23 New York, New York

The three Soong sisters were daughters of Shanghai. But for political reasons none of them died there. Ching-ling, a leader of Red China, spent her final years in Beijing, where she worked for the Communist government to her last breath. She did not like the capital and missed Shanghai; but she had no choice. Ei-ling and May-ling were exiled from their native land, and chose to live out their last years in New York, a city reminiscent of their birthplace. They loved New York and were virtually New Yorkers. In the hustle and bustle of this metropolis they found peace and tranquillity.

Also settled in New York were two Soong brothers. One, T.L., was a year younger than May-ling. A former banker, he lost most of his money fleeing the mainland and was unable to make a living in America. After his savings ran out, he had to rely on his siblings' support for a living. Financial dependency is never a recipe for an easy bond. In a city littered with such fraught relationships, T.L., like many others in his position, scarcely saw his relatives, living modestly and quietly with his wife and daughter. He was the only Soong who sent condolences for Red Sister's death in 1981; but Beijing did not make a big thing out of it – it almost seemed as if he was not a Soong. His death in 1987 at the age of eighty-eight received no attention.

Another Soong brother who was drawn to the magnet of New York after 1949 was T.V., the eldest and most prominent of the three brothers. He had an apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, but lived in a permanent state of alert fearing for his life. One evening, a grandson of his was watching television, when there was a sudden commotion on the programme. The grandson was shocked to see his grandfather rushing in with a gun in his hand. He always carried a gun and, when he left New York, he would not tell people where he was going and for how long. T.V. was on Mao's list of ‘war criminals', but his real worry was Chiang Kai-shek's ill will towards him. During the civil war, he had dallied with his brother-in-law's Nationalist opponents who had been trying to oust the Generalissimo. This brief burst of ‘disloyalty' antagonised Chiang profoundly. T.V. had to take precautions.

T.V. knew that Nationalist agents kept a close eye on him in New York and that the biggest taboo from the point of view of his brother-in-law was him being close to Washington (which could potentially back him as a replacement of Chiang). So, although he had many prominent American friends, T.V. saw almost none of them. He stayed away from visiting officials from Taiwan as well. His was an entirely private life: daily walks in Central Park, watching American football on television, playing cards or hide-and-seek with his grandchildren. This was hardly a satisfactory substitute for the limelight he had enjoyed since his youth. But he had a happy family: a loving (and beautiful) wife, three well-behaved daughters and nine grandchildren.

Of his sisters, he had no communication with Ching-ling, sealed off as she was in Maoist China. He rarely saw Ei-ling though they lived in the same city. Big Sister held it against him for replacing H.H. Kung as prime minister near the end of the Japan war. She saw it as back-stabbing and colluding with Chiang to make H.H. a scapegoat.

He remained close to May-ling – but thousands of miles separated them when she was in Taiwan. Over the years, they exchanged letters and gifts, and performed little services for one another whose real purpose was to show they each had the other in their thoughts. In one long intimate letter in 1962, May-ling told her brother, ‘In a few days will be Sister's birthday … I hope that you will telephone her to wish her a happy birthday, for the older I grow, the more convinced am I of the wisdom of the saying “Blood is thicker than water”.'

T.V. contacted Big Sister as May-ling suggested, and Ei-ling responded by inviting him to stay in Los Angeles. While he was there, the Cuban missile crisis erupted. It ended, at least in the public eye, with a climbdown by the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev. T.V. celebrated with Ei-ling, and they made up. Happy and excited, he wrote to May-ling at once, ‘I stayed at sister E's elegant house in Los Angeles where I found her in fine shape and spirits. We were much cheered by the confrontation Kennedy put up to Khrushchev. This is the beginning of a new chapter in history, and affords renewed hope of returning to our homeland.'

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Encouraged by her success at bringing her brother and sister back together, May-ling set out to engineer a reconciliation between T.V. and her husband. In February 1963, while in Manila visiting a married daughter, T.V. received an invitation to nearby Taiwan. The invitation was carried specially by T.A., who as the Little Brother often acted as the messenger between his politically divided elder siblings. T.V.'s immediate reaction was caution. He loved his sister, but could not trust her husband. He was worried that Chiang might rob him of his freedom, if not his life. Preparing himself for this scenario, T.V. wrote several letters to his wife, telling her that he was only going ‘for a week or two' and that she ‘should not worry in the slightest. I shall be back before the end of the month.'

