ORIENTAL WOMEN TALK
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Told by Hani Law Copy right © 2008 All Rights Reserved
THE MOST POWERFUL THREE SISTERS OF CHINA ARE THE THREE SOONG
SISTERS. Each of whom played a vital role in China during the first half of the 20th
century.
Three girls were born to a father who was American-educated Methodist minister,
CHARLIE SOONG (1866-1918), also known as Yao-ju, and to a mother Ni Guizhen.
Charlie and Guizhen have six children altogether and they are in order of age:
SOONG AI-LING (also spelled as Soong E-ling)
SOONG QINGLING (also spelled as Soong Ching-ling)
SOONG ZIWEN (also known as TV Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-ven)
SOONG MEILING (also spelled as May-ling)
SOONG ZILIANG (also known as TL Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-liang)
SOONG ZIAN (also known as TA Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-an)
CHARLIE SOONG was of Hakka Chinese origin. He was called Soong Yao-ju when
he was born to this world in Hainan, a province in China. He was sent to America at
the tender age of nine to work as an apprentice in a family teahouse in Boston, which
was then managed by his uncle. However, Charlie had always wanted to go to school
but his uncle insisted that he should continue his apprenticeship in the teahouse. At the
age of 12, Charlie stowed away on a ship which was bound for the south. Charlie just
did not know or care where the ship was heading to as he just wanted to get away. Of
course he was caught and brought before the captain. The captain took him on and
offered him a job as a cabin boy. He was converted to Christianity by the captain at 15
and then became a Methodist missionary in 1885. He was the first international
student at Trinity College (now Duke University), but later transferred to Vanderbilt
University where he received his degree. He went back to China and worked as a
Methodist missionary in Shanghai. There he married Ni Kwei-tseng (also spelled as
Guizhen) in 1886. He became very wealthy by printing and selling the Bible in Chinese.
SOONG AI-LING (also spelled as Soong E-ling.
Several years later, Charlie resigned from his missionary work in 1892 and became a
successful bible publisher and businessman in Shanghai. In 1894, he met and became a
close friend of Sun Yat-sen who was planning a revolution in China. Charlie soon
became one of Sun Yat-sen's most important supporters and played an important role
in financing Sun Yat-sen's revolution that toppled the Qing Dynasty in 1911. China
became a republic and Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the republic.
Charlie died in 1918, but his three daughters became extremely influential and
powerful figures in China.
THE SOONG SISTERS
SOONG AI-LING (1890-1973)was born in Shanghai. She was the eldest daughter of
Charlie Soong. Her christian name was Nancy. She arrived in the United States in 1904
at the age of 14 to begin her education at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. She
returned to China in 1909 after graduation and worked as a secretary for Sun Yat-sen.
Ai-Ling met Kung Hsiang-his in 1913 and married him in Japan the following year. She
was engaged in improving child welfare but after marriage, she was too busy to
continue to work for Sun Yat-sen. Her sister, Qing-ling, who had just graduated from
America, succeeded her and worked as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary.
Kung Hsiang-his and Ai-Ling went to the United States with their family, after the fall
of the Nationalist government in 1949. She died at the age of 83 in 1973. She had four
children, two daughters and two sons.
Kung Hsiang-his (1881-1967) also known as HH Kung. He was born in Shanxi
Province in China. He was educated at Oberlin and at Yale. His family was in banking
business and was the richest man and one of the most powerful men in China at that
time. His first important position was Minister of Industry and Commerce, and then
was appointed Minister of Finance and later Governor of the Bank of China. In 1931,
he joined the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party).
SOONG QINGLING (1892-1981), was born in Shanghai. She also graduated from
Wesleyan College. Her christian name was Rosamond. In 1914 she married Sun Yat-
sen, who was 26 years her senior, in Japan after falling in love with him. Sun Yat-sen,
through arranged marriage, already had a wife, who bore him a son Sun Fo, who later
became a high ranking official in the Republican government. From the first marriage,
he also had two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan. He kept his wife far in the
background as she had the old-fashioned bound feet. Charlie Soong thought his friend
was much too old for his daughter, but their love for each other and their shared goal
of making China strong and improving the livelihood of the people gave them a bond so
strong that they became inseparable.
