PART II The Sisters and Sun Yat-sen (1912–1925)
3 Ei-ling: A "Mighty Smart" Young Lady
When she was five years old, in 1894, Charlie and his wife sent Ei-ling, their first child, to McTyeire School, the Methodist boarding school founded by Dr Allen and named after Bishop McTyeire. The fact that the school's two founders had been either hostile or arrogant to Charlie made no difference. It was the best school for girls in Shanghai – and it was American. Ei-ling herself had asked to go there. She had noticed that its pupils were given a special place to sit at Sunday services. Even at this young age, Ei-ling showed the strong will and fascination with status that would shape her future. Her mother hesitated: the child was too young to board. Ei-ling persisted, and in the end they enrolled her for the autumn term. Grandma Ni protested tearfully. To the Chinese, one would not part with one's young children unless one was destitute, and sending their child away from home when they had a choice was downright "cruel". But Charlie and his wife encouraged their children to be independent, and they suppressed their feelings.
There was another indication of her later drive that would make Ei-ling one of the richest women in China: her reaction to the suitcase bought for her to take to school. For a week, as she informed her biographer Emily Hahn, she had been "at a fever heat of excitement over the preparations, the clothes and The Trunk. It was her first private, individual trunk, a beautiful black, shiny one." But, when she saw it with her new clothes inside, "her disappointment was intense … The Trunk was not filled to the brim." She "insisted upon bringing out all her winter clothes too and filling that space".
The other thing that bothered the five-year-old was that she "had lovely teas at home; would they at the school?" She set off only after her mother packed a basket of goodies she specified, "one packet of Golland & Bowser's butterscotch and one of bitter black chocolate".
Finally, she was on her way by her father's side, wearing a Scottish plaid jacket and green trousers and her hair bouncing in a pigtail. Her excitement faded when her father took leave of her; she clung to his neck sobbing and would not let go. She remembered this episode many decades later, but not how her father had broken free.
Her memories of school were chiefly of suffering. She was the only child of her age. The desks were too high and her feet could not touch the ground; her legs would go to sleep during the interminable lessons. She later confided that she "suffered horribly from that, and nobody thought of it or of remedying the situation". She had to find a way herself to get the blood circulating. Perhaps the worst memory was the fear at night. While the older pupils were working, she "lay in bed alone in the great dormitory upstairs, quaking with terror". The moment of comfort came when she heard the hymn "Abide with Me", sung by the girls after they finished their evening work and were returning to the dormitory. It signalled the end of being alone. And at the sound of the singing she would fall asleep. For the rest of her life, whenever she heard the tune, a wave of relief would engulf her.
At the McTyeire school, Ei-ling developed an even stronger character and a dependence on religion. She never told her parents about her misery. Father and Mother did not encourage moaning. This school life meant that Ei-ling's childhood was largely a solitary one without playmates of her age. She grew introverted, even forbidding. All through her life, she made few real friends, so that when she was universally criticised, no one came to her defence.
The Soongs" second child, Ching-ling, was three years younger, born on 27 January 1893. A delicate baby, then "a dreamy and pretty child", "quiet and obedient", she was her mother's favourite. She was taught at home and not sent to McTyeire until she was eleven. Perhaps Mrs Soong sensed Ei-ling's distress and took pity on her fragile second daughter. Ching-ling followed her mother round, quietly thinking her own thoughts. She reacted very differently from her sister to signs of privilege. She recalled, "As a child I was taken to church on Sundays by my mother who was a devout Christian. When we arrived at church the pastor and his assistants used to drive away the poorly clad women in the front pew to give up their places to us!" This put her off missionaries, and planted the seeds for her conversion to Communism. Shy but friendly, she made a small number of friends and kept them.
The extrovert of the family was Little Sister May-ling. She went to McTyeire when she was five, because she wanted to emulate her eldest sister. Born on 12 February 1898, she was healthy, plump and spirited. In winter, her mother dressed her in a thick padded cotton jacket and trousers and she waddled about looking like a Halloween pumpkin, inviting teasing nicknames, which she did not mind a bit. Her cotton shoes, called "tiger's heads", had colourful long whiskers, sticking-out ears and fearsomely bulging eyes. Her hair was plaited into two pigtails tied with red strings and then rolled into round loops. The style for young girls had an unflattering name: "crab holes" which, again, did not bother her.
At McTyeire, May-ling had to walk down dark passages alone and catch up in difficult lessons. She insisted to her teachers that she found nothing difficult or intimidating. But one of them spotted her waking up in the middle of the night in fits of trembling, and saw her climbing out of bed and standing up straight beside it, reciting her lessons. The school soon sent her home. Little Sister retained her open and sunny disposition.
