The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Her husband talked rapidly. He showed her a verse in the Bible that he had found that very morning when he opened its pages:

  “Jehovah will now do a new thing, and that is. He will make a woman protect a man.” After so many days of stubborn holding out he was still insisting excitedly that he would do nothing in the way of compromise, and he implored her not to ask such a thing of him. Mayling calmed him and reported the almost unbelievable reaction on the part of the public to his detention. “Even the smallest school children were crying as though they had lost a father, and when it was reported that he had been assassinated many soldiers had committed suicide. ‘Therefore,’ I urged, ‘you should not talk of sacrificing your life for the good of the country . . . . ’”

  It was an interesting point, the difference between the old and the new ideals. Chiang was upheld through these trying days by the traditional, personal heroism on which he had always tried to base his actions: Mayling was speaking from the point of view of the democrat. How far can one travel with either conception before making a compromise with the other? At any rate, Chiang was again with his wife, who could always help him to adjust his rigid convictions to the exigencies of reason. . . . “I noticed that his recital of what he had suffered on the morning of December twelfth upset him emotionally and agitated his mind. To calm him I opened the Psalms and read to him until he drifted off to quiet sleep.”

  Afterwards she had a long talk with Han-ching and reproached him for thinking that he could have got anything out of Chiang with force. The Young Marshal defended himself: “But the Generalissimo would not discuss things with us. He was so angry after we detained him that he would not talk at all. Please, you try to make the Generalissimo less angry and tell him we really do not want anything, not even for him to sign anything. We do not want money, nor do we want territory.”

  They talked further, and Chang gave her the rather dubious compliment of commending the sentiments she had expressed in two of her letters to her husband, which he had had occasion to read after confiscating the Generalissimo’s papers. He agreed, late in the evening, to argue for Chiang’s release with his friends; he himself was now quite willing to let him go. It was not until after two o’clock that he came to report that Yang and the others were not in agreement with him. “They say that since T.V. and Madame are friendly towards me, my head would be safe, but what about theirs? They now blame me for getting them into this affair, and say that since none of our conditions are granted they would be in a worse fix than ever if they now released the Generalissimo.”

  The next two days were full of conferences and suspicion. As Madame says, the arrival of the Soongs had split the camp; Han-ching was now considered definitely on their side, whereas the others felt that to give up their captives would put themselves into danger. The Government troops were getting nearer; the Generalissimo’s temper was frayed. T.V. was working all the time explaining, arguing, soothing and suggesting. His party was willing, of course, to give complete freedom to the mutineer, and had the rebels been less worried for their safety they would have found pleasure in the way things were going, for the Nanking group was evidently willing to consider resistance against Japan at last.

  “We heard nothing of menaces from the Reds during all this time,” wrote Madame. “Quite contrary to outside beliefs, we were told, they were not interested in detaining the Generalissimo. Instead, they preferred his quick release. But we never forgot that their armies were out in the distance — silent now, but menacing and dangerous. We were assured that they had given up their old policies and practices. We refused to believe it. It is a ruse, we told ourselves, and we indicated to the Sian leaders that we would not swallow ruses.”

  On the twenty-fourth the Generalissimo writes, “The leaders in Sian suddenly disagreed over what they had discussed with T.V. yesterday. They indicated that they could not let me go until the Central Government troops had withdrawn to Tungkwan.

  “T.V. is very much upset, but I am taking it quite calmly, as I have not been expecting to leave this dangerous place. The question of life and death bothers me no more.”

  The entire building must have been a whispering gallery. The Chiangs were never left to private conversation; guards watched them all the time. “I must have seemed very demonstrative to the guards watching us through the peephole,” said Madame later, “for when I wanted to tell my husband something in secret, I bent very near him to whisper in his ear.”

  Colonel Huang all this time was playing chess with his jailers, philosophically waiting for whatever might come. Nobody ever told him anything. Christmas morning dawned and he said to himself, “This isn’t the way I expected to spend the holidays.”

