The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  8. Bride and bridegroom face each other and bow once

  9. Bride and bridegroom thank those officiating and the witnesses by bowing to them

  10. Bride and bridegroom bow to guests and thank them by bowing once.

  . . . The civil ceremony at the Majestic was performed by Dr Tsai Yuan-pei, ex-President of the Peking National University, and at present Minister of Education of the Nanking Government.

  Before the ceremony began the foreign orchestra played foreign music. There was an expectant hush, a craning of necks, and Chiang Kai-shek, accompanied by the best man, entered the ballroom and the cameras began to grind.

  Another hush, another craning of necks and mounting of chairs by those in the road, and to the time-honored music of “Here Comes the Bride,” Miss Soong entered on the arm of her brother, Dr T.V. Soong, former Minister of Finance. The cinema cameras by now were grinding furiously.

  Miss Soong carried a huge bouquet of white and pink roses. Both she and the bridegroom posed for the cameraman before the ceremony. Then came three bows to the portrait of Dr Sun Yat-sen, which occupied a central position on the platform. On the right of his portrait was the flag of Dr Sun and on the left the flag of the Kuomintang. The portrait was in the center and the bows were first to the right, then to the left and then directly in the center.

  A calm Chinese voice was then heard reading the certificate of marriage, following which the official seal was affixed to the certificate. The bride and bridegroom then faced each other and bowed once. Then came the thanks to the “witnesses” which were made with one bow. A final bow was made to the guests.

  The orchestra was playing and hand-clapping was heard as the new Mrs Chiang walked from the platform with her husband and the two posed under a huge bell of roses while pictures were taken.

  Contrary to the Christian custom, the bride was not embraced or kissed by the bridegroom, minister or others. The ceremony itself was brief and simple. The bride was given away by her brother, T.V. Soong. The best man was Liu Chi-wen, Chief Secretary to Chiang.

  A feature of the wedding was the singing of “O Promise Me,” by Mr E. L. Hall. Following the ceremony tea was served in the ballroom and the Venetian Room.

  The China Press:

  The main ballroom and sides had been hung with wedding bells of white massed flowers, and the aisle leading from the east side, down which the wedding party proceeded, was also lined with flowers . . . . The altar . . . was composed of a Chinese table fronting an alcove made of green and white foliage, on either side of which were gigantic white shields of massed flowers, the character for long life and happiness worked out in red geranium on them, and the back of which was a photograph of Sun Yat-sen below crossed the flags of the Party and Government — the red, white and blue, and the blue and white . . . . The couple left tonight by special train for Hangchow.

  The North-China Herald:

  The bride looked very charming in a beautiful gown of silver and white georgette, draped slightly at one side and caught with a spray of orange blossom. She wore also a little wreath of orange buds over her veil of beautiful rare lace made long and flowing to form a second train to that of white charmeuse embroidered in silver which fell from her shoulders. She wore silver shoes and stockings and carried a bouquet of palest pink carnations and fern fronds tied with white and silver ribbons.

  She was followed by four bridesmaids. Miss Pearl Kwok, Miss Yoeh E. Wang, Miss Pauline (Rosamunde) Kung and Miss Jessie Nyi, the two former wearing peach charmeuse beaded with diamante and peach coloured beads, and with sleeves of the charmeuse to the elbow, where they blossomed into bells of georgette, also of peach shade. The two smaller bridesmaids wore dresses of the same but trimmed with frills of georgette at the neck and having sleeves of frills. After the bridesmaids followed little flower girls, the Misses Chow and Chan, dressed in ribbed peach taffeta and carrying little baskets laden with flower petals, and the train was ended by two small pages, Miss Jeannette Kung and Master Louis Kung in black velvet suits with white satin vests.

  The bride’s mother wore wine-colored chiffon velvet and black shoes and stockings.

  . . . The bride and bridegroom returned by their crimson path to two chairs under a huge bell of flowers from which hung ribbons which when pulled swung the bell, which released a shower of rose petals on the pair beneath. After many photographs had been taken, the bride retired with the bridesmaids and tables were set ready for the bridal party to take tea under the bell of flowers. However, while this was being arranged, the bride escaped from the retiring room and neither she nor the bridegroom were seen again by the guests.

  The honeymoon will be spent in Hangchow and Mokanshan, though it is not known how long Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his bride will be away.

  They were away, in fact, little more than a week, for the Nanking government asked Chiang to take his place again as Commander-in-chief and finish the Northern Expedition. Nobody else was able to do it, and things were in a bad way for the Nationalists. There were quarrels and threats from the ubiquitous war lords, and the Communists in Swatow were waiting.

  Chiang agreed to see the war through, but he said that he wanted to resign the military post when it should have been brought to a successful close. Feng Yu-hsiang had promised to support him, as had also Yen Hsi-shan, which took care of Hunan and Shansi. The Government called a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, and Chiang was made chairman of the Central Political Council, and also of the National Military Council. On January tenth Chiang announced that he intended to suppress the Communists.