Family life was disciplined and religious. Because "God wouldn't like it", no one was allowed to play cards – or to dance, which was deemed "devil's doings". There were the daily family prayers and the frequent visits to church. As a child, May-ling found the family prayer sessions boring and would slip out of the room with excuses. She dreaded the long sermons in church. Ching-ling did as her mother told her to do but kept her detachment, while Ei-ling slowly but surely turned into a devout woman.
The children seem genuinely not to have resented the strictness of their parents. Rather, it inspired devotion from all six children, who looked up to their parents and felt reassured by their constancy. They were not spoilt like many other rich children, but they had their own fun. Mrs Soong was a good pianist, and family evenings were often spent with her playing the piano and Charlie singing the songs he had picked up in America. Ei-ling would join in duets when she was home. The children were encouraged to run wild in the fields and climb trees. The siblings played among themselves. Whatever rivalry there might be between them, it was well under control. Their affectionate, close relationship extended long into their adult lives, and cemented the pillars and walls of the later famous "Soong dynasty".
—
Mr and Mrs Soong were determined to give their children an American education. Before Ei-ling turned thirteen, her father had called on his old Vanderbilt friend Bill Burke and arranged for him to take her to the US. The sweet-natured Irish giant of a man had come from Macon, Georgia, a centre for the Southern Methodists, where a ladies' college, Wesleyan, had the distinction of being the first in the world to grant degrees to women. Burke wrote to the president of the college, Colonel DuPont Guerry, who welcomed Ei-ling. When Burke took his young family back home for a short leave, he brought Ei-ling with them. At the time, America was tightening its Chinese exclusion laws to limit the number entering the country. To get round the problem, Charlie bought a Portuguese passport for Ei-ling, a practice that was not uncommon.
On a bright day in May 1904, Ei-ling, fourteen years old, stood poised and reserved at the jetty on the Bund in Shanghai, with a trunk full of new Western-style clothes. She was waiting to board a tender to take her and the Burke family to the large ocean vessel, the Korea, which would carry them to the other side of the globe. She would be the first Chinese woman to be educated in America. But there was no sign of excitement, no sadness at leaving her family, nor any fear for the journey to the unknown. She parted with her father, who had accompanied her to the ship, with a restrained verbal goodbye – and without tears, unlike their parting at McTyeire years before. The teenage girl had been moulded into a paragon of self-control. Still, when the ship set sail, she burst into sobs, albeit silently in a quiet corner. Burke spotted this, and later said that this was the first and only time he saw Ei-ling betray her feelings.
Ei-ling attracted much attention. One night there was a dancing party after dinner, and the ship's orchestra played a waltz on deck. Ei-ling passed by with the Burkes when one of the ship's officers approached her and asked her to dance. "No, thank you, I cannot," she shook her head sternly. The officer tried to coax her, "Well, there's no better time to learn. Come, I'll teach you." "No, it's not right for me to dance," the fourteen-year-old replied firmly. "Why?" "Because I am a Christian and Christians do not dance," said the unsmiling face.
The Burkes travelled with her only as far as Yokohama in Japan. Mrs Burke was dying from the typhoid that she had contracted before the journey, and her family disembarked to stay with her. Burke arranged for a couple on board to look after Ei-ling. When she went to see them, they were not in, but the cabin door was open, so she sat down to wait. When they came down the passageway, the wife said loudly, "I'm so tired of those dirty Chinamen … We won't see any more for a long time, I hope." Ei-ling rose when they came in and made a hasty excuse for having called, saying that she now wanted to go back to her cabin. She later said that the remark had seared her heart forever. It was only partially soothed by the appearance of a middle-aged American missionary, Miss Anna Lanius, who knocked on her door, introduced herself and kept Ei-ling company during the voyage. (Among other passengers on board was Jack London, going home from Korea. The twenty-eight-year-old writer of The Call of the Wild had been covering the Russo-Japanese War, and had apparently sent out more dispatches on the war than any of his fellow American correspondents.)
A heavier blow than the unpleasant remark was awaiting Ei-ling when the steamer arrived outside the Golden Gate at San Francisco on 30 June 1904. The immigration officers refused to recognise her Portuguese passport and threatened to detain her. Ei-ling lost all her poise and flared up, saying: "You cannot put me in a detention home. I am a cabin-class passenger, not from steerage." She meant that she should not be treated the same as the coolies. In the end she was not detained, but was made to wait as a virtual prisoner on the Korea. When the ship sailed, she was moved to another vessel, and then to another.
