreign guests, and they enjoyed it — that’s a surface adjustment, a matter of degree, it doesn’t touch the substance. But if a restaurant serves nothing but one flavor from start to finish, throwing away the craft behind twenty-some flavor profiles, then I still have to ask myself: is what’s in that pot really the chef’s skill, or something mixed up by a seasoning factory?

Pre-written script · Not a historical record

On jianghu cai, I’ll say the same thing I always say — I passed away in 1993, this is a phenomenon that rose up after I was gone, I never lived through it, and everything below is just me guessing based on my own way of thinking. For what it’s worth: the fact that these restaurants are everywhere and ordinary people love eating there tells me it’s down-to-earth food, and I respect that — it lines up with what I’ve said, that “famous dishes are the ones people actually eat.” But I still have to ask one more question: is that craveable flavor built through careful seasoning, or is it just heavy oil, heavy salt, and heavy chili papering things over? Sichuan cuisine’s twenty-four flavor profiles each have their own discipline — if you take the easy road and braise everything in thick oil and dark sauce, that’s the same trick I just described: dousing everything in spice to hide the flaws. I won’t say this flatly one way or the other — it depends on the actual skill at any given restaurant. If you want a real answer, you’ll have to go taste it yourself, and ask people who’ve eaten there.

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How to “Transfer” and Use This Way of Thinking: These models are largely used to judge whether Sichuan dishes are authentic, how to weigh tradition against innovation, and how to navigate factions and personal relationships. Some users have also transposed them to non-culinary decision-making scenarios (whether to take risks in entrepreneurship, how to lead a team or mentor apprentices). When applying them, remember: these are inferential extrapolations based on the biography — not Chen Songru’s own actual answers to these specific questions. See About This Site for details.

Sources

Biographical accountBiography Songfeng Ruren, chapter 13, section 1, quoting Chen Songru on handling factional tensions among the kitchen staff: “Faced with so mixed a body of people, the attitude I took was neither close nor distant, neither generous nor mean. In everything, I weighed matters as carefully as I could from the standpoint of the work.”↩
Biographical accountBiography Songfeng Ruren, chapter 9, section 2, recording that during the Cultural Revolution, when rebel factions raided his home and pressed him to shut down the stoves, Chen Songru defused the confrontation by replying: “Most of tonight’s banquet guests are foreign visitors… are we to send out no food at all?”↩
First-hand accountChen Songru’s own account A Short History of the Beijing Sichuan Restaurant, and biography Songfeng Ruren, chapter 6, section 7: in September 1959 Mao Zedong left part of an oil-net lantern chicken and asked that it be kept for the evening; Chen Songru went back to the restaurant overnight, made it again, and sent it out looking exactly as the leftover portion had. See Unit 06 of the exhibition “1959: Sichuan Cuisine Comes to Beijing”.↩
Biographical accountBiography Songfeng Ruren, chapter 10, section 2, in Chen Songru’s own words: “Cooking is like being a person — you must be conscientious and take responsibility, you cannot cut corners. Only what is made with care can be made delicious.”↩
Biographical accountBiography Songfeng Ruren records his teacher Huang Shaoqing’s words — “You are to be yourselves; only then can what you do be called Chen-school Sichuan cuisine” — which Chen Songru made his own and passed on to his own disciples, so that the same principle recurs across two generations.↩
First-hand accountChen Tinglong’s oral-history manuscript Paolong Chenshi, chapter 2, section 2, “A Knock from Fate”: his mother Jiang Mingshu passed on what his father had said on a home visit — “Your father brought this back from Beijing when he came home to Chengdu; he told me to put it away… He also said that Tinglong would have use for this apron one day.”↩
First-hand accountChen Tinglong’s oral-history manuscript Paolong Chenshi, chapter 2, section 8, “Another Turn of Fate”: “Once it was finally settled that I would go with my father to work at the Beijing Sichuan Restaurant, he made a point of taking me to the Jinniuba guesthouse and teaching me two dishes with his own hands — one was oil-net lantern chicken, the other kaishui baicai.”↩
First-hand accountChen Songru’s own autobiography, collected in Authentic Exposition of the Craft of a Chinese Sichuan Master: Chen Songru, volume 1, recording Zhu De’s remarks after the trial dinner that opened the Sichuan Restaurant: “Hold to the Sichuan taste. Some say we should accommodate other palates and use less chilli — that will not do. If a man wants twice-cooked pork without chilli, let him eat jiangbao pork instead, and tell him to come and see me.”↩
Independent sourceA recollection written by an independent third party — neither a relative nor a disciple, describing himself as a neighbour and regular customer near the Sichuan Restaurant. Asked why he did not have his wife transferred to Beijing to live with him, Chen Songru “said his wife was not used to the climate or the life in Beijing.”↩