The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

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  The Soong Sisters

  Emily Hahn

  Apology

  Attempt was made at the beginning of this book’s writing to follow the Wade system of spelling for Chinese names, but when upon completion of the work the author submitted it to several savants in succession, requesting them to correct her Wade, the most dire results obtained. Each expert leaped at the chance; each expert disagreed violently with everything that had been decided by someone else, and at the end the spelling was in a worse muddle than ever. The writer has done her best but knows it is not good enough, and meekly bends her head before the inevitable storm.

  Acknowledgment

  This book should be dedicated to the Japanese, since without their aid and assistance it would never have been written — or would have been done better, which is as good an excuse as any for a dedication. Twice the notes and several chapters were lost when my room was bombed, and the working manuscript was carried into and out of dugouts so often that it became indecipherable. Early photographs of the Soong sisters and of the rest of the family are scarce because of the fact that the Kung ancestral home in Shansi, where many of these mementoes were stored, has been looted by Japanese soldiers. The Soong house in Shanghai, also because of the Japanese, cannot be used as a source of material.

  Thanks are due Zau Sinmay for searching out and translating for me the Chinese sources I have used, and to Mr P. C. Kuo (Kuo Ping-chia) for correcting many of my mistakes in historical fact and for finding such necessaries as paper and typewriter ribbon in Chungking when these commodities were scarcer even than peace and quiet. Thanks are due Miss Corin Bernfeld for her constant attention to this work in progress: between air raids, huddled over a charcoal burner, she read it assiduously, criticized it severely, and kept me at work. Thanks are due Mrs Tilman Durdin and Mrs Jack Young, who typed the script and sent it back to me across country by sampan, pony, sedan chair or coolie. Thanks are due the Press Hostel for lending me what books they still had. Thanks are due my very good friends, the Reverend and Mrs J. G. Endicott, who let me use their house and children for relaxation, their attic for work, and their long experience in China for purposes of argument and inspiration.

  I wish to thank Dr Richard L. Pearse of Durham for the valuable material he collected for me in America. I thank “Billie Lee” of T’ien Hsia for all the help she gave me in Hongkong. I owe very much to Mr Randall Gould of the Shanghai Evening Post, from whose writings I have not only borrowed but taken outright, and from whose time I extracted large amounts whenever I wanted something looked up at long distance.

  Thanks are due especially to Messrs Edward Gammell and A. Gidley Baird of the Asiatic Petroleum Company. When every available living place in Chungking had been bombed, they took in myself as well as a large number of other refugees, and in the “safety zone” of the South Bank the book was at last completed, in full view of the burning, shattered, unconquered city. The kindness of Messrs Gammell and Baird, who put themselves at great inconvenience for many months, almost caused me to remove whatever adverse comments I have made anent western imperialism in the Far East. Almost, but not quite.

  E. H.

  Hongkong, October 30, 1940.

  The author and the publishers are indebted to the following for permission to include quotations from their work:

  Harper & Brothers, for two quotations from This Is Our China, by Mme Chiang Kai-shek.

  Henriette Herz, for a quotation from an article by Edgar Snow.

  Fulton Oursler, for a quotation from his interview with Mme Chiang Kai-shek, reprinted from Liberty Magazine.

  Penguin Books, Inc., for a quotation from China Struggles for Unity, by John Martin Douglas Pringle and Marthe Rajchman.

  The Nation, for an extract from “Madame Sun Keeps Faith,” by Randall Gould.

  Current History and Forum for a quotation from “China Unconquerable,” by Mme Sun Yat-sen, and for a quotation from an article by Mme Chiang Kai-shek.

  Carol Hill, for an extract from Personal History, by Vincent Sheean, published by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

  Introduction

  The Soong sisters early accepted the simplest American fashion of spelling their names — Eling, Chingling and Mayling. Strict sinologues, according to the complicated Wade system (which has borrowed rules from most of the dead and living languages of the world), spell the same names Ai-ling, Ch’ing-ling and Mei-ling. There are various ways of translating the syllables; it is an interesting subject and worth a little attention here.

