Soong May-ling

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Soong May-ling bigraphy, stories - First Lady of the Republic of China

Soong May-ling : biography

[[Circa|ca]] 1897 – October 23, 2003

Soong May-ling or Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Madame Chiang ( March 5, 1898 – October 23, 2003) was a First Lady of the Republic of China (ROC), the wife of Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek. She was a politician, painter and the chairman of Fu Jen Catholic University. The youngest and the last surviving of the three Soong sisters, she played a prominent role in the politics of the Republic of China and was the sister-in-law of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Republic of China preceding her husband.

Childhood and Education

She was born in Hongkou District, Shanghai, China, on March 5, 1898, though some biographies give the year as 1897, since Chinese tradition considers one to be a year old at birth.

She was the fourth of six children of Charlie Soong, a wealthy businessman and former Methodist missionary from Hainan, and his wife Ni Kwei-tseng. May-ling’s siblings were sister Ai-ling, sister Ching-ling, older brother T. V. and younger brothers T.L. and T.A.

In Shanghai, May-ling attended the McTyeire School for Girls with her sister, Ching-ling. Their father, who had studied in the United States, arranged to have them continue their education in the USA in 1907. May-ling and Ching-ling attended a private school in Summit, New Jersey. In 1908, Ching-ling was accepted by her sister Ai-ling’s alma mater, Wesleyan College, at age 15 and both sisters moved to Macon, Georgia, to join Ai-ling. However, May-ling could not get permission to stay on campus as a family member nor could she be a student because she was too young. May-ling spent the year in Demorest, Georgia, with Ai-ling’s Wesleyan friend, Blanche Moss. Mrs. Moss enrolled May-ling as an 8th grader at the Piedmont College. In 1909, Wesleyan’s newly appointed president, William Newman Ainsworth, gave her permission to stay at Wesleyan and assigned her tutors. She briefly attended Fairmount College in Monteagle, Tennessee in 1910.Chitty, Arther and Elizabeth, Sewanee Sampler, 1978, p. 106, ISBN 0-9627687-7-4 May-ling was officially registered as a freshman at Wesleyan in 1912 at the age of 15. She then transferred to Wellesley College a year later to be closer to her older brother, T.V., who, at the time, was studying at Harvard. By then both her sisters had graduated and returned to Shanghai. She graduated from Wellesley as one of the 33 Durant Scholars on June 19, 1917, with a major in English literature and minor in philosophy. She was also a member of Tau Zeta Epsilon, Wellesley’s Arts and Music Society. As a result of being educated in English all her life, she spoke excellent English, with a pronounced Georgia accent which helped her connect with American audiences.http://www.wellesley.edu/Anniversary/chiang.html

Reading

  • Laura Tyson Li, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek : China’s Eternal First Lady (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).
  • Samuel C. Chu, ed., Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Her China (Norwalk, CT: EastBridge, 2004).
  • Hannah Pakula, The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the Birth of Modern China (London, Weidenfeld, 2009). ISBN 978-0-297-85975-8

In popular culture

The apocryphal tale that the large pearl on Empress Dowager Cixi’s crown ended up on Madame Chiang’s gala shoes is described in Bertolucci’s film The Last Emperor.

Madame Chiang appears as a minor character in the 2012 novel The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson.

The historical novel Mayling (2012) by Dutch author Lucas Zandberg portrays the life of Madame Chiang from a first-person perspective.

Actress Joan Chen portrays Madame Chiang in the HBO film Hemingway and Gellhorn (2012), which starred Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway and Nicole Kidman as Martha Gellhorn.

Madame Chiang’s visit to Washington D.C. in 1943 is central to the plot of Elliott Roosevelt’s 1998 (published posthumously) murder mystery novel Murder in the Map Room.