ABSTRACT
Like the mounted brigands who used to ravage Manchuria, the chiefs idea had been to take Yun hostage and force his family to carry out their demands. When at long last the world settled down into a peaceful state, Toad Yun set out to improve the inferior status attached to his family ancestry. He laid down a four-point strategy for his lifelong mission to bestow distinction on his family. First, he gilded his genealogy. The gains and losses from the genealogy business were about even, and so the second step was for Toad Yun to get an official post for himself. The third point in Master Yun's strategy to embellish his family's status was the rather more brilliant enterprise of forging marriage links to the real aristocracy. The fourth and final point in Master Yun's strategy was the most important of all. It was to make members of his immediate family into men of real power and substance.
