[1] By the year he was killed (1925), her father had been promoted to director of military affairs in Shandong Province and served as brigade commander under the local warlord Zhang Zongchang.

[2] In October 1925, during the second war between the Zhili and Fengtian warlord cliques, her father Shi Congbin was leading a brigade of mercenary soldiers in an attempt to capture Guzhen, Shandong.

[2] Less than two years later, in early 1927, Sun Chuanfeng was deposed by the Northern Expedition,[2] a military campaign by the Kuomintang that was targeted at ending the rule of the local warlords.

He retired from his military career and founded the Tianjin Qingxiu lay-Buddhist society (Chinese: 天津佛教居士林; pinyin: Tiānjīn Fójiào Jūshìlín) together with his former fellow warlord Jin Yunpeng.

[2][5] After a lengthy legal process with two appeals that ultimately reached the Supreme Court in Nanjing[2] and pitted public sentiment against the rule of law,[4][6] she was finally given a state pardon by the Nationalist government[2] on 14 October 1936.