The Soong women

Love stories melt my heart! I’ve chosen three for Valentine’s Day about the famous Soong sisters, Ai-Ling, Ching-ling and May-ling, who by chance led to Chiang Kai-shek’s love interests, too!

In 1800, the Han-Soong’s elders were merchants and boat builders in Hainan Island. China’s atmosphere was one of opium abuse, notorious gangs and the British East India Company in Canton. In that atmosphere coupled with filial piety, Charlie, the father of these three accomplished patriotic women, was shipped out to Boston, Massachusetts at nine years old. Charlie attended Duke and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee to become a Methodist preacher. Back in China, when Charlie himself became a father, he sent his three daughters, nine to 14 years old, to America. Eventually, Wesleyan College in Georgia became their alma mater. The Soongs were truly westernized.

As a patriarch, Charlie led his children to remarkable attainments so that the three married top military, financial, and political leaders of the new China. His son, Harvard-educated T.V. Soong, financed the rise to power of Chiang Kai-shek, and in World War II skilfully persuaded President Roosevelt to support the China of the Soong — Chiang Kai-shek’s. First against Japan, and then against the Chinese communists. Reaching the top in China, Charlie Soong, financed the revolution of Sun Yat-sen, which led to the collapse of the Machus.

His first daughter Ai-ling was gifted with financial cunning, and married in Yokohama the wealthiest Chinese banker who became finance minister of China, Kung Hsiang Hsi. In fact, the three sisters provoked the now-famous Chinese saying, “One loved money, one loved power, and one loved China.” Some may think that statement is derogatory but all three could have been just as motivated and outstanding with their background of wealth, education and friends.

Ching-ling Soong, the second daughter, became the wife of the first President of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen. She became the joint president of the People’s Republic of China with Dong Biwu from 1968 to 1972 and honorary president of China in 1981 upon the death of Dr. Sun. “She inspired two generations of Americans who ranked her for years among the 10 most popular and respected women on earth,” Time magazine wrote. The third sister, May-ling, married Chiang Kai-shek and was a prominent political leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party herself. A wife and partner to the Generalismo of all the Chinese Armies who later became president of Taiwan, May-ling became a member of the Legislative Yuan from 1930 to 1932.

By fate, Ching-ling took over Ai-Ling’s duties as Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s secretary. In time a secret romance began. He was 50 and she was 20.

Unexpectedly, father Charlie announced the family’s return to Shanghai, which meant Ching-ling would leave Sun Yat-sen in Japan. “In Shanghai, the Soongs announced the formal engagement of their daughter Ching-ling to a young man from a good family. She fought stubbornly and insisted that she would not go through with it,” author Sterling Seagrave wrote.

Ching-ling explained the situation to her father Charlie, and her mother Ni Kwei-tseng, a Ming Dynasty descendant, who were both scandalized. Ching-ling took the precaution of locking her bedroom door. While her amah held a ladder, Ching-ling climbed out the window. She sailed that night for Kobe to meet Dr. Sun. It was a daring escape for a respectable young Chinese girl.

Dr. Sun made all the necessary preparations for a wedding and divorce proceedings, and told everyone that he considered himself divorced. “Yet, Ching-ling was an adulteress and both were committing bigamy.”

Charlie swore that he would have the marriage annulled on the grounds that Ching-ling was underage. Still, Sun refused to respond. Whenever the subject of Ching-ling came up, the Soongs simply said that she had “formally joined Dr. Sun,” 26 years her senior.

Another daughter would soon fall in love with Chiang Kai-shek, who had revolutionary fire in his heart and believed in the military treatise The Art of War by Sun Tzu. When Chang Kai-shek was 14, he was betrothed to a village girl named Mao Fu-mei, three years his senior. She bore him a son, Ching-kuo. Chiang treated her violently and frequently beat her and suddenly left for Shanghai. At one famous prostitute’s home, Chiang exchanged torrid glances with a pretty chambermaid named Yao Yi-ching. He took the girl as his concubine and installed her in his mother’s home at Chikou.

Chiang Kai-shek in time became one of Sun Yat-sen’s senior lieutenants and Chiang fell in love again, this time with a prostitute with unbound feet, named Ch’en Chieh-ju. He divorced his original wife, cast out the chambermaid concubine and married Miss Ch’en.

One night in December, Chiang attended a Christmas party at Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s home, and met a vivacious young woman with “extraordinary connections.” She was the youngest daughter of the legendary Charlie Soong, and the sister of Madame Sun Yat-sen. Her name was May-ling. He was so taken with May-ling Soong that he divorced the Chikou village girl to whom he had been married in his youth, tossed out the chambermaid who was raising his Japanese-born son, and his one-month bride Ch’en Chieh-ju, and dedicated his energy to the revolution with “all my heart.”

May-ling and Chiang remained married for 48 years. She did him well as “she built a legacy for her husband at par with Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin.”

Remember the “High Court of Love”? That court settled contracts, betrayals and violence against women in 1400 in Europe. whose judges based their decision on poetry reading. I am sure all three of these strong-willed women had their share of poetry and never mind what judges (or parents) had to say. Love conquered all, including China’s history.