  Nanking, which by 1937 had achieved the dignified beauty of one of the world’s capitals, was at this time a sad mixture of ancient, crumbling glory and new raw ugliness. The Ming tombs and the famous avenues of animal statuary, the walls surrounding lotus-choked pools, a number of old houses hidden jealously away, and the purple mountains that guarded the valley were the only compensations for filthy crowded streets and low-lying huts. Factory conditions were appalling, and the local government had gone its way without attempting any reform.

  The Nationalists set to work to build a permanent city of which China could be proud. To begin with and for many months they camped out, living in what buildings they could find, while the streets were prepared for the Government houses. Whole rows of houses had to be pulled down; they were clustered thickly about the highways and on the bridges. It was to this mixture of raw, scarred emptiness and yet untouched squalor, surrounded by the distant beauty of the Nanking mountains, that Chiang brought his bride. They were to make their home here until he began again to lead the army North.

  Mayling had traveled much in China, but her experience was limited to the cities of Tientsin, Peking and Canton. Life for her until her marriage, in her own words, had been “easy and comfortable.” Nanking was a change for her, a change that most of the women of her class were unwilling to undergo; none of the other wives of the Nanking officials came up to live there, preferring to remain in Shanghai, where their husbands could visit them occasionally. This state of affairs continued for several years. There was no social life of the usual sort, but the Generalissimo was of course very much entertained by his colleagues, attending dinners and receptions constantly. He insisted that Mayling accompany him and act as hostess at his own dinners; she was the only woman present at these parties, and at first she felt very uncomfortable.

  “I think the officials themselves were also very conscious of me as a woman,” she said, “but later on I forgot about myself in my interest in helping my husband in his work, and they also began to regard me not as a woman but as one of themselves.

  “Nanking was then nothing but a little village with one so-called broad street from the station to the Bridge House (a hotel near the Bund). Even then the street was so narrow that if two motor cars were coming in opposite directions one of them had to back off on a side street until the other passed. The houses were all very primitive, cold and uncomfortable. The exceptions wer
e those on the missionary compounds.”

  Anybody who knows Nanking can testify that of all places in China, it probably touches the two extremes of discomfort in climate, in midwinter and midsummer. Mayling left the ultramodern steamheated houses of Shanghai in January and settled down in one of the icy barns of China’s interior. It was a poor substitute for a honeymoon. Yet there were compensations; Nanking had a spirit of joyous endeavor and hope that even Canton had not possessed during the period of Sun’s Presidency, for it was obvious to everyone that there was at last a chance of bringing some order out of the sixteen-year chaos that followed the Revolution. She threw herself into the work of construction, and soon found several outlets for her energy.

  It was at this time that she started the Schools for the Children of the Revolution. Many of the revolutionists had died in battle, and others had lived on to make more sacrifices; the children of these people were left without anyone to overlook their education. “These children, I thought,” said Madame Chiang, “would be the most valuable material if they were molded right, as they all had revolutionary blood in their veins.” It was a natural woman’s adaptation of the program Chiang had taken and developed from the Soviet, that of political education. Mayling had here an opportunity to put into practice some of the theories of teaching that she had unconsciously developed. “What I have learned,” she says, “about the training of students has come mostly through observation of how students should not be taught. In other words, I saw that there were certain discrepancies in our system of education and the life around us. For example, book knowledge alone was emphasized and no attempt was made to point out the necessity of assimilating learning with practical living or to prepare the students for their future by teaching them how to live as citizens of a community.

  “In the Schools for the Children of the Revolution, my children were taught to use their hands and their bodies and to reason out why such and such a thing should be done in a certain way. In so far as possible, I tried to get away from the idea of regimentation by emphasis upon the necessity of developing initiative in cooperation with observance of school discipline in self-discipline. Also, I organized rural service clubs in the Schools so that the students could help the farmers in the community, and, at the same time, put into practice the theory of learning by doing.

  “I do not claim to be a born teacher or even that I am a good teacher now. I am still experimenting with educational ideas. Each training class that I have had since the war I have learned a little more myself and the subsequent class benefits from the experiences I have had with the previous classes.”

  The Officers’ Moral Endeavor Association (it does not take nearly so long to say this in Chinese) had already come into existence, though in a slightly different form, during the early days of the Nationalist Government in Canton, while Chiang was still President of the Whampoa Military Academy. In those days it had been known as the Whampoa Officers’ Moral, etc., and had been merely another club in the Academy, formed for the purpose of morale and extra-curricular political education. Now, in Nanking, Mayling noticed that the young officers had rather a dreary time of it. They had no homes and no companionship, with few chances for relaxation after work. Nanking could not offer the usual wartime distractions to her warriors; no cabarets lit up those dreary streets, and there had been no time in which to organize private clubs. The lazy, dissolute officer of pre-Canton days had disappeared; Chiang’s iron regime had produced lean, self-denying, serious youngsters who made excellent soldiers but had no talent for leisure.

  Many of the Generalissimo’s former students from Whampoa would come to visit him, and Mayling talked to them. She heard the same complaint from all of them — there was nothing to do in Nanking while they waited for their orders for the front. Here was another job she could do. Out of these talks the Chiangs developed the new Officers’ Moral Endeavor Association, or, as most people inevitably call it in English, the O.M.E.A. J. L. Huang, an experienced Y.M.C.A. worker, was persuaded to come up from Shanghai and to see what he could do to build up the organization.