Chiang Kai-shek let T.V. spend a dozen or so pleasant days in Taiwan, but he did not welcome him with open arms, as he did H.H. Kung. Nor did he ask T.V. to do anything for him in the US. Like his in-laws, Chiang was elated by President Kennedy's tough stance in the Cuban missile crisis, and was planning to send his son Ching-kuo over in September to try to persuade Kennedy to back him to attack Red China. He agreed to May-ling's plea to enlist T.V.'s help. W. Averell Harriman, undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Kennedy government, was an old friend of T.V.'s.

T.V. saw Harriman after his Taiwan trip, and wrote May-ling a long and detailed letter afterwards reporting the conversation, which May-ling translated into Chinese for her husband. The report carried no jolly news for Chiang. The American government had no wish to be engaged in any ‘major conflict' with Beijing. The ice in Chiang's heart towards his brother-in-law remained frozen. Chiang took care not to involve T.V. in Ching-kuo's visit to Washington.

In October 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb. Around this time, France recognised Beijing, obliging Taiwan to cut its diplomatic ties with Paris. The following year dealt Chiang a further blow. Li Tsung-jen, who had briefly supplanted him to be the acting president of China in 1949 and had been living in New York since, evaded secret Nationalist surveillance and made a dramatic appearance in Beijing. As he stepped out of the plane onto the red carpet, in the line-up of ex-Nationalist bigwigs to welcome him there were friends of T.V.'s, and friends of friends. Chiang's dark mood grew darker. T.V. was never invited to Taiwan again, even though he tried hard to be of service.

On 26 April 1971, T.V. died suddenly at the age of seventy-six, while dining with friends. He had ‘choked on piece of meat', recorded the death certificate. It may well have been a stroke: there had been signs earlier that day, and a day or so before.

As soon as she heard the news, May-ling told her husband she was going to New York for her brother's funeral, which was scheduled for 1 May.

The night before her departure, Chiang had second thoughts. In his diary entry of 29 April, he wrote: ‘This evening I suddenly heard that Soong Ching-ling may be going to New York for T.V.'s funeral with the intention of using the opportunity to talk peace [i.e. Taiwan's capitulation] with my wife. So I decided to order my wife not to go to New York tomorrow.'

There is no evidence that Red Sister was going to New York. This was a time when China was sealed off from the outside world. Beijing had no diplomatic relations with Washington. Kissinger had yet to go on his secret (July) mission to the Chinese capital. It was impossible that Ching-ling, the figurehead of Red China, could suddenly jump into a plane. T.V.'s family in New York had had no contact with her for decades and did not issue an invitation. Nor did they receive any approach from Beijing. There was no sign Ching-ling made any request to go. Even when a much less political Soong, T.A., died in 1969, all she could do was send a cable of condolences. And this simple objective had been achieved only by Red Sister appealing to Prime Minister Zhou En-lai through Zhou's wife.

The idea that Beijing might send Ching-ling to T.V.'s funeral to try some stunt may have flickered across the Generalissimo's mind. A story that month would have raised his hackles: some American ping-pong players had been invited to China, in an unprecedented move by Beijing. Chiang was on the lookout for similar moves. But ultimately, the Generalissimo was loath to let his wife go all the way to mourn T.V. Resentful thoughts towards his brother-in-law had been churning in his head lately. Going over the loss of mainland China, he had ‘many regrets', he wrote in his diary. Prominent among them was the employment of T.V., who he claimed had messed up the finances out of ‘ignorance and unwillingness to obey orders or to take responsibilities'. It was in this frame of mind that Chiang told his wife that he forbade her to go to New York.

Absence from T.V.'s funeral was a sore point for May-ling. When her friend Emma wrote to express sympathy, she rather abruptly changed the subject: ‘The family deeply feels the loss of him and of my younger brother T.A., who died just two years previously … Madame Kung has been here for the summer having come in April for my birthday.'