She spent nearly three uncertain weeks on those ships. Miss Lanius stayed and moved with her, even though her own father was on his deathbed waiting for her return. Finally, through the help of the Methodist network, Ei-ling entered America. She remembered Miss Lanius warmly, but was angry about her treatment by the officials. For the remainder of the journey to Georgia, by train across the continent, she kept a gloomy silence. Burke, whose wife had died in Japan, joined Ei-ling for the trip. He was looking forward to pointing out the sights of America to her, hoping to lose some of his sorrow in her delight. He was sorely disappointed. Burke felt that he "might as well have been trying to entertain a plaster mannequin".
That she did not bother to be polite to the man who had helped get her an American education, and who had just lost his wife, shows Ei-ling to be a wilful young woman. She was still preoccupied with her bad experience more than a year later when an uncle of hers, Wen, came to Washington as a member of a Manchu government delegation. She persuaded him to let her go with them to the White House – in order to have it out with President Theodore Roosevelt. She made her complaint bluntly, and the president said he was sorry.
—
The train that carried the strong-willed girl pulled in at Macon on 2 August. For the next five years, Ei-ling led the life of a young American woman privileged enough to attend college at the beginning of the twentieth century. But her experience would not be like anyone else's. Macon was a religious town, with churches of different schools standing next to each other, their spires and domes vying for dominance. The town had not been universally enthusiastic about having her, the first female Chinese student in their midst. The Macon Telegraph felt the need to stress Ei-ling's Christian credentials: "she was a product of our own missionary work", and Wesleyan would "qualify her for Christian work among her own people in China". President Guerry explained that "she will not force herself or be forced upon any of the other young ladies as an associate", and issued a veiled appeal: "I have no misgivings as to her kind and respectful treatment.'
So Ei-ling was greeted with an uncomfortable welcome, which could not have escaped her. Even when people were nice to her, there was something unnatural about it. Her reaction was to retreat into herself – so much so that in later years, when she became famous and her contemporaries were asked to recall what she had been like, no one could think of anything personal to say. They remembered her "poise", "her quiet dignity", and that she was "a serious student, quiet and reserved". That was it, other than the observation that she was "never really made one of us". Short, plain and somewhat stout, she easily evaded attention and lost herself in the corners of the campus among the big ash and beech trees and lush bushes, where she read, studied and thought. She wore American clothes, and swapped her pigtail for a high pompadour hair-do. On Sunday mornings, she joined fellow students to troop down the long hill to Mulberry Street Methodist Church. But she talked little with them and made no friends in those five years – unlike both her sisters and her father, who had all had friends in America, even intimate, lifelong friends.
Ei-ling grew to be fiercely self-sufficient and proud. One classmate saw that she looked "insulted … when one of the Wesleyan professors told her she had become a fine American citizen". She once gave a recital of her own arrangement of Madame Butterfly, and stood on the stage not as a victim, but as a queen. She had asked her family to send her silk brocade to make her costume, and Charlie had sent her forty yards. The gorgeous colourful display mesmerised her fellow pupils, who enviously whispered to each other about her "trunks of silks".
The girls noticed that Ei-ling had an inclination for serious subjects, and that she was "well informed on current history when the rest of us were not even interested". Her last essay at the college shows a political maturity beyond her nineteen years. Entitled "My Country and Its Appeal", she commented on China's cultural icon Confucius: "His grossest mistake was the failure to regard womankind with due respect. We learn from observation that no nation can rise to distinction unless her women are educated and considered as man's equal morally, socially, and intellectually … China's progress must come largely through her educated women.'
Ei-ling's description of China's modernisation was uncommonly spot-on, more so than most other contemporary or future narratives: "We could mark the year 1861* as the beginning of her awakening." Since then, "China's great transformation, though gradual, has been apparent … Since the Boxer trouble, which came as a blessing in disguise," argued the teenager, "China has experienced more rapid advancement than ever before.'
She kept herself informed about events in China and had her own considered opinions about them. These college years also reinforced her religious belief. "China's plea is for more missionaries," she wrote. The college authorities were impressed by her intelligence and pleased about her commitment to Christianity. They were convinced that the young woman "will exert a strong Christian influence" in China. They were right: Ei-ling would later help convert China's ruler Chiang Kai-shek to Christianity, as well as turn the first lady, May-ling, into a profoundly religious person. These were events that made a big impact on Chinese history.