After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, Qingling was elected in 1926 to the Kuomintang
Central Executive Committee. She sided with the Communists in the Chinese civil war.
After the defeat of the Communists, she resigned from the Kuomintang and went to
Moscow in 1927. The constant struggles for control between the Communists and the
Nationalists during the 1930's weakened China and left the country vulnerable to
Japan's expansionist ambitions. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
reconciled her with the Kuomintang. With the help of her sister Qing-ling (despite their
political differences), they both encouraged nationalist cooperation between the
Communists and the Kuomintang to fight the Japanese invasion until 1946.
She remained in China after the Communists had taken over in 1949 and served as
Vice President of the People's Republic of China until 1981. She devoted herself to the
promotion of the welfare of children and women in China and represented China in
most forums attended by communist and third world nations. Two weeks before her
death, she was admitted into the Chinese Communist Party, so that she could be made
Honorary President of the People's Republic of China. Qingling believed in the
Communist ideology and eventually was estranged from her two capitalist sisters.
Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), often called the “Father of Modern China”, was born into a
farm-owning family near Guangzhou in China. He studied in an Anglican boy school
in Japan, where he came under Western influence, particularly that of Christianity. In
1892 he received his medical qualification from the University of Hong Kong and
practised medicine there. In 1895, a coup he plotted to overthrow the imperial
government in China failed, and for the next 16 years Sun Yat-sen was an exile in
Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan, raising money to continue his revolution
in China.
Sun Yat-sen‘s main political ideology, known as the Three Principles of the People,
was modelled on western democratic principles. They are nationalism, democracy, and
people's livelihood. In 1911, the revolution led by him succeeded in overthrowing the
Qing Dynasty, which is the last monarchy in China. After establishing the first
republican government in China, Sun Yat-sen was elected the Provisional President of
the Republic of China in 1912 and co-founded the Kuomintang where he served as its
first leader. Two months after the establishment of the Republic, he resigned from the
post of Provisional President.
In the early periods of the Republic, China was fragmented as warlords virtually
disregarded the existence of the central government and administered the areas under
their respective control. Although he had resigned from the office of President, Sun
Yat-sen remained a unifying figure until his death in 1925. Lacking a convincing
leader, China was divided between two movements, the Communist Party led by Mao
Ze-dong and the Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek, until the Communist
formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
SOONG MEILING (1897- 2003), born in Shanghai, attended Motyeire School, an
American private school, in Shanghai at the age of eight. She graduated with honours
in 1917 with major in English literature and minor in philosophy in Wellesley College.
She spoke excellent English with a Georgia accent which helped her connect with
American audiences in her later life.
She met Chiang Kai-shek in 1920. At that time Chiang Kai-shek was 11 years her
senior, already married, and a Buddhist. Meiling's mother strong opposed the marriage
between the two, and insisted that Chiang could only marry her daughter if he could
divorce his first wife and became a Christian. After their marriage in 1927, Soong
Meiling immediately engaged herself in politics. In 1945, she became a member of the
Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. As her husband rose to become
Generalissimo and leader of the Kuomintang, Meiling acted as his English translator,
secretary and advisor. As she was well versed in both Chinese and Western cultures,
she became popular both in China and abroad. Through her personal friendship with
President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Meiling successfully drummed up American
support for China's war of resistance against the Japanese aggression (1937-1945).
She was the first Chinese woman to address the US Congress. Chiang Kai-shek’s
undivided effort to eliminate the Communists in China during Japan’s invasion put
China in a most perilous state. However, he was convinced by Meiling that the
immediate task at that point in time was to join hands with the Communists to fight the
Japanese.
After the defeat of the Kuomingtang by the Communists in China in 1949, Meiling
together with her husband and many government and military officials fled to Taiwan.
Meiling continued to play an active role in international affairs. Through the late 1960s
she was elected one of America's 10 most admired women. Her political adeptness was
one of the driving forces of the Kuomintang leadership.