  Family or clan names in China, although they are simple characters, i.e., Chinese words, are a little specialized by virtue of the fact that they have been used as appellations for a long time. Thus, although a man may be Mr Chang, those who know him or read his name in the paper will not automatically think of him as Mr “Open” any more than we conceive a mental picture of a blacksmith working at his forge as soon as we hear the name of Smith. To us Mr Smith is simply Mr Smith, and he is nothing more. But the personal “Christian” name of a Chinese, usually made up of two Chinese words, is not quite so ordinary; each man has a name especially composed of some significant combination, selected at will by his people. Whether he retains the label chosen by his parents or uses another of his own choice — Chinese are much more in the habit of changing their names than we are — the syllables are picked out with an eye to the meaning of the words. A popular girl’s name, for example, is Pei-yu, which means “Hanging Jade.” Now we Occidentals are not accustomed to this fashion of nomenclature, and when we first hear such a name translated into our own language we are pleasurably impressed. Even when we become used to it, we still feel a little thrill at using the pretty phrase; such a name enhances the owner’s attraction in our ears. Just so might a Chinese or a Japanese be pleased to know that “Theodora” means “Gift of God”: once he knows this he will probably think “Gift of God” subconsciously whenever he pronounces the name “Theodora.” The word will mean more to him, actually, than it does to us, for we have long since ceased to appreciate the syllables as anything more than a convenient name for a certain girl. On his own side he is so used to names like “Hanging Jade” and “Plum Blossom Under the Moon” that they have lost their significance for him even though they have been composed originally with an eye to esthetic effect.

  The Soong sisters, therefore, should properly be known to us as Eling, Chingling and Mayling, rather than as “Loving Mood,” “Happy Mood” and “Beautiful Mood,” clumsy nomenclature beloved of the American magazines and newspapers, irritatingly and exaggeratedly “quaint.”

  It is not uncommon that Chinese parents should label their children in series, preserving a sort of family resemblance of names by using a common first or second syllable. The “ling” of Eling, Chingling and Mayling means “life” or “age” in the sense of lifetime or era, rather than “mood.” But it is likely that this character was chosen more for the sake of euphony than for meaning; unless the Chinese paterfamilias is scholarly to the point of snobbery, he does not fret too much about such trifles. Almost any high-sounding, abstractly virtuous character will do.

  Perhaps it was half believed that the character “ling” might impart long life to those who bore it as appellation: Mei-ling, “Beauty, the Long-living.”

  One friend of the Soongs goes so far as to say that this “ling” means no more than does the “ling” in “darling”; that it is, in short, merely a loving diminutive. The theory is tempting but too amusing and pat to be taken seriously; nevertheless, since it has been put forward by a Chinese, it is safe to suppose at least that the intrinsic value
of the character, in translation, is not great.

  “Eling,” or “Ai-ling,” means “Friendly Life” (or Era) or “Long-living Kindliness.” “Chingling” means “Glorious Life.” “Mei-ling” means “Beautiful Life.” If we ignore the second syllable and translate the other words as nouns, which according to Chinese grammar we have every right to do, Madame Kung may be called “Kindliness,” Madame Sun “Gloria,” and Madame Chiang “Beauty.” By this time, at any rate, they are celebrated names that mean just about as much as the “Elizabeth” of England’s queen or the “Eleanor” of Mrs Roosevelt. The comparison is not very good, because the Soongs are Chinese ladies, who would insist that their personal names have no importance whatever. They are better known to their people as Mesdames Kung, Sun and Chiang.

  Chinese fortunetellers claim a talent superior to that of their gypsy brothers-in-trade; and any one of them can tell a fortune at a distance, without even seeing his subject. If you have a friend whose fate interests you, and who cannot go to consult a seer for himself, you have only to tell the fortuneteller what day and what year he was born, and you will be able to learn everything about him and his future down to the last detail.