In 1908, during her last year at Wesleyan, Ei-ling's two sisters joined her. Ching-ling had won a government scholarship the year before when she was fourteen, and along with a group of other scholarship students she had been escorted to America by an official and his wife – Uncle and Aunt Wen. To their parents, it had made sense for May-ling to go too, even though she was only nine. The most important consideration was that, with this group, she would have no problem entering America. Mr and Mrs Soong were so afraid of missing this chance for May-ling's education.
The two sisters arrived without a glitch. Ei-ling helped them settle in at Wesleyan, fussing over them and looking out for their needs. Her affectionate side, which had so far been bottled up, now had an outlet. It was here that she began to mother her two sisters, which she would continue to do even when they both became "first ladies". Ei-ling particularly mothered May-ling, who was nearly a decade younger. Once a student spotted Ei-ling "scolding" May-ling for "associating with some girl whom E[i]-ling thought was not a good influence. May-ling replied very impulsively, 'But I like her – she fascinates me.'" Little Sister was like a much-loved headstrong child winning over a doting parent. She had always looked up to Big Sister as a role model and at Wesleyan she became awestruck by Ei-ling's intelligence. She would say that Big Sister was "undoubtedly the most brilliant mind in the family". Later many people close to the sisters noticed how May-ling behaved like a daughter to Ei-ling, how she meekly did what Ei-ling told her to do, and how completely she was under Ei-ling's influence. At Wesleyan, they (unwittingly) demonstrated their relationship on stage in the college auditorium, in an operetta called The Japanese Girl. Big Sister played the Japanese emperor and Little Sister the emperor's attendant.
In 1909 Ei-ling graduated, and while her sisters got on with their studies at Wesleyan – and made friends quickly – she returned to Shanghai. She began her twenties aspiring to do big things in China. The republican revolution broke out in 1911, and her father revealed to her his relationship with Sun Yat-sen. His description of Sun conjured up a Christlike figure who had sacrificed himself for the salvation of his people. Ei-ling came to worship Sun. Even though she had never met him, she regarded him as a heroic uncle. While Charlie lobbied missionaries to support the republicans, she staged charity shows to raise money for them. Charlie had suggested in the past that she organise charity concerts and she had resisted the idea. Now, she was full of enthusiasm. She turned out to be a first-class organiser, with a systematic mind, full of ideas. A big theatre was hired for the events, with performances in English – something new even for Shanghai. Ei-ling longed to meet her hero and offer her service to his revolution.
—
Meanwhile, Sun was preoccupied with his battle to become the president of the forthcoming republic, which he considered his due. The fight started the moment he arrived in Shanghai on 25 December 1911. The fact that he had not participated in the uprisings and that he had delayed returning to China for well over two months earned him much scorn. Many revolutionaries regarded him as "a coward". The Times correspondent George Morrison reported that the republicans "spoke with some contempt of a man who had been only a drummer of the revolution, who had taken no actual part, always keeping away in order to save his own skin". Sun, they said, "is always in the background whilst there is danger". Because Sun had claimed to be staying abroad in order to raise funds for the revolution, newspapers asked him to confirm that he indeed brought back "gigantic sums of money". Sun had prepared his answer. He adroitly avoided telling an outright lie and, laughing as if this was a silly but amusing question, said: "A revolution does not depend on money; it depends on passion. I have brought back not money, but the spirit." One could construe that he did bring back money and just preferred not to talk about such a vulgar matter.
Sun tried to have himself made president. He needed to be voted in by the delegates from the seventeen (out of twenty-two) provinces in which uprisings had broken out. "Election" was now the accepted route to office. Several dozen delegates had gathered in Nanjing to cast their vote for the "interim president".
Nanjing, an old royal capital, was cradled by the majestic Purple Gold Mountain and imbued with a rich cultural atmosphere. In bygone days, elegant barge houses on the canal in the city centre had been famed venues for poets, mandarins and quick-witted geisha to compose verse and music while downing dainty cups of fragrant liquor. After some satisfactory lines were created, they would give generously to the poor, dropping a handful of coins into little velvet bags dangling at the end of long bamboo poles extended from neighbouring houseboats. The canal looked most charming at dusk, when lanterns gleamed through the papered and latticed windows of the barges.
After the republican revolution, the city was virtually the territory of Chen Qi-mei, the "Godfather" of Shanghai's main secret society, the Green Gang. A fragile-looking man with eyes that could instil terror, and thin lips that murmured lethal orders, he was a devotee of Sun. During the revolution he had taken control of Shanghai, and put himself in a position to call the shots in the nearby city of Nanjing, where the voting was to take place. The delegates were subject to his vetting. One from Fujian, called Lin Chang-min, belonged to a different political organisation and the Godfather dispatched a gunman to meet him at Nanjing railway station. Lin was shot at, but not killed. The warning was clear: stay away from the voting. Lin duly fled Nanjing.