  “It was just a little low shack at first, in the middle of a lot of other shacks,” he said. “Near by was the Y.M.C.A. building, a fine new house. I admit it was a temptation to stay with the ‘Y’ when I contrasted those two buildings, but after I had looked around and asked a few questions I realized that this might be a big thing, and it could do more good for the army than the Y.M.C.A. in a different way, because it was something that had been planned especially for the officers. We could influence the men directly with an organization like that. So I agreed to take it on. The first few months were exciting. A lot of the cadets were prejudiced against us, feeling that the O.M.E.A. was a new method of foreign propaganda and a hidden way of forcing them to become Christians even if they didn’t want to. They used to throw things at me when I was out walking in the street, and sometimes they talked of burning down the building. But little by little they began to like coming up and using the place. Now all the officers belong.”

  Today the O.M.E.A. is responsible for most of the musical entertainment in the army, and its art department is an important center in Chungking, supplying posters for propaganda, paintings in general, backdrops and scenery for plays and decorations for public buildings. It all dates back to those first days of feverish energy on Mayling’s part.

  There were three months of preparation for the resumption of the expedition, and during that time Mayling and her husband worked hard but quietly, taking walks in the country and reading and discussing the Bible — for he kept his promise to his mother-in-law and studied Christianity with all the concentration of which he is capable.

  The war proper began again in April. From that time on, Mayling went with the Generalissimo on all his campaigns, living wherever they could find quarters, in thatched huts and railroad stations and farmhouses. It was an initiation for her into the true living conditions of China; some of these places were a greater departure from the houses of Nanking, chilly and comfortless as they were, than Nanking had been from Shanghai.

  Wherever she went, whatever she saw strengthened her desire to clean it all up. The energy with which she insists today upon scrubbing the floors and tables, washing the linen, cleaning the windows of any place where she is in charge represents more than a personal foible. For Madame Chiang, that cleanliness where age-old dirt reigned before her coming is a symbol of all that must be done for China. Her spirit, inherited from the redoubtable Charles Soong and encouraged by her American training, was never cast down by the magnitude of the task she set herself. The more she saw of her country the more energetic she became. It is no delicate and feminine gesture when she takes curtains and flower bowls with her to the front and decorates the house in which she is to live with the Generalissimo, no matter how poor a hut it may be. It is an outward sign of her defiance, the war she is continually fighting against sloth and laissez-faire.

  CHAPTER XV

  Victory for Chiang

  It took less than a month for the Generalissimo’s troops to get as far as Tsinan, the capital of Shantung. The Old Marshal’s army had not resisted for long; Chiang, with Feng and Yen to help him, seemed in a fair way to get to Peking without too much trouble. The Japanese, however, did not relish the success of the Southerners, for they were in possession of Tsingtao and wanted to retain control of Shantung. Therefore they sent men up to Tsinan and barred the way of the Chinese along the railroad. There was an outbreak of fighting on May third.

  Chiang had no desire to be interrupted again in his Northern Expedition, or to be tricked into a war with Japan before he had unified his own country. He therefore tried to quiet down the trouble, and negotiated with the Japanese General, agreeing to suppress anti-Japanese propaganda and to move his men seven miles away from Tsinan — for the Japanese had excused their actions on the grounds that their people in Shantung needed “protection.”

  The Generalissimo insisted, however, upon a right of way along the
railroad in order that his army would have a clear path to Peking. The Japanese would not agree to this compromise, and on May eighth there was a battle between the forces, in which the Chinese were driven out of Tsinan and seven miles away. Feeling in China ran high, and there was more evidence of what the Japanese called “anti-Japanese propaganda.” Evidently aggrieved and astonished by this reaction, the Nipponese warned both Nanking and Peking not to make any more trouble, or they would begin to “maintain order” in Manchuria; to begin with, they suggested that the Old Marshal retire then to his own domain, north of the Great Wall.

  Chang Tso-lin agreed to this with unbecoming alacrity, and began moving out of Peking with his troops. On June third, as his train approached Mukden, it was blown up by a bomb, and he was killed. This left his son, the Young Marshal, Chang Hsueh-liang, in charge of the Manchurian troops, and he continued to move them north. Yen Hsi-shan’s army took possession of Peking on behalf of Chiang, who was still on the other side of Tsinan, held up by the Japanese: the Northern Expedition had at last arrived at its destination. Chiang Kai-shek came to Peking on the third of July.

  He had promised to resign as Generalissimo as soon as the expedition should be at an end, and now he did so, but the Central Executive Committee refused to accept his resignation. Chiang was named chairman of the Committee, the highest post in the Government, at the next session in August. On the “Double Tenth” — October tenth, the anniversary of the Republic — Chang Hsueh-liang announced that he was willing to stand by Nanking, and was appointed to the State Council. Manchuria had joined forces with China. The powers recognized the Nanking government before the end of 1928; China was evidently unified at last. It was even more of a triumph than Sun’s had appeared to be in 1911, at the close of the Ch’ing Dynasty.