  These prophets use their talents to amuse themselves when they have no customers; from time to time they peer into the destiny of the man of the hour, be he a contemporary general, a new-rich gangster or a president. The Soong family is popular among fortunetellers, although it is to be doubted that any Soong has ever been superstitious enough to consult one. The sisters especially have been discussed, observed and singled out for study.

  Fortunetellers are character readers, too; some of them, like phrenologists, can describe a man’s personality by studying the shape and contours of his face and head. There are books in Chinese that outguess Lombroso, prophesying criminal careers for people who possess a certain type of nose and divulging many a character trait from the height of a forehead. This knowledge is general and follows set rules; just as the life line of a hand means the same to any palm reader who is up in his work, so the shape of a face denotes the same characteristic to no matter what fortuneteller. They are all agreed, for example, that the three Soong sisters are alike in possessing the quality of peng fu yuin: in other words, they are pearls among women, “husband-helpers.” Praise could go no higher. One does not, of course, need a fortuneteller’s information on this subject; the smallest child in China is well aware that Mesdames Kung, Sun and Chiang are excellent wives and helpmeets. But the seers do not stop with this; they use the countless photographs of Madame Chiang that appear in the daily papers, the few available prints of Madame Sun, and the very rare pictures of Madame Kung; with these they indulge in a bit of unsolicited character reading now and then, publishing the results in the hope of a little modest advertising. I have yet to hear that any one of the ladies has paid attention to these offerings, but public interest in the seers’ pronouncements is always immense.

  Eling’s face, according to these prophets of the market place, is of the “melon-seed” or “goose-egg” type, smoothly oval in shape. This oval face is much admired in China, where one of the tests for beauty is to make certain that a lady’s lower jaw is invisible from the back: Madame Kung, they say, passes this test with flying colors. A melon-seed face is more than merely beautiful; it denotes great cleverness and an admirably practical habit of mind. Madame Kung dislikes being photographed, and as a result her face is not really well known to the masses. The description of her character as far as it goes is quite accurate.

  Chingling’s face is round and small, with delicate, perfectly formed features. It is a countenance of nobility and dignity, the face of a princess. She gives an impression of physical fragility through which her sturdy spirit shines.

  Mayling is sometimes considered the chief beauty among the sisters, but she does not photograph well, and her pictures do not do her justice. Her cheekbones are noticeably high; this feature first of all attracts the attention of the fortuneteller. “Power,” he says, placing a sure finger upon the pictured face. One is left skeptically wondering if he would have been so sure of an unknown lady, an unfamiliar face. . . . To be sure, he did not read power into Madame Rung’s countenance, although he must have known enough to expect he might find it there. No, the melon-seed face remains unread, delicately oval in shape, inscrutable.

  The Revolution of 1911 brought about many emancipations, chiefly that of Chinese women. We who read history, when we consider the Chinese Revolution, think first of the unbinding of the feet, but there were other unbindings more significant, if not so dramatic. In Chinese domestic life, women had always held a certain power, but even there they became immeasurably freer after 1911, and all the public world was virgin territory to them; they advanced eagerly, yet fearfully, with slow steps.

  The Chinese woman has never been as downtrodden as was her Japanese sister across the sea. There has never been any of that kneeling in China, that rapt devotion in the Temple of Service that makes gods of the most ordinary and unlovely Japanese men. Nevertheless concubinage and slavery were heavy shackles; nor were they thrown off all at once. The freeing of women in China has progressed very slowly; concubinage, for example, was outlawed only a few years ago, and still exists, and the old-fashioned peasant women of certain provinces in the backwoods still bind their baby daughters’ feet. All the definite changes took place only in the big cities, where young women embraced the new fashion with feverish enthusiasm. Some of them had played a personal part in attaining their liberty; a few girls had even carried bombs and thrown them, and fought in revolutionary battles, side by side with their men companions. But in the country these reforms went gently, by degrees.