After the death of her husband in 1975, Meiling maintained a very low profile. Chiang
Kai-shek was succeeded by Chiang Ching-kuo, his eldest son from a previous marriage
with whom Meiling had a very poor relation. In 1975, she emigrated from Taiwan to
her family's 36 acre estate in Long Island in the suburb of New York City where she
kept a portrait of her late husband in full military regalia in her living room. She sold
her Long Island estate in 2000 and moved to her Manhattan apartment where she
spent the rest of her life. During her 28 years’ stay in the United States, she returned
to Taiwan only three times. She believed that the Democratic Progressive Party, which
later took control of Taiwan, had little reverence for her. Her life in her latter years
was peaceful but somewhat solitary. She had few visitors and passed her time growing
flowers, practising calligraphy, drawing pictures and reading. She died in her sleep in
2003 at the age of 106.
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), the son of a wine merchant, was born in Fenghau,
China. His father died when he was a child and his family was in extreme poverty. He
was sent to live with relatives but he ran away and joined the provincial army. He was
a good soldier and was eventually selected for advanced training in the military
academy in Paoting. In 1907, he was sent to attend the Military State College in Tokyo.
During this period he became a supporter of Sun Yat-sen. Chiang-kai-shek eventually
emerged as the leader of the Kuomintang. Not only had he to deal with a nation
thoroughly plundered by Western powers, he also had to rid China of her warlords who
divided China into a number of spheres of control. In 1926, Chiang Kai-shek defeated
the Communist army and forced it to make the famous Long March to Shensi in North
West China. However, his own government was corrupt and he was eventually defeated
by the Communists in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government officials
fled to Taiwan where he remained President till his death in 1975.
When the Japanese army invaded China in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek agreed to
collaborate with Mao Ze-dong and his Communist army to fight the Japanese. After
the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Chiang kai-shek received considerable financial
support from the United States. No sooner had the Japanese surrendered than the
Communists and the Kuomintang resumed the civil war in China. The Communists
eventually gained the control of the country in 1949 in which year Mao Zed-dong
announced the establishment of People's Republic of China.
Chiang kai-shek fled to Taiwan and set up his military government. He died in 1975.
THE MOST POWERFUL THREE SISTERS OF CHINA ARE THE THREE SOONG
SISTERS. Each of whom played a vital role in China during the first half of the 20th
century.
Three girls were born to a father who was American-educated Methodist minister,
CHARLIE SOONG (1866-1918), also known as Yao-ju, and to a mother Ni Guizhen.
Charlie and Guizhen have six children altogether and they are in order of age:
SOONG AI-LING (also spelled as Soong E-ling)
SOONG QINGLING (also spelled as Soong Ching-ling)
SOONG ZIWEN (also known as TV Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-ven)
SOONG MEILING (also spelled as May-ling)
SOONG ZILIANG (also known as TL Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-liang)
SOONG ZIAN (also known as TA Soong and spelled as Soong Tse-an)
CHARLIE SOONG was of Hakka Chinese origin. He was called Soong Yao-ju when
he was born to this world in Hainan, a province in China. He was sent to America at
the tender age of nine to work as an apprentice in a family teahouse in Boston, which
was then managed by his uncle. However, Charlie had always wanted to go to school
but his uncle insisted that he should continue his apprenticeship in the teahouse. At the
age of 12, Charlie stowed away on a ship which was bound for the south. Charlie just
did not know or care where the ship was heading to as he just wanted to get away. Of
course he was caught and brought before the captain. The captain took him on and
offered him a job as a cabin boy. He was converted to Christianity by the captain at 15
and then became a Methodist missionary in 1885. He was the first international
student at Trinity College (now Duke University), but later transferred to Vanderbilt
University where he received his degree. He went back to China and worked as a
Methodist missionary in Shanghai. There he married Ni Kwei-tseng (also spelled as
Guizhen) in 1886. He became very wealthy by printing and selling the Bible in Chinese.
SOONG AI-LING (also spelled as Soong E-ling.
Several years later, Charlie resigned from his missionary work in 1892 and became a
successful bible publisher and businessman in Shanghai. In 1894, he met and became a
close friend of Sun Yat-sen who was planning a revolution in China. Charlie soon
became one of Sun Yat-sen's most important supporters and played an important role
in financing Sun Yat-sen's revolution that toppled the Qing Dynasty in 1911. China
became a republic and Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the republic.
Charlie died in 1918, but his three daughters became extremely influential and
powerful figures in China.
