Li Wen-Cheng

Li is a Comprador who comes from the Kiangsu countryside, the fourth son of a moderately wealthy farmer. In Li Wen-Cheng’s year of birth, the great imperial examination system of China was abolished; to obtain a Western technical education, Li converted to Christianity and attended a Methodist boarding school. When he announced his conversion, his Confucian father tore Christ from a place of respect among the household gods and disowned his unfilial fourth son.
Now, Li Wen-Cheng is without family, and serves as an impoverished library assistant at the Methodist University. He is known as friendly, intelligent, hardworking, loyal, and full of boundless energy. Li knows a good deal about Shanghai, though he avoids much of it as it is sinful and wicked.