The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Mayling was not a regular student; she was not old enough. However, because there was another little girl of her age in the school, the daughter of the president, Bishop Ainsworth, another special arrangement was made, and she stayed on the campus. This worked so well that yet a third child, Claribelle Marshall, the little sister of another big girl, was included in the group, and the three formed their own unofficial class. Eloise Ainsworth, Claribelle Marshall and May Soong were quite happy, but they had one common longing, the perpetual desire of the little girl to be as important as the big girls.

  “The big girls had secrets,” says Madame Chiang. “How we wanted to know what they were talking about! But they would never tell us; they would say, ‘Run away now, children.’”

  The girls’ sororities almost drove them mad until they hit on the plan of forming their own. They called themselves the “Tri-puellates” and looked about for a chapter room. Only one room was available, a small one over the big music room, and to get permission to use that they had to swear in Bishop Ainsworth as an honorary member. This worked so well that in a short time most of the faculty were honorary members. The children made up their equivalents to the passwords, secret signs and rules of the big girls’ sororities; one of the rules, for instance, was that chewing gum was not to be chewed during chapter meetings. Teachers who in the ordinary way never thought of chewing gum would walk into that room chewing lustily, just to make the founders scream in protest.

  Chingling studied philosophy and worked hard. She spent a good deal of time writing long letters, very thoughtful and idealistic, to girls at home. She made friends easily and kept them long. Mayling, who was to specialize in English literature when she grew a little older, was at that time just at the age when she loved to pick up and use long words. She would try them out first on Eling, watching out of the corner of her eye to see the effect on her big sister.

  “I’ve just met the most atteractive girl, sister,” she said one day. “She’s my new friend; she’s been so nice to me. She’s invited me to her box tonight. Oh, she’s simply fanisating.”

  The institution of the “box” was responsible for a very dramatic night in the Soong annals. One of Eling’s friends had received a fine big one, full of turkey, pickles and other indigestible things. Its arrival was naturally kept as secret as possible among about six of the girls, including the Soong sisters, and they arranged to meet in Eling’s room after the hour for going to bed. Boxes were usually devoured in this clandestine and illicit manner. That night the feast was ready on a blanket spread on the floor, when a noise, real or fancied, in the corridor outside sent the visitors flying. The food was whisked out of sight. Chingling and Mayling, who had more or less of a right to be there, went into the bathroom: the other two visitors fled pell-mell into a closet. Eling promptly made confusion worse confounded by tipping two clothesbaskets full of dirty laundry on top of them. She then closed the closet door and opened the one into the corridor.

  Nobody was there.

  Eling said in a loud voice, “Good evening, Miss Jones,” and replied to herself, “I thought I heard somebody in this room. Didn’t I hear somebody in this room?”

  “Oh no, Miss Jones,” said Eling, “there’s nobody here.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Eling. “I’m coming in to see.”

  She kept that up for about ten minutes. The only reason she was not choked when at last she liberated her suffocating prisoners was that they were so impressed with her powers of mimicry.

  “But I could have sworn that was Miss Jones talking. Why, you really ought to be on the stage . . . . How could you have been so mean?”

  People at Wesleyan say that while the two older girls found it difficult sometimes to learn American customs and idiom, Mayling slipped very easily into the school environment — naturally, since she was so young. Sometimes in the early days her friends, going into her room, surprised her in Chinese dress, but she had always to run into the closet and change before she felt at ease. She was very pert: when one of the older girls said, “Why, Mayling, I believe your face is painted!” she retorted,

  “Yes, China-painted!”

  She had a quick temper and often quarreled hotly with her two little friends. Mrs Ainsworth once said, “Aren’t you ashamed to storm about like this?” “Mrs Ainsworth,” said Mayling, “I rather enjoy it!”

  Eloise, Claribelle and May started a newspaper. May was literary editor, and the other two divided the jobs of art editor and reporter. It was probably the only paper of its kind in the world, for though there were five copies issued every day, no two of these copies were alike. The society column of one would say:

  “Of all the girls on this campus, none is so pretty as Betty Brown. She was seen yesterday . . . ” etc., etc.

  Another would say, in the same column:

  “Dorothy Dell is the cleverest girl in the whole school.”

  The first paper was sold to Betty Brown, the second to Dorothy Dell, and since each one cost five cents, and since the paper was ordinary school exercise paper, there was no overhead. The Tri-puellates had twenty-five cents to spend every day, after their labors. The most trying part of the whole affair was in agreeing how to spend it — on ice cream altogether, or partly on salted peanuts, or on candy. “It must have been priceless,” writes Madame Chiang, “because there was one character who appeared every day called ‘Madame Telle Storie,’ dealing with beauty aids and advice to the lovelorn, comments on campus gossip, and had what I fondly imagined a decided Tatler and Spectator slant.”