THE SOONG SISTERS
SOONG AI-LING (1890-1973)was born in Shanghai. She was the eldest daughter of
Charlie Soong. Her christian name was Nancy. She arrived in the United States in 1904
at the age of 14 to begin her education at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. She
returned to China in 1909 after graduation and worked as a secretary for Sun Yat-sen.
Ai-Ling met Kung Hsiang-his in 1913 and married him in Japan the following year. She
was engaged in improving child welfare but after marriage, she was too busy to
continue to work for Sun Yat-sen. Her sister, Qing-ling, who had just graduated from
America, succeeded her and worked as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary.
Kung Hsiang-his and Ai-Ling went to the United States with their family, after the fall
of the Nationalist government in 1949. She died at the age of 83 in 1973. She had four
children, two daughters and two sons.
Kung Hsiang-his (1881-1967) also known as HH Kung. He was born in Shanxi
Province in China. He was educated at Oberlin and at Yale. His family was in banking
business and was the richest man and one of the most powerful men in China at that
time. His first important position was Minister of Industry and Commerce, and then
was appointed Minister of Finance and later Governor of the Bank of China. In 1931,
he joined the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party).
SOONG QINGLING (1892-1981), was born in Shanghai. She also graduated from
Wesleyan College. Her christian name was Rosamond. In 1914 she married Sun Yat-
sen, who was 26 years her senior, in Japan after falling in love with him. Sun Yat-sen,
through arranged marriage, already had a wife, who bore him a son Sun Fo, who later
became a high ranking official in the Republican government. From the first marriage,
he also had two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan. He kept his wife far in the
background as she had the old-fashioned bound feet. Charlie Soong thought his friend
was much too old for his daughter, but their love for each other and their shared goal
of making China strong and improving the livelihood of the people gave them a bond so
strong that they became inseparable.
After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, Qingling was elected in 1926 to the Kuomintang
Central Executive Committee. She sided with the Communists in the Chinese civil war.
After the defeat of the Communists, she resigned from the Kuomintang and went to
Moscow in 1927. The constant struggles for control between the Communists and the
Nationalists during the 1930's weakened China and left the country vulnerable to
Japan's expansionist ambitions. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
reconciled her with the Kuomintang. With the help of her sister Qing-ling (despite their
political differences), they both encouraged nationalist cooperation between the
Communists and the Kuomintang to fight the Japanese invasion until 1946.
She remained in China after the Communists had taken over in 1949 and served as
Vice President of the People's Republic of China until 1981. She devoted herself to the
promotion of the welfare of children and women in China and represented China in
most forums attended by communist and third world nations. Two weeks before her
death, she was admitted into the Chinese Communist Party, so that she could be made
Honorary President of the People's Republic of China. Qingling believed in the
Communist ideology and eventually was estranged from her two capitalist sisters.
Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), often called the “Father of Modern China”, was born into a
farm-owning family near Guangzhou in China. He studied in an Anglican boy school
in Japan, where he came under Western influence, particularly that of Christianity. In
1892 he received his medical qualification from the University of Hong Kong and
practised medicine there. In 1895, a coup he plotted to overthrow the imperial
government in China failed, and for the next 16 years Sun Yat-sen was an exile in
Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan, raising money to continue his revolution
in China.
Sun Yat-sen‘s main political ideology, known as the Three Principles of the People,
was modelled on western democratic principles. They are nationalism, democracy, and
people's livelihood. In 1911, the revolution led by him succeeded in overthrowing the
Qing Dynasty, which is the last monarchy in China. After establishing the first
republican government in China, Sun Yat-sen was elected the Provisional President of
the Republic of China in 1912 and co-founded the Kuomintang where he served as its
first leader. Two months after the establishment of the Republic, he resigned from the
post of Provisional President.
In the early periods of the Republic, China was fragmented as warlords virtually
disregarded the existence of the central government and administered the areas under
their respective control. Although he had resigned from the office of President, Sun
Yat-sen remained a unifying figure until his death in 1925. Lacking a convincing
leader, China was divided between two movements, the Communist Party led by Mao
Ze-dong and the Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek, until the Communist
formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
SOONG MEILING (1897- 2003), born in Shanghai, attended Motyeire School, an
American private school, in Shanghai at the age of eight. She graduated with honours
in 1917 with major in English literature and minor in philosophy in Wellesley College.