To more stubborn opponents, the Godfather was not so gentle. An old comrade turned nemesis of Sun's, Tao Cheng-zhang, enjoyed a large following and had been attacking Sun in virulent language, accusing him of being "a liar", "a self-enricher" and having "criminally harmed comrades". Godfather Chen decided to silence him forever. He sent one of his henchmen, none other than the later Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, to carry out the task. Chiang found out that Tao was staying in a Catholic hospital in Shanghai. He walked into Tao's ward, respectably dressed in a suit, and shot Tao dead in the bed at point-blank range. Chiang proudly recorded this episode in his diary – assassins were lauded by the revolutionaries – musing that this may well have been the origin of Sun's favourable attention to him and the beginning of his political elevation.
Sun named the Godfather "the first man of republican uprisings", even though Shanghai was not the first place to revolt. He was crucial to Sun's election.
There were only two other candidates: the leaders of the Wuhan Mutiny, army chief Li Yuan-hong, and republican number two, Huang Xing. Luckily for Sun, neither entertained ambitions for the presidency. Huang, in particular, had no interest in being the policymaker and asked his supporters to vote for Sun.
A physical giant, Huang had a passion for the battleground, where he seemed to seek death. The bursting impatience with which he charged into a seemingly suicidal assault made people think he was "crazy". Victory in battle obsessed him. Despite holding on to Wuhan for a month and sparking off the republican revolution in many provinces, he felt dejected on account of having ultimately lost the city. On a steamer on the Yangtze River going from Wuhan to Shanghai, he brooded and told his friends that he had lost Wuhan because the Germans had given cannons to the government troops, and that he wanted to kill the six Germans he saw on the steamer. A Japanese friend dissuaded him, saying that the steamer was owned by a Japanese company and it was bound to conduct a thorough investigation and trace the killing to him, which would harm their cause. Huang conceded reluctantly, saying, "Well then, let's throw the Chinese comprador into the sea and drown him. He helps the Germans do business and is most disgusting." Huang also agreed that the killing should be delayed till they disembarked the next day. Once he gave the order to kill, Huang visibly brightened up, "his energy restored", remarked the Japanese friend. With a smile, Huang told the group that the assassin he had chosen was an excellent hit man and "extremely experienced". Over lunch, the assassin fixed his gaze on the comprador in order to remember him, while the hapless man was cheerfully eating and drinking. It sent a chill down the spine of the Japanese comrade, even though he was no stranger to spilling blood. The comprador was gunned down at the foot of the gangway as he was leaving the steamer. The story did not end there. Soon afterwards, the same assassin was hired by somebody else to kill Huang, and he was forced to accept the job as his father was being held hostage. Huang got wind of this and confronted the assassin, who confessed. Huang comforted him and gave him money to leave China. Before long his body was washed up on a beach near Tokyo.
Huang regarded Sun as better suited to be leader. Still, Sun had to make major concessions before the voting. He told the delegates who came to Shanghai to see him that he wanted the word "interim" taken out of the title "interim president", but they said that they had no mandate to elect the president proper. That would have to be decided by a general election in due course. In fact, the delegates said, they were only electing someone "to preside over the peace talks" between the republicans and the Manchu throne. Moreover, during the talks, because the republicans were far from certain that they would win, they had promised that if Yuan Shi-kai, the prime minister of the Manchu government, persuaded the throne to relinquish power (to avoid a bloody civil war), they would support Yuan to be the interim president. Sun was told that he had to honour this promise.
He conceded to the arrangement, and on 29 December, the delegates voted Sun the interim president. Sun went by a special train from Shanghai to Nanjing and was sworn in on 1 January 1912. On that occasion, he had to pledge publicly that he would step down in favour of Yuan if and when the throne surrendered power.
Sun made the pledge extremely reluctantly, and tried to prevent Yuan from taking over. Because Yuan could only assume office if the peace talks were successful, Sun tried to get the republicans to pull out of the talks and keep fighting. The delegates and most other republican leaders objected. One confronted him: "Why do you not want peace talks? Is it because you don't want to give up the presidency?'
Secretly, Sun contacted the Japanese and asked for 15 million yuan so he could raise an army to continue fighting. In return, he promised to "lease" Manchuria to Japan once he had toppled the Manchus. Sun knew that Japan craved this rich Chinese territory, larger than France and England combined, but Japan turned him down.
