† $50,000,000 Chinese = $35,500,000 U.S. in 1928 ($446,191,000 today).
* Short for “Hao pu hao?” or “How are you?”
* Li stayed in Moscow for a number of years, survived Stalin’s purges, and returned to his home after the Communist victory. After recanting his “youthful errors,” he rose to become minister of labor in 1958 but was pushed to suicide during the Cultural Revolution. (Crozier, The Man Who Lost China, pp. 143–44.)
* 300,000,000 Chinese = $213,000,000 U.S. in 1928 ($2,670,000,000 today).
† 400,000,000 Chinese = $284,000,000 U.S. in 1928 ($3,570,000,000 today).
* Both Generals Li and Pai ended up fighting for China and Chiang Kai-shek during World War II, when they were known as “the Two.”
* 3,000,000 Chinese = $1,920,000 U.S. in 1929 ($24,132,000 today).
† Up until that point, Chinese homes were usually heated by raised brick sleeping platforms called kangs.
* To quote the wife of China’s most famous diplomat, Wellington Koo, “A public show of affection… is considered in the worst possible taste.” (Koo, Hui Lan-koo, p. 56.)
* It is often said that Ching-ling refused to attend the ceremonies. There are, however, photographs showing her in the family funeral procession, albeit keeping her distance from the others.
* The endearment is highly unusual in their correspondence. Chiang always signed his cables to his wife “Brother Kai.”
* Although most of today’s scholars believe that the Tanaka Memorial was a forgery, Crozier points out that the question is irrelevant since the Japanese ended up trying to do exactly what the memorial proposed.
† The following comment about the flood in the North-China Herald must have been inserted by a clever critic of Chiang Kai-shek: “It is related that the first Ming emperor, who founded his capital at Nanking, placed all his friends in high offices and thereby aroused the indignation of the gods. The consequence was that the gods placed a terrible curse on the Kompo [flood] district, vowing that it should be forever an area of famine and drought. The curse has been broken with grim reality.” (“Notes and Comments: The Yangchow Floods,” The North-China Herald, September 1, 1931.)
* $20,000 Chinese = $6,800 U.S. in 1932 ($107,180 today).
* Chiang Kai-shek’s detractors say that he could have sent in the necessary reinforcements but sent only 15,000 poorly trained soldiers, who were of little use. A more sympathetic theory suggests that Chiang was trying to withstand the Japanese without actually declaring war, which would have led to massive invasions of the country. (See Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty, pp. 306–7.)
* Before they left the country, Chang and his two wives were put into rehab in Shanghai by a doctor friend of Donald, emerging sometime later free of their dependence on opium. According to the head of his bodyguard, Chang’s secretaries, servants, and two attendant doctors had been keeping him on the drug, deriving a tidy profit from his addiction. It is not surprising that they “disappeared” the day after he entered the clinic.
* The author was unable to discover what this particular operation was supposed to cure.
* The nephew of the dowager empress, 1871–1908.
* Spitting was a time-honored custom in China, and not just among the working class. Spittoons were placed by the chairs of Chinese leaders at banquets and ceremonies, and Deng Xiaoping was famous for his aim. There was an attempt to stop this during the 2003 SARS epidemic, when citizens were fined if they were caught spitting in public.
* $4.00 Chinese = $1.44 U.S. in 1935 ($22.50 today).
† $1.00 Chinese = $.38 U.S. in 1935 ($5.63 today).
* His rank was raised to ambassador in 1935.
* The Treaty of Versailles limited the German army to 100,000 men and did not allow it to employ a general staff.
* In their recent biography of Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday contend that Chiang Kai-shek deliberately allowed the Chinese Communists to escape. They may be right— this author has not seen the relevant archives—but from everything we know about Chiang and his extermination campaigns, it is highly unlikely that he would not have disposed of the CCP if he could have done so. Chang and Halliday also claim that Mao did not walk like the others but was carried on a litter while he read.
* In southwest China on the road to Szechuan.
* I have included here the classic story of crossing the bridge, but it must be noted that Chang and Halliday claim that the legend of heroism was “a complete invention” and that there were “no Nationalist troops at the bridge when the Reds arrived.” (Chang and Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, p. 159.)
* Taylor says that attending the school was his own, not his father’s, idea.
* The Chinese believe that a baby is one year old when he or she is born.
* According to Young Marshal Chang, the Communists were known for their ghastly methods of torture if the soldiers did not comply.
* The majority of the following quotes are taken from a book that was written after the incident, giving both Chiang Kai-shek and May-ling time and opportunity to edit their stories and present themselves in the best light.
† It is said that Chiang was dressed only in his nightshirt and was without his false teeth. The first is unlikely; the second is apparently true.