  A university student in the East heard about this paper and wrote to them, requesting a copy to put on record as the product of the youngest editor in America. He did not include the nickel, and they wrote him scornfully, pointing out this omission. “Especially,” they said, “as it is costing us two cents to send this letter.” He then sent the nickel, but if he kept his copy it is the only one in existence. The others, unfortunately, are lost.

  Madame Chiang thinks that because of the special tutoring she received during this time, she made much greater progress than she would have done in an ordinary classroom. She learned amazingly quickly, and was to continue to learn quickly, all the way through the university. By the time she was ten she had read every word of Dickens, but she is not prepared to say how much of it she really understood.

  Eling was graduated in 1909, at the early age of nineteen, with an enviable record of high “marks.” She had attended summer school at various places, during one long vacation at Cornell. In New York at a party she had made the acquaintance of Kung Hsiang-hsi, then a postgraduate student at Yale; she did not remember him, but when they met again, years later, in Japan, he had not forgotten.

  From the class prophecy for Eling on her graduation:

  Look at that flaming headline on the front page! Greatest Reforms in China that the World Has Ever Heard Of. The wife of the leader is the real power behind the throne. As the result of her sagacity, China has made great strides. We can now understand why Eling felt so insulted once when a Wesleyan professor told her she had become a fine American citizen.

  At the graduation exercises she read an original arrangement of Madame Butterfly, wearing a costume of rose brocade of which Charlie had sent her forty yards. That blaze of pink glory was her last experience of America for many years.

  She was to arrive in Shanghai just two years before the great Revolution. Eling, coming back to China after so many years abroad in a country where life was comparatively free for a girl, must have had many adjustments to make. In the first place, she had become so accustomed to foreign clothing that it was difficult to change back into the Chinese style. “I always wear foreign dress when I go shopping,” she said apologetically to another girl. “It makes me feel less conspicuous.” She had brought back with her a wardrobe from America, and her old friends looked enviously at her tailor-made costumes and ostrich-plumed hats. After a little time, however, she gave up her foreign-style dress and adopted the pre
tty Chinese costume.

  Today each of the three sisters has a style of dress that is quite distinctively representative of her character. It is probably an unconscious phenomenon, but very revealing. Madame Kung always wears dresses the material of which is patterned in a small print; she favors blue of the navy or very slightly brighter shades, or black. She likes black lace for evening. Her feet, very small and of exquisite shape, with high instep, are usually in French-heeled slippers.

  Madame Sun’s dresses are of complete simplicity, and she seldom wears a patterned material, preferring plain colors. For ordinary clothes she uses the bright blue cotton material that is the uniform of the Chinese worker, but even when she is dressed for important ceremonials she maintains a severely plain style. This fashion has developed since her youthful days, for when she returned from America she wore foreign clothes, tailored costumes and picture hats.

  It must be remembered that the Soong girls were not exceptional in the use of American dresses. All the women of China’s treaty ports during the days immediately following the Revolution had adopted foreign dress, as a part of the general protest against the Manchu-ridden past. For a while the young people of China rapturously welcomed all the appurtenances of Western civilization, and these clothes were as important a manifestation of their spirit as were the factory machines that the new government was ordering in quantity from America. The reaction came, and it speaks well for the esthetic sense of Chinese women that they saw how much better their own dress suited them. Unlike the Japanese women, they evolved a costume of their own, using the old Man-chu blouse lengthened to the ankle and slit up the sides for freedom; in a little time the silken trousers, now unnecessary, were discarded. Today it is only the very occasional woman who uses foreign dress; most of them fear, with reason, that any Oriental woman in such clothes will be mistaken for a Japanese, and they continue to use the lovely sheathlike robe, depending for variety upon the length of the skirt and of the sleeve, the buttons, the material and the braid that edges the robe. For some reason a Chinese girl who looks in her native dress like a bamboo or a willow, slender to the point of fragility, becomes a much heftier specimen as soon as she dons foreign clothing. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Chinese female figure, though hips and bosom are small in comparison with the Occidental woman’s, does not have a very pronounced waist. The line from armpit to knee is almost straight, whereas the line along the side of a foreign woman’s body is deeply indented above the hips. There, where the waist of a Western-fashion dress is supposed to show slenderness, the Oriental woman is not slender, and the belt often reveals a thickness surprising to Western-trained eyes. Modern Chinese women never use hats, and there too they show their superior knowledge of beauty, remaining free from the tyranny of Parisian designers and their cruel sense of humor.