Ei-ling, who was in Taiwan at the time, did not go to T.V.'s funeral either. As a result, the Soong family presence at the occasion was scant, compared to the funeral of T.A., which May-ling had gone to San Francisco to attend. So had T.V.; so had Ei-ling, who had struggled up from her sick bed in New York.

When H.H. Kung, Chiang's other brother-in-law, died aged eighty-five on 15 August 1967, May-ling had flown from Taiwan to New York for the funeral; in Taiwan, Chiang had held a large-scale memorial service for him. The Generalissimo had penned a fulsome eulogy. T.V. got none of these. Chiang sent only a piece of calligraphy, of the kind that emperors used to have framed and bestow on worthy subjects, like a filial son, a chaste widow, or a long-suffering mother who kept the family line going.

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It was in New York that Ei-ling finally succumbed to cancer, aged eighty-four, on 18 October 1973. She had been besieged by illnesses in her old age. May-ling had made sure she had the best possible care in Taiwan whenever she was there, and stayed with her in the hospital for days on ends. When she was dying, May-ling flew over and kept vigil at her bedside, before rushing back to her husband, who was fading.

A year after Chiang's death in 1975, May-ling settled permanently in New York, living with David Kung at 10 Gracie Square on the Upper East Side, Manhattan. This was a large corner apartment on the ninth floor of an imposing 1930s building, overlooking the East River. In choosing the apartment Mme Chiang Kai-shek very much had her own safety in mind. The building had a covered driveway inside the security barrier, which ensured that she could get in and out of a car practically inside the building. A stone's throw away across a patch of green was the New York mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion, which meant that the whole place was likely to be well guarded. Even so, her windows were bulletproof.

Surrounded by guards and staff, she sometimes went to stay in the Kung mansion on Long Island, which now belonged to Jeanette, who was like a daughter to her. Jeanette continued to manage her household, and kept the staff on their toes day and night (night-shift nurses must not doze off). As ever, her rough manners caused much resentment from the staff, but she was indispensable to May-ling. Her devotion to her aunt was singular. She would take any new medicine May-ling was prescribed, to see whether there were any side effects. Well into her seventies, she would kneel down to scoop up May-ling's feet and cut her toenails, not trusting any pedicurist.

Jeanette's death in 1994, after David's in 1992, was a particularly heavy blow to May-ling. She was in low spirits for months. Seeing how badly she was affected, an admirer decided to do something to cheer her up. At his suggestion, a number of US senators held a reception for her at Congress in 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the defeat of Japan. She went to Washington for the day. On the plane there, the ninety-seven-year-old was busy revising her speech. She talked energetically and impressively. Afterwards, at the residence of the Taiwan representative, she was mobbed by Chinese Americans at a buffet lunch, and reciprocated with her full charm, chatting and having photographs taken with them. Afterwards she flew back to New York, showing no sign of fatigue. Her adrenalin rush lasted for days, during which all around her could feel her elation.

Rosamonde, Ei-ling's eldest daughter, took over the job of looking after May-ling. But she herself was in her late seventies, and she did not get on with her aunt nearly as well as Jeanette. The former first lady's large staff was now practically her family, superbly managed by a devoted former air-force colonel named Sung. An able, courteous and tactful man, he made a tremendous difference to the last decade of May-ling's life. She was polite and kindly to the staff, and they did their jobs diligently. Once or twice a year, the war orphans, now also in old age, paid her a visit. When she received them, and other occasional visitors, mainly from Taiwan, she would change, make up, compose herself and appear with her queenly graciousness. Once she said to the gathered group: ‘When you were small, I used to stroke your faces. Now come over and let me stroke you.' They laughed and adored her.

Apart from these visitors, she saw no one outside her household. She accepted few invitations, public or private, and met virtually no friends. Emma Mills, with whom she had maintained a correspondence for decades, saw her just a couple of times in over ten years since she settled in New York after her husband's death. (Emma died in 1987, aged ninety-two.) She talked to no neighbours – a fleeting smile when she bumped into them was all she would manage. And she rarely went out. She might as well have been living anywhere, Taiwan included, where all her staff came from anyway, at immense cost. But Little Sister had to live in New York. The buzz of the city was in the air: it floats through closed windows and locked doors and fills all space. Even in her seclusion, May-ling was nevertheless connected with the world.