  It is fairly obvious to anybody familiar with the Chinese temperament that the women of the upper and middle classes, those with enough means to have retained their natural animal spirits, had never been nonentities in society, even during pre-Revolution days. Enormous power was wielded in family circles by the old lady, the dowager mother-in-law; and henpecked husbands are as old a joke in China as anywhere else in the world. Those beauties who were aware of their feminine power, whose wishes were carried out anyway, without personal effort, were among the loudest decriers of the new freedom. It has always been thus. Only the really new type of girl, the ever-present Modern, demanded her right to education and an opportunity for public service. The Revolution, in short, took place just in time for Charles Soong’s daughters.

  No, the Chinese have never been shocked by the Soong sisters’ assumption of power and responsibility. True, the American directness with which Soong Mayling sometimes goes about her appointed tasks may have startled the public at the beginning of her career, but it is an old story now, and the chief fact, the Soong Dynasty itself, was never a new story at all. There is, of course, a proverb to match the occasion. The Chinese are never at a loss for a proverb. This one has become popular as the popularity of the Soongs increases:

  “Value not males, but the birth of females.”

  Back in the Tang Dynasty, when Yang Kwei-fei conquered the Emperor’s heart with her plump beauty, he granted lucrative appointments to all her male relatives. Nowadays, the saying is repeated in good faith or in bitterness with never-diminishing relish wherever gossips get together, wherever people debate on politics (nobody in China ever fears the accusation of being bromidic): “Value not males, but the birth of females.” Not all disappointed parents, you see, exposed their girl babies to the elements in China, even in the bad old days. There was always the chance that the little girl might grow up a Yang Kwei-fei or a Soong.

  It would be. quite useless to explain to a traditionally educated Chinese that Kwei-fei was of an entirely different type of woman from the Soongs. The way of a woman with a government is always the same, he would say wisely; anyway, who cares? Smart girls, the Soongs — good girls. Well might their father be proud of them as he looks on from heaven, the world of ancestors.

  Yet our stubborn listener is wrong, from
beginning to end. Yang Kwei-fei, if she still keeps an eye on this troubled planet, must look in amazement at the actions of China’s rulers. Who are these strange women whose lives are all outside the palace gates? What manner of empress is this who travels from province to province, making speeches to the dangerous mob? Why will she not allow herself to be hailed as empress? One can only guess at Kwei-fei’s utter bewilderment when she contemplates Madame Sun. Only Madame Kung would be at all comprehensible to the pretty Kwei-fei; her type is immortal and has endured from the beginning of China’s history. China and only China produces the Elings of the world; mother and statesman together.

  As for Charles Soong, his heaven is not the sort of afterworld from which ancestors look benignly or critically upon the actions of their descendants. Charles Soong dwells serenely in a Methodist heaven, and visits the world no longer in mortal shape. The odors of the banquet, the appetizing vapors of cooked meats and wine are not for him; his chair is empty on New Year’s Eve. Indeed, no chair awaits him: his ghost is nowhere expected. The Soong New Year is a Christian holiday.

  E. H.

  CHAPTER I

  Charlie Soong Gets an American Education

  Even before there began to be that resentment against the Western missionaries in China, which was to culminate in the Boxer uprising, and which was almost to stamp out Asiatic Christianity for the sixth time, certain scholars and courtiers in Peking began to evince an interest in European culture. The Dowager Empress herself, the Manchu Tzu Hsi, disliked the barbarians of the outer world, but she was willing to examine their claims to civilization. It is typical of the Chinese mind that these elegants should have been tolerant enough to admit the possibility of any civilization at all outside of the Middle Kingdom. Sincerely believing all non-Chinese to be little better than savages, they still realized that people who had for centuries been sending messengers to China might be able to teach them a few things worth knowing. Marco Polo had been a valuable adviser to Kublai Khan, after all. Now there came news of universities in the capitals of Europe and in America, and the academic curiosity of the savants was aroused.