* Many Chinese Communists, including Chou En-lai, agreed with Mao and felt that if they had been able to keep Chiang in Sian a bit longer, they could have made some headway in bringing the two sides together. But, according to Snow, “There is little doubt that Stalin was interested in saving Chiang Kai-shek out of fear that the Kuomin-tang generals, without Chiang, would in rage turn and join the Japanese in an anti-Russian pact.” (Edgar Snow, Random Notes on Red China, p. 4.)
* Crozier says that according to an eyewitness, T.V. “personally guaranteed that Chang would not be punished in Nanking.” (Crozier, The Man Who Lost China, p. 188.)
* Yang, a member of the Sian Military Commission of the Anti-Japanese Allied Army, which demanded the release of the Young Marshal, traveled to Europe and the United States as its “special military investigator”; when he returned in 1938, he was arrested by Chiang’s government. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and died. Eight years later, his eldest son wired T.V., “My father… has been imprisoned since he returned.… I hope you can help him regain his freedom.” But T.V. told his secretary not to reply. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek had Yang executed before the Communists, who would have released him, came into power. (Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, vol. 4, p. 7, and Si Jiu-yue, “Diary of T.V. Soong Concerning the Xian Incident,” International Herald Tribune, June 22, 2004.)
* Some say that there were actually two signs: “No Dogs Allowed” and “Only for Foreigners.” (Stella Dong, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City, p. 198.)
* Emily Hahn, Chiang Kai-shek, p. 217.
* A bridge over Soochow Creek from Hongkew to the Bund.
* Signed in 1922, the Nine-Power Treaty (the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Japan, and Portugal) guaranteed the territorial integrity and administrative independence of China, along with equal opportunity for the other nations doing business there. Since the treaty did not promise to defend that integrity, it was, in effect, a moral sop to the conscience of the West.
† The Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed in 1928 by the ninth assembly of the League of Nations, renounced wars of aggression but, like the Nine-Power Treaty, made no provision for sanctions.
* According to Chennault, the nickname “Flying Tigers” was first used by American newspapers looking for encouraging stories in “an Allied world rocked by a series of shattering defeats.” The group’s first insignia—a shark tooth design on the nose of its planes—was replaced by the picture of a winged tiger flying through a large V for Victory, designed by an artist at the Walt Disney Studio. (Claire Lee Chennault, Way of a Fighter, pp. 135–36.)
* Chiang Kai-shek’s old rival.
&nb
sp; * General Mow was a former brother-in-law of Chiang Kai-shek, having been married to Chiang’s first wife’s sister. The marriage was terminated sometime before the early 1950s—whether by death or divorce is unknown.
* The only person who believed Chennault was the Swedish minister, who later sent him a silver pocket flask in thanks.
* The Idzumo was later bombed successfully but reappeared in three days in perfect condition, leading Chennault to believe that the Japanese had sent its sister ship back to the Whangpoo to save face.
* According to the columnist Joseph Alsop, who worked for Chennault but swore he checked the story with the Chinese, Chennault used his American Hawk-75 monoplane to shoot down more than forty Japanese planes “at a bounty of $500 per plane. As Mme Chiang and the generalissimo grew more pleased with the results,” Alsop added, “… the ante was raised to $1000 per enemy plane destroyed.” (Joseph Alsop with Adam Platt, I’ve Seen the Best of It, p. 166.)
* This, of course, was before the Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939. The situation changed back again in June 1941, when Hitler attacked the USSR, and the Chinese became popular with the Russians once again.
* The author of The Rape of Nanking.
† After the Japanese overran Manchuria in the early 1930s, T.V. had arranged to have these major works of art moved from Peiping to Nanking to protect them not only from the Japanese but from local officials, who would have sold them to antiques dealers.
* The same was apparently true of the Japanese, who, according to Donald, “never report losses” and “always have victories.” (Hoover Archives: Stanley K. Hornbeck papers, copy of letter from W. H. Donald to H. J. Timperley, February 28, 1939, Box 150.)
* As she became more famous, May-ling worried about the openness of her earlier letters to her friend. “I seem to recollect seeing somewhere that you had promised the May-ling Soong Foundation the letters I have written to you,” she added at the end of a letter in 1953. “Now, my dear girl, put a codicil in your will that those letters are first to be turned over to me to be censored, for I do not know what nonsense I might have written in years gone by which was meant for your eyes only.”
* In the eastern province of Kiangsu.
* Which may or may not have happened in this case.
* No author is given, so we must assume it was written under the direction of Henry Luce, a noted admirer of and apologist for the Chiangs.
* Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the eldest son of the former president, was a Republican who had served as assistant secretary of the navy, governor of Puerto Rico, and governor-general of the Philippines before his Democratic cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president. Joking that he was FDR’s “fifth cousin, about to be removed,” which is exactly what happened, he served in both world wars and won the Medal of Honor. At the time of this correspondence with Donald, he was vice president of the publishing firm Doubleday and Company.