On 12 February the Manchu throne abdicated and handed power to the republicans. The following day, Sun was compelled to step down. He tried to impose a "condition" demanding that Nanjing, where Godfather Chen held sway, be made the capital and Yuan take office there. His calculation was that with the Godfather in charge of the city, Yuan would never get to assume office. The delegates rejected his "condition" and voted to keep the capital in Beijing. Sun flew into a violent temper, and "ordered" another vote, threatening that he would send an army to "escort" Yuan from Beijing to Nanjing. But the delegates declined to change their decision, and Sun had no army to send. There was nothing more Sun could do. In Beijing on 10 March, Yuan Shi-kai was sworn in as interim president of China. Sun had been in office for just over forty days.
Sun returned to Shanghai in April 1912 to try other ways to supplant Yuan. The chief attraction of Shanghai was its foreign Settlements, the areas that were governed by Western, and not Chinese, laws. As he prepared his battle, Sun wanted to be out of Yuan's reach. Westernised Shanghai was also much more to his taste. Now aged forty-five, for most of his life – since the age of twelve – Sun had hardly been on Chinese soil.
In Shanghai, the ex-interim president met Soong Charlie again, after nearly two decades. The man who had been so generous to him all those years ago now warmly welcomed him to stay. Charlie regarded Sun as the noblest man in China, and felt outraged that he had been pushed out in favour of Yuan Shi-kai, who had only left the Manchu camp at the last minute. To Charlie, Yuan was a cynical opportunist. Sun set up his headquarters in Charlie's house. At this time Ching-ling, nineteen, and May-ling, fourteen, were still in America; of his three daughters only the twenty-three-year-old Ei-ling was at home. She had been waiting eagerly to do something for her hero, and now volunteered to work as Sun's English-language assistant.
—
Being in the whirlwind of political events had drawn Ei-ling out of herself, and she had blossomed into an attractive and fetching young woman. Although still not exactly beautiful, she had shed much of her teenage weight and grown radiant and graceful. A certain deferential gentleness had been introduced to her efficient manner, perhaps because she was conscious that she was among important men who were doing great things. Visitors to the Soong house were impressed by her. John Cline, president of Soochow University which had also been founded by the Methodists, came to invite Sun to speak to his students, and was immediately struck. His description also provides a glimpse of Sun's life with the Soongs:
First I met Soon[g]'s private rickshaw coolie at the street door. He was the outer bodyguard. If he hadn't recognized me, I would have got no further. After him came another bodyguard, posted at the stairway. On the second floor, a secretary stopped me outside a private office, then he went in and came out with Eling [Ei-ling]. Eling was as far as I got. Soon[g] and Sun were having an important conference with party leaders inside. But Eling was as nice as she could be and after learning what I wanted, she said she would arrange it, and she did. A mighty smart and efficient young lady, that Eling. She's going to get somewhere in this world.
Her first conquest, it seems, was Sun Yat-sen. From his youthful days in Hawaii, Sun had been attracted to Westernised women. The Wesleyan-educated Ei-ling captivated him easily. William Donald, a ruddy, sandy-haired and bespectacled Australian newspaperman and Sun's adviser, observed (in his biographer's words) that when he and Sun were talking: "Often [E]i-ling would take a chair near them, make notes as Donald talked and smiled encouragingly. Sun would transfer his quiet, expressionless gaze from Donald to her, and there he would keep it, not an eyelash flickering … In Shanghai one day, he gazed intently across the desk at Donald after the sweetly timid [E]i-ling had passed through his office and whispered that he wanted to marry her. Donald advised him to sublimate his desire, since he was already married, but Sun said that he proposed to divorce his present wife." Donald objected that Sun was like an uncle to the girl (he was twenty-three years older than her). "I know it," Sun replied, "I know it. But I want to marry her just the same." Tongues began to wag among fellow revolutionaries in Shanghai that Sun was living with Ei-ling. This was only a rumour: the Soong parents would not have tolerated it and Ei-ling herself, religious like them, would certainly not have considered having an affair. She was undoubtedly aware of Sun's amorous intentions. The way Sun gazed at her would have made his feelings clear. But Ei-ling never reciprocated. Indeed, his unwanted attention may well have dampened her enthusiasm about him. He was not that noble after all. In fact, Ei-ling came to admire Mu-zhen, Sun's wife, who joined him with their children, and was always extremely deferential towards her. When they were going out together, she would take Mu-zhen's arm and support her as Mu-zhen's bound feet made it hard for her to walk. She made a point of calling Mu-zhen "Mother", perhaps as a signal to Sun to stop his advances.