She spoke excellent English with a Georgia accent which helped her connect with
American audiences in her later life.
She met Chiang Kai-shek in 1920. At that time Chiang Kai-shek was 11 years her
senior, already married, and a Buddhist. Meiling's mother strong opposed the marriage
between the two, and insisted that Chiang could only marry her daughter if he could
divorce his first wife and became a Christian. After their marriage in 1927, Soong
Meiling immediately engaged herself in politics. In 1945, she became a member of the
Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. As her husband rose to become
Generalissimo and leader of the Kuomintang, Meiling acted as his English translator,
secretary and advisor. As she was well versed in both Chinese and Western cultures,
she became popular both in China and abroad. Through her personal friendship with
President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Meiling successfully drummed up American
support for China's war of resistance against the Japanese aggression (1937-1945).
She was the first Chinese woman to address the US Congress. Chiang Kai-shek’s
undivided effort to eliminate the Communists in China during Japan’s invasion put
China in a most perilous state. However, he was convinced by Meiling that the
immediate task at that point in time was to join hands with the Communists to fight the
Japanese.
After the defeat of the Kuomingtang by the Communists in China in 1949, Meiling
together with her husband and many government and military officials fled to Taiwan.
Meiling continued to play an active role in international affairs. Through the late 1960s
she was elected one of America's 10 most admired women. Her political adeptness was
one of the driving forces of the Kuomintang leadership.
After the death of her husband in 1975, Meiling maintained a very low profile. Chiang
Kai-shek was succeeded by Chiang Ching-kuo, his eldest son from a previous marriage
with whom Meiling had a very poor relation. In 1975, she emigrated from Taiwan to
her family's 36 acre estate in Long Island in the suburb of New York City where she
kept a portrait of her late husband in full military regalia in her living room. She sold
her Long Island estate in 2000 and moved to her Manhattan apartment where she
spent the rest of her life. During her 28 years’ stay in the United States, she returned
to Taiwan only three times. She believed that the Democratic Progressive Party, which
later took control of Taiwan, had little reverence for her. Her life in her latter years
was peaceful but somewhat solitary. She had few visitors and passed her time growing
flowers, practising calligraphy, drawing pictures and reading. She died in her sleep in
2003 at the age of 106.
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), the son of a wine merchant, was born in Fenghau,
China. His father died when he was a child and his family was in extreme poverty. He
was sent to live with relatives but he ran away and joined the provincial army. He was
a good soldier and was eventually selected for advanced training in the military
academy in Paoting. In 1907, he was sent to attend the Military State College in Tokyo.
During this period he became a supporter of Sun Yat-sen. Chiang-kai-shek eventually
emerged as the leader of the Kuomintang. Not only had he to deal with a nation
thoroughly plundered by Western powers, he also had to rid China of her warlords who
divided China into a number of spheres of control. In 1926, Chiang Kai-shek defeated
the Communist army and forced it to make the famous Long March to Shensi in North
West China. However, his own government was corrupt and he was eventually defeated
by the Communists in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government officials
fled to Taiwan where he remained President till his death in 1975.
When the Japanese army invaded China in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek agreed to
collaborate with Mao Ze-dong and his Communist army to fight the Japanese. After
the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Chiang kai-shek received considerable financial
support from the United States. No sooner had the Japanese surrendered than the
Communists and the Kuomintang resumed the civil war in China. The Communists
eventually gained the control of the country in 1949 in which year Mao Zed-dong
announced the establishment of People's Republic of China.
Chiang kai-shek fled to Taiwan and set up his military government. He died in 1975.
SOONG QUINGLING the middle
SOONG MEILING, the youngest
SOONG AILING, the eldest
THE MOST POWERFUL THREE SISTERS OF CHINA
Poems
Wise talk
Taiji
Idioms
Buddhism
History of China
"Butterfly Lovers"
Calligraphy
Lyric verses
Yi Jing
Famous picture
Chinese tea
A true story
Confucianism
Book talk
Link to
chinesechinese.net
Wise talk
Taiji
Idioms
Buddhism
History of China
"Butterfly Lovers"
Calligraphy
Lyric verses
Yi Jing
Famous picture
Chinese tea
A true story
Confucianism
Book talk
Link to
chinesechinese.net