* The USS Panay was sunk by the Japanese on December 12, 1937, as it was taking members of the U.S. government out of the Nanking war zone. It was attacked by a large contingent of bombers, which continued to fire on the men who had escaped in lifeboats, even strafing the reeds on the riverbanks for survivors. There was no question that the attack was a deliberate attempt by the Japanese military to provoke the United States into war, since the U.S. Embassy had informed Japan of the Panay’s departure in advance. Nevertheless, the United States accepted the Japanese government’s formal apology—it claimed that American flags had been mistaken for Chinese ones—and offer of reparations.
* China’s capital for the remainder of the war.
* Although H. H. Kung is said by Crozier to have been the head of a third clique, he belonged to the Soong family, and his relationship with and influence on the generalissimo will be discussed in a later chapter.
* By the end of the war, it would reach around 800,000.
† Chiang’s spitting obsession was finally vindicated during the SARS epidemic of 2002–2003 when spitting was prohibited on pain of being fined. Elizabeth Rosenthal, “SARS Forces Beijing to Fight an Old but Unsanitary Habit,” The New York Times, May 28, 2003.
* This was wishful exaggeration, as witness the following memo from White House economist Lauchlin Currie to Roosevelt’s secretary, Missy LeHand: “You might also pass along to the president an intimation from T. V. Soong that nothing would be more appreciated by Chiang than an autographed photograph of the President.” (FDR Library: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Personal File, File 7308, General Chiang Kai-shek, Memorandum, January 23, 1941.)
* McHugh, who was in charge of Far East secret intelligence, lived in a house across the Yangtze with the American ambassador, Nelson T. Johnson. “Fat and cheery,” Johnson allowed his naval attaché to serve as his contact with Chiang “because it was an arduous trip across the river… in a sampan… which navigated the river crabwise in the strong current and ended up about half a mile down river from where you started across. Then one had to retrace one’s steps to the point where the stairs, 367 of them, climbed to the heights on which Chungking was located.” (Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, James M. McHugh papers, letter, McHugh to Donald, March 6, 1940, and draft for book, foreword, 7, Box 13, Folder 4, no. 2770.)
† 40 cents Chinese = 2.4 cents U.S. in 1940 (37 cents today).
* She was not able to save him. Chiang allowed her to beg for his life, waiting until she had finished her plea before telling her he was already dead.
† The author assumes that Ching-ling means the quotation from I Corinthians, 13:13: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
* Interviewed at the age of 101.
* Referred to by Gellhorn in her book as “U.C.,” standing for “Unwilling Companion,” it was Ernest Hemingway, who had married Gellhorn the year before and was covering the trip for PM, a new liberal newspaper. (See endnote for what happened to Hemingway’s report.)
* The south bank of the river was where most of the foreign embassies, along with the Standard Oil and American Petroleum compounds, were located. This area, cooled by a breeze in the summer, was relatively safe from the incessant bombing by the Japanese.
† Not true (see next chapter).
* Lattimore was being sent to China as Roosevelt’s personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek.
* See endnotes for stories on this.
† Life magazine was not started until 1936.
‡ This is not true. T.V. had given an interview to Karl H. von Wiegand that appeared in May 1932 in the New York American.
* The author of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, China’s Eternal First Lady.
* The oldest bank in China, founded in 1912 after the fall of the Manchus.
† Sometimes referred to as the “Opium Farmers’ Bank.”
* In 1939, a Chinese dollar was worth $.30 U.S.; by 1943 it was down to $.05. The pair of shoes that would have cost $24.00 U.S. in 1939 cost between $45 and $60 U.S. in 1943. (In today’s dollars that would be somewhere between $560 and $746 U.S.) The price for a pack of cigarettes was $6.00 U.S. ($75 today); a tangerine $1.00 U.S. ($12.45 today); and a gallon of gas $8.00 U.S. ($100 today). These figures come from Crozier, The Man Who Lost China, p. 244.
* The Kung offspring apparently considered themselves above the law. According to McHugh, writing in 1938, their “undisciplined and over-bearing activities… continue to arouse widespread dissatisfaction and criticism both from within and without the Government.” (Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, James M. McHugh Papers, “Strictly Confidential, Present Political Situation in China,” Report September 14, 1938.) The story is told that one of the sons, who was driving very fast on a crowded street, “felt himself too important to be stopped by a traffic light” and “when the policeman insisted upon arresting him, fired at him with the small pistol he carried, hitting the policeman’s thumb. The incident,” according to author Pearl Buck
, “might have caused serious trouble except for Madame Kung’s swift balm of gifts and apologies.” (WCA: Pearl S. Buck, “The Sister ‘Dictators’: Behind the Chinese Dragon,” scrapbook of items by or about Madame Chiang Kai-shek, collected by Hetty S. Wheeler (1935–1940), unidentified magazine, September 1937.)
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