—
This was the first time Sun had been with his family since the Canton Uprising in 1895. For that dangerous undertaking, he had made no arrangements for his family – Mu-zhen, his mother, a four-year-old son Fo, a daughter Yan less than a year old*. He had left them to fend for themselves when he fled Canton. His friend Luke Chan was back from Hawaii in the village for his own wedding and heard the news about the failed revolt. He took it upon himself to help the families of Sun and his brother Ah Mi to escape to Macau. Luke then escorted them to Hawaii – this time at Sun's request. When Sun arrived himself, he was only there to raise funds for another revolt and took little interest in the welfare of his family. After staying for six months – during which Mu-zhen became pregnant with their third child, a daughter Wan – he left again.
Sun was unmoved by the tears of the women in his family. Friends heard him say, "Anyone who is engaged in the revolution must conquer tears." This does not seem to have been too hard for him, as concubines and mistresses kept him company. A friend once asked him what his favourite pursuits were; he replied without hesitation: "revolution" followed by "women". In Japan, for example, at least two Japanese women were known to be his consorts. One, Haru Asada, lived with Sun until her death in 1902, and was referred to in Japanese government files as his concubine. When she died, a gorgeous young girl in her mid-teens, Kaoru Otsuki, took her place. She is said to have had a daughter by Sun, who never set eyes on her father, as he left her mother one day and never returned or wrote.
Mu-zhen and Sun's mother were miserable. Old Mrs Sun, at a loss as to why her younger son chose to be an outlaw, was outraged at his total disregard for his family. Luke often heard her complaining "bitterly at having to leave her village" and losing her home. "Often when I visited them at [Ah] Mi's on Maui, the old mother would tell me her disappointment and grief at her son's actions. And poor [Mu-zhen] would weep at the mere mention of the Revolution." Mu-zhen had already been hurt badly by the fact that she had married an absentee husband who gave her no support in raising a young family or in caring for his parents. On a pair of crushed and bound feet, the burden of life had been almost too much to bear. Then, on those same feet, she had to flee thousands of miles, carrying an infant and pulling along another child, supporting a mother-in-law who also had bound feet and could hardly walk, and carrying as many belongings as her exhausted body could. She had lived in fear and frenzy, first in hiding in Macau, and then in Hawaii on the other side of the globe.
What comforted the women was the unfailing generosity of Sun's brother Ah Mi and his wife. Mrs Ah Mi, a strong woman who had unbound her own feet, was in charge of the household, and she never treated the relatives as a burden. She was kind and fair, and there were seldom quarrels among the women. As time went by, Mu-zhen sought solace in religion and became a Christian, diligently studying the Bible every day. Ah Mi acquiesced. Mrs Ah Mi would go to church with her sister-in-law and celebrate Christmas with her at the pastor's. She did not become a Christian herself, out of respect for her husband's feelings. The extended family were thrown together in Hawaii, and became very close. Eventually Sun's mother gave up any hope for her younger son and resigned herself to a life without him. Although she never really stopped worrying about Sun, she felt that those years in Maui were the happiest in her life.
Misfortune struck after they lived in Hawaii for ten years: Ah Mi's businesses went bankrupt. The extended family had to decamp to Hong Kong, where Ah Mi rented a small tumbledown house. He could no longer afford the children's school fees. Old Mrs Sun went blind, but there was little money for her to consult doctors. She died in 1910 with neither of her sons by her side. Ah Mi was away from home and desperate to get back, but he could not raise the necessary fare. He was heartbroken – and angry with his brother, who took no responsibility at all for the family. One day when he and Sun were briefly together, he exploded at his brother, who hung his head and did not say a word.
After the republican victory, Sun fetched his family in 1912 and at last started to look after them. The eldest, his son Fo, was now twenty, and the daughters, Yan and Wan, eighteen and fifteen. They had rarely seen their father, and this was the first time they spent an extended period with him. Sun arranged for Fo to study in San Francisco, and tried to get scholarships for his daughters. But the family reunion was marred by Sun's lust for Ei-ling, which his daughter Yan noticed. When she became very ill the following year, just before she died she said bitterly that her father had "behaved badly".
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Sun's behaviour also deeply hurt his concubine, Chen Cui-fen. She had met and fallen in love with Sun in the church circle in the early 1890s, when he was still a medical student. A beautiful nineteen-year-old with large eyes, high cheekbones and a strong jawline, she shared his life when he struggled to practise medicine, acting as his receptionist, nurse and all-purpose assistant, and when he then took up revolution as his vocation.