  Suddenly a messenger arrived and said something to the guards at the door, and then he was simply told that he could go. He stepped out at once for the Generalissimo’s quarters, wondering what on earth had happened. The first person he met was Donald.

  “Merry Christmas, J. L.,” said Donald, and he looked as if he meant it.

  “What’s merry about it?” demanded Huang.

  “Why, we’re going back to Nanking. Hadn’t you heard?”

  Huang started to explain that he had heard nothing, that he had been in jail, but Donald was in a hurry and left him. The Colonel continued on his way toward the house, the front gate of which was at the top of a flight of steps. As he approached, the gate swung wide and T.V. came down the stairs. It was the first Huang knew of T.V.’s arrival.

  “Oh, Huang,” said T.V. busily, “I’ve been looking for you. We’re leaving, you know. Don’t forget to bring my secretaries. They’re in the office.” Then he, too, hurried away, leaving the Colonel gaping after him.

  Next, Madame herself appeared at the gate. “Merry Christmas, J. L.,” she said cheerfully. “We’re leaving, you know. . . . I leave my amah in your care. Don’t forget to bring her, will you?”

  When Colonel Huang had got his bearings, the departure was almost completely organized. He discovered that the impossible had happened during his incarceration; that the mutiny was over and the Generalissimo was free. There was one more conference going on in that grim building and when it was over the party was to leave Sian. The Young Marshal too? Well, nobody seemed to be quite sure. What was sure, and what interested the Colonel rather more than anything, was that the Soongs and the Generalissimo were awaited at that moment on the air field, whereas he himself and the secretaries and the amah and the other members of the party were to wait until next day, as it was growing rather late for the trip to Loyang . . . .

  He stood near the flight of steps with the gate at the top, waiting and watching. Two cars drove up and stopped, their engines idling. It was still uncertain; this moment, perhaps, was the most uncertain of all. Many of the commanders were still reluctant; would they back down at the last minute?

  The gates opened. Out came the Generalissimo dressed in a plain long gown, leaning on the arm of his wife. He was pale and thin, and walked with difficulty. Followed by T.V., the Young Marshal and another general, they came down the steps, entered the first car and drove off. Chang Hsueh-liang at the door of the car seemed to hesitate, then stepped in. Other generals followed in the next car, and then there was left only J. L. Huang himself, wishing he had had a camera.

  A more pressing matter remained to be settled, however. He did not like the sound of that next day’s departure for himself and his party. He commandeered a car and hurried to the air field, from which the Chiang plane had just taken off. He demanded to see the pilot of his own plane.

  “Can you make Loyang tonight if we hurry?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” said the pilot. “It’s dangerous, trying to land after dark on that field.”

  “Never mind,” said Huang; “I’d rather die outside of Sian than inside, even if we’re still in Shensi. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  T.V.’s secretaries were willing to hurry up a bit, though they were hard at work in the deserted building, but Madame’s amah ob
jected to being interrupted in her leisurely packing. Huang had to pull her out by the hand while he commended her for her devotion to duty; a few dresses more or less wouldn’t matter, he explained. They were all at the plane in record time, and nobody seemed to have reconsidered as to their departure. They took off; Huang heaved a sigh of relief as he glanced back at the cradle of China’s civilization, which had so nearly been her grave. There was a happy reunion that night at Loyang.

  In Shanghai, strollers in the street under the great illuminated Christmas decorations jumped at the sudden din of joyful cries and exploding firecrackers. The town that had been dull with lethargy woke up with a vengeance. For once no policemen tried to enforce the municipal regulations against fireworks. The Generalissimo was free! He was alive! He was on his way home!