  Madame Chiang, with her characteristic good sense and practicality, started a new style when she began to tour the country with her husband. In the mountain regions of Szechwan and Anhwei she puts aside her silken robes and wears slacks or outdoor pajamas and stout little walking shoes. When she is living in the city she likes dresses of striking pattern, large, colorful flower designs like those beloved of the ancient Chinese makers of brocade and satin; the patterns and the shades set off her vivid beauty and furnish a symbolic picture of modern China, blend of two civilizations, when she makes her public appearances. She used often to wear a fringe over her forehead and draw the rest of the hair back in a knot on her neck; this fashion is a favorite of the young girls in the country. Lately, however, she has worn her hair without the fringe, and Madame Sun uses the same simple style; it is that which most Chinese women have worn for centuries, ever since they abandoned the elaborate coiffure of the Ming Dynasty to which old-fashioned Japanese women are still slaves. Madame Kung’s glossy black hair is pushed off the forehead and worn somewhat high. Chinese women, when they eschew the dangers of the permanent wave, can keep their coiffures miraculously neat, each hair remaining in its place.

  It was an effort for Eling to fall again into the habit of speaking Chinese, after six years of practicing English day and night. English had become so natural to her that she thought in that language, and when she spoke in a hurry or inadvertently it was usually English that she used. This habit, common to returned overseas students, disappeared in time.

  Adapting herself to life in Shanghai was easier than she had feared. There was plenty of work for a public-spirited young woman in the early years of the century, and her days were more than full. She joined her mother in the charitable affairs of the church, she worked for the civic organizations, she taught English to the other girls of her circle. With the money earned in this way she helped two young friends, a girl and a boy, to begin and complete a university course. The girl is now one of the McTyeire branch principals, and the boy took a degree in law and is now practicing in Shanghai. It was a remarkable thing for a young woman of her age to have done, but Charlie Soong’s belief in education had been transmitted to his daughter.

  Eling even wrote a play for the benefit of the Famine Relief Fund and directed it herself. It was acted in the famous Chang’s Garden: a pleasant little comedy of life in an American girls’ school dormitory. The citizens of Shanghai watched in tickled amazement the behavior of these young things of the United States, who according to that clever Miss Soong were always carrying on feuds, freshmen versus upper-classmen, between their lessons. This young group earned a good sum of money for the flood sufferers with her play, which was so successful that a repeat performance was given by request.

  “I wouldn’t dare do it now,” she said recently. “Only an optimistic young girl would have taken on such a task in those days.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Charlie Soong, Revolutionist

  Madame chiang recently wrote to someone (Mr George C. Bellingrath) in Demarest, Georgia, in reply to a request for reminiscences:

  My sisters and I spent a summer vacation in Demarest, and when my eldest sister (Madame Kung) returned to China my second sister (Madame Sun) returned to Wesleyan, Macon, Georgia. I was too small then to go to college, being eleven years of age, and as I liked the village and found many playmates among the little girls there, my sister decided to leave me with Mrs Moss, the mother of one of my eldest sister’s schoolmates.

  I attended the eighth grade at Piedmont, and enjoyed my stay of nine months there very much. It interested me greatly to find that many of the students who attended the eighth grade there with me were in reality grown men and women. They had come from far in the hills, many having taught primary school for years to get the funds necessary to attend Piedmont. All these people were greatly interested in me, and, for my part, I began to get an insight into the lives of those who had to struggle for a living and for even the means to acquire an elementary education. I suppose my contact with these people as a girl influenced my interest in the lot of those who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, a contact which I may never have experienced otherwise. It made me see their sterling worth because, after all, they and their kind constitute the backbone of any nation.

  I remember that Miss Olive van Hise taught me physiology and physical culture. I was never so proud in my life as on the day when she announced my average grade in physiology was 98 per cent, and that I was the only pupil who, because of high marks in that course, was exempt from final examinations.

  Another teacher was Miss Henrietta Additon, who is now connected with the New York police force, and from whom I received a letter recently. She taught me arithmetic. I must confess that when it came to percentages and discounts I did not acquit myself with any brilliance and only made C grade.

  It was at Piedmont that I was initiated into the mysteries of parsing sentences. My knowledge of English then was at best somewhat sketchy as I had only been in America two years and I had many funny little tricks of phraseology which baffled my grammar teacher. To cure me of them she made me try to parse them. Her efforts must have been
productive of some success for people now say that I write very good English. If so, I am inclined to think that these sessions of wrestling with rambling phrases and split infinitives may perhaps have had as much to do with any ability I acquired to overcome the intricacies of English grammar and rhetorics as any subsequent training I have had.

  The village people used to look upon me as something of a curiosity, but curiosity or not, I thoroughly enjoyed the five-cent gum drops which I used to get at old Mr Hunt’s general merchandise store equally as much as any of my playmates enjoyed them. I remember that three or four of us little girls used to consider it a great treat when one of us had a nickel to enable us to invite others to share cheese crackers or all-day suckers, which were displayed so enticingly in Mr Hunt’s glass window. We knew little of the dangers of flies and microbes in those days, and cared less about them, even though speckled fly paper shared equal honors with the attractive merchandise displayed in the windows. However, I have lived to tell the tale.