Coming from a poor family, Cui-fen was not bothered by hardship. The danger of a revolutionary's life did not daunt her either. During the preparation for the Canton Uprising, she helped smuggle arms into the city, hiding rifles in the coffin of a funeral procession and ammunitions and explosives under the seat in her sedan chair. Sun's friends were impressed by her manners. There was no shyness about her, or other conventional ways of femininity. She maintained eye contact when talking to them, her long eyelashes not lowering as was required of women. Nor was she soft-spoken. At meals, she used men's chopsticks rather than the slender dainty ones deemed more suitable for women, and she would wolf down her food like a coolie. But she was a beauty. Cui-fen remained totally loyal to Sun when he was a fugitive for nearly two decades. She cooked, washed and cleaned for him and for any of his comrades staying with them uncomplainingly. Sun's friends told their long-suffering wives to model themselves on her.
But now she was an inconvenience to him in his newfound glory. The practice of keeping concubines went on as before under the new republic, but Sun was conscious that it was unacceptable to the Christian Soongs. Sun wrote to Ah Mi, asking him to offer Cui-fen to a friend as that man's concubine, promising to pay the man 10,000 yuan. Even by the standards of a society that condoned concubinage, this was an act of heartlessness, even treachery, by a newly successful man to a woman who had faithfully stuck by him. Ah Mi angrily rejected the proposal and instead invited Cui-fen to join his large household. Cui-fen did, and got on with everyone; she became like a sister to Mu-zhen.
However aggrieved Cui-fen felt about the way Sun treated her, she never publicly complained about him. Rather, she insisted that it was also her wish to leave Sun. She was a proud woman. And she was generous and forgiving. For the rest of her life, she would treasure the two gifts from Sun, a gold ring, and a watch that had been given to Sun by Dr Cantlie after Sun's release from his "kidnapping" in London. Being an independent woman, she did not want to be a burden on Ah Mi, and went to Penang to try to start a business in rubber planting. The venture flopped. But there she adopted a daughter who became the joy of her life. The daughter grew up and married Ah Mi's grandson, adding another bond to the extended family. Years later, during the war against Japan in the early 1940s, Cui-fen's son-in-law voluntarily returned to China and joined the army, serving in the radio corps. Cui-fen and her daughter left neutral and safe Macau and travelled into the war-ravaged mainland with him. They accompanied him wherever he went, despite the constant Japanese bombing that pursued the radio corps. A loving family life was of paramount importance for Cui-fen. She died at the age of eighty-eight, surrounded by family.
Ah Mi himself had died, perhaps of a heart attack, long before her in 1915, aged sixty-one. His last years were marked by sadness. During Sun's brief tenure as interim president, friends had lobbied for Ah Mi to be made governor of his native province, Guangdong. Sun vetoed the nomination. "My brother," he said, "is exceptionally straight, and if he gets into politics, he will come to grief for being always on the square." When Ah Mi came to Nanjing to argue his case, Sun told him he was not cut out for politics and should stay away. Ah Mi had to accept the reality that for all he had given to his brother, and to the revolution, he could expect nothing in return. He was not even treated as a "revolutionary" despite the fact that for some years he had been banished from Hong Kong and other British colonies for carrying out republican activities. Ah Mi went on bearing the responsibility of caring for the extended family until his death.
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Sun's family roused great admiration in Ei-ling; she was full of sympathy for them, and was exceptionally warm and affectionate towards them, especially Mu-zhen. The smart young lady handled Sun's advances deftly, keeping him at arm's length while managing to work with him.
* The year Empress Dowager Cixi seized power, and initiated China's modernisation.
* 孙中山家族 兄弟姐妹 长兄：孙眉，字德彰（1854～1915年) 姐：孙妙茜（1863－1955) 妹：孙秋绮（1871年~1912年) 另有一兄：（孙德佑）五岁早夭 另有一姐：（孙金星）亦早夭 妻妾 原配：卢慕贞（1867年－1952年）1915年与孙中山离婚 日本籍妻子：大月薰（1888年－1970年） 在日本期间，后未见过 妾：陈粹芬（1873年－1960年） 1912年离开孙中山 日本籍妾：浅田春（1882年 - 1902年） [30] 末任妻：宋庆龄（1893年－1981年），1915年10月25日与孙中山在日本结婚。 子女 儿子：孙科（1891年10月20日—1973年9月20日） 长女：孙娫（1894年3月31日—1913年6月25日） 次女：孙婉（1896年11月12日—1979年6月3日） 日本籍长女：宫川富美子（1906年—1990年）（与大月薰所生）（1906年出生）