  In Nanking the same thing happened, only more so. In all the little towns up and down the river and out in the interior the Christian holiday was celebrated with a fresh fervor unknown to Christian countries. Feng Yu-hsiang, a confirmed teetotaler, drank two cups of wine and let the newspapers know about it. For the first time in troubled centuries all China, traitors and patriots and peasants and Communists and capitalists, even Chiang’s enemies, were together as they heaved a gigantic sigh of relief. It had been an irresistibly gripping drama.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Chinese Unity

  What was the inside story of the Sian settlement? Among the foreigners who watched and puzzled and gossiped it seemed fairly clear; the Soongs had paid a lot of money for Chiang. How else could it all be explained? It was an old story to China, they said to one another, for all the trappings of planes and long-distance telephones.

  Only the fact that Chang Hsueh-liang had come along with the Chiangs to Nanking was rather difficult to sum up in the accounting. When the Generalissimo made his statement and offered his resignation, when it became known that the Young Marshal was going to stand trial for his rebellious act, and when the Northwest people kept quiet, it did not seem so beautifully simple, after all. At the same time, it might be even simpler than it looked — it may have been a very deep game, said the treaty port foreigners, who always think they know more than anybody else about these inner workings of the government. Perhaps it was all a put-up job to unify China. Yes, that was it — Chiang Kai-shek had been to Sian before, in October, hadn’t he? Well then, the thing was obvious; it was arranged at that time that he should be kidnaped, held for a couple of weeks, and released on Christmas Day. Maybe everybody in Sian hadn’t been in on the secret; perhaps Chang Hsueh-liang was the only conspirator, and that was why he had come out with the Chiangs, in order to escape assassination at the hands of the hoodwinked commanders of the Northwest. Oh, it was a clever plan, a deep plan; look at the way the Chinese had risen to the bait! The whole nation had been swayed, and now they were one and all behind the Generalissimo except for those incautious ones who had stuck out their necks in Nanking and shown themselves for what they really were. Now the Chiangs knew who was with them and who against. It was a very good trick. Damn clever, these Chinese . . . .

  In the meantime a very nervous Young Marshal was being supported in Nanking by the assurance of the Chiangs and of Donald that he had done the right, the honorable, the only thing, and that no harm would come to him because of it. He waited upon Madame Kung as one of the family for whom he had always had the greatest respect — he had also entertained hopes of a marital alliance between their children. He addressed her as “Big Sister,” and expressed his anxiety and his regrets. “Please forgive me,” he implored. Eling’s heart was touched for him; the Young Marshal had always had this effect on people.

  “I wanted to — well, to punish him for what he’d done,” she said later, “and yet he was so sorry . . . . Really, it was embarrassing.”

  Of course he had lost all his appointments, and he would have to stand trial. That was to be expected. If only he would behave himself, now, and confine his behavior at the trial to a quiet manifestation of remorse, everything would be all right.

  The Young Marshal, however is not a stoic, and he had taken this adventure very much to heart. At the trial he lost patience with his questioners. “I did it once, and I’d do it again if I thought the Government needed it,” he shouted. “My mistake was in trying to coerce the Generalissimo. I wouldn’t have injured him. He’s the only one of you all that’s worth a damn, and none of the rest of you would be any loss to China.”

  In spite of everything his friends could do, Chang Hsueh-liang was promptly placed under Kuomintang “protection” for ten years and there he remains to this day, rusticating in the country. He plays tennis, golf and bridge. A few select among his friends call on him sometimes, and every so often there is a report in the Chinese press that he is coming back as a General to lead his troops to victory. It may happen; it has not happened, however, to date. He has still a year to go before he regains his civil rights, which were declared forfeit for five years.

  Chiang Kai-shek in a message full of humility and apology to the nation attempted to resign; his resignation was, of course, rejected. Twice more he offered it, and then, the amenities having been observed, he took a real vacation in order to get well again and to rest his wrenched back. The Generalissimo in the Introduction to his Diary gives his reasons for apology:

  As I am a responsible member of the Party and the Government, I should not have allowed myself to be trapped in a city full of rebels. I am ashamed of my shortcomings and have no wish to appear to justify myself. Even if I give a plain statement of facts, still I am afraid that something may slip my memory. Moreover, people may suspect that I have exaggerated my own merits and the wickedness of others. Although the rebels did not treat me as their chief, I cannot deny that they are my subordinates, and therefore I accept full responsibility for the outrages committed by them. In telling the story I place the blame squarely on my own shoulders. Since my friends and comrades are eager for detailed information concerning this incident, I hereby, instead of frequently repeating the story, extract from my diary the main facts concerning my personal experience and the thoughts that were in my mind during those troublous days. This, I fear, may reveal my lack of ability as a statesman and as a military commander.

  In truth, however, the Generalissimo could scarcely deny that out of evil good has come. He refused, as we know, to sign any agreement with his captors, but the long conversations in Sian and the manner in which he was treated had the result of putting an end to the civil war between Nanking and the Communists, nevertheless. Both sides found that there were many points on which they could agree; notably the Japanese. Other matters, it was tacitly decided, could wait until the Japanese were settled. When one looks back upon the months that followed Sian, one is amazed at the enormous change in Nanking’s attitude. Though the Government put on a show of fire-eating and denounced the Reds, they gave in to many of the important demands of the Communists, who by the way agreed to stop calling themselves Communists. Political prisoners were set free. The now famous “United Front” was announced as an accomplished fact. The Reds placed themselves under the central government. Wang Ching-wei said that China’s future program would be devoted to the recovery of the land she had lost. A famous Communist leader, Chow En-lai, came to Nanking; a Kuomintang leader went to Sian. Ten years of strife had been wiped out by the abortive mutiny in Shensi, and the Japanese knew it, and watched keenly for further developments.

  Tokyo, as the world knew by that time, was emotionally and inalterably opposed to Communism in any form; the Japanese stood still in horror at the idea that China, their neighbor, was drawing nearer and ever nearer to Russia, the fountainhead of those dangerous ideas. With the last of her internal strife abolished, China was getting far too strong; this truth was not announced outright in the Japanese press, but the newspaper outcry against Reds in the Government amounted to the same thing. The struggle could not be held off much longer. Japan was aware of this; so was Chiang; so were the ex-Communists.
r />   Asia waited.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  At War with Japan

  Asia waited, but she did not do it quietly. The “incidents” crowded in upon one another in such number that even with the newspapers of the period it is difficult to tell in what order they took place. The original “incident” of Shanghai was probably the matter of the Japanese marine in Hongkew who was shot — by a Chinese according to the Japanese authorities; by a private Japanese enemy, according to the Chinese. There were many more to follow, however. Some of the incidents were obviously arranged by Nippon in the same way as the Manchurian episode had been staged; others were just what Japan alleged them to be — outbreaks of hatred and anti-Japanese feeling on the part of the Chinese. Two Japanese newspapermen were mobbed in faraway Chengtu and horribly mutilated. A harmless Japanese shopkeeper in the South, who had lived in China seventeen years with his Chinese wife and had almost forgotten the island of his birth, was mobbed and murdered by patriots who until that day had been his friends. A Japanese vice-consul disappeared from his office in Nanking, and was quite inadvertently found alive and well in the mountains suffering from “amnesia” brought on by private domestic troubles instead of going down in history as a martyr to Chinese bandits. A Japanese sailor disappeared from his ship at Shanghai after the war had begun in the North: he had both governments breathing fire and brimstone, while foreigners began to pack their belongings, before he was found fleeing from shame and disgrace in an up-river town, having gone A.W.O.L. in a Yangtzepoo brothel.

  The Japanese press talked openly of Nippon’s destiny. Japanese schoolchildren learned to recite, “The oranges of Japan are not very good, but when we take control of Fukien we will have very good oranges.” A Japanese news agency man in Shanghai became famous for his Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior; sober he was charming and modest, whereas when he was drunk he was apt to bellow to a party of foreigners, “Be careful, now, or I’ll have a squad of blue-jackets upriver to make you behave!”