PART III The Sisters and Chiang Kai-shek (1926–1936)

8 Shanghai Ladies

Before she returned to China in July 1917 at the age of nineteen, Little Sister May-ling had spent a decade in America and grew into a fun-loving and carefree young lady with little interest in politics. After finishing high school at Wesleyan in Macon, Georgia, she went on to the east coast to attend Wellesley College, Massachusetts. There she studied English language and philosophy, taking, amongst a variety of courses, Old Testament history. Outgoing and gregarious, May-ling was far more integrated into American life than her two sisters. Wesleyan contemporaries agreed that ‘She was the friendly one, seeming to like everyone and interested in everything, always gay and talkative.' ‘May Ling used to come to my room and lie on the little baby pillow on my bed while she talked.' Described as ‘chubby' and ‘fat', she was ‘intensely alive and into mischief every minute'. She was bursting with energy and ‘used to be allowed to go out and run around the campus in the middle of her French lesson because her restless little body could not be still so long.'

At Wellesley, she kept a ‘confession book', like other girls, and like them she showed hers to others. One entry went: ‘My one extravagance, clothes … my favourite motto, don't eat candy – not one piece … my secret sorrow, being fat.' She had to watch her weight very carefully all her life.

After graduation she headed home with her brother T.V., who had been studying economics at Harvard and Columbia. Unlike his outgoing sister, T.V. was shy and adopted a distant and aloof expression, which contributed to his reputation of being haughty. He and May-ling were devoted to each other. Later Little Sister fondly reminisced to him ‘how I used to cook cocoa for you in the early mornings before your classes'.

Together they journeyed in the summer of 1917 by train across Canada to Vancouver to board a steamship for China. In Vancouver she wrote to her friend Emma Mills, ‘Brother & I went to the best shop, trying to get some things; but to our disappointment, the store was terrible. Someone said that there isn't a well-dressed Canadian woman here; I did think that was an exaggeration. Now, however, I am inclined to think that there is some truth to that. The women here look like dowds!'

Chinese affairs did not preoccupy her. When they did confront her, her reactions were instinctive, and somewhat unexpected: ‘we saw a train-load of Chinese coolies who are being shipped to France as laborers. If one of them should die, his family gets $150.00! Such is the price of life to them! If ever I have any influence, I shall see to it that no coolies are being shipped out, for China needs all her own men to develop the mines.'

She wrote her first letter from Shanghai to Emma three weeks after her return. With excitement she boasted about her home:

We live way uptown. The further up the more exclusive. It is lovely here: but it is so far from the shopping district and the theatres and eating houses! We have a lovely carriage and two coachmen etc.: but horses are such bother. One can only use them just so much. Next week we are going to get an automobile for running around town, and let Mother keep the carriage for her private use. We have a beautiful garden, lawn tennis [sic], croquet ground. The house is one of the loveliest in Shanghai … We have verandahs, sleeping porches and whatnot. The house has three stories and has 16 large rooms not counting the kitchen, baths etc … . By the way, I am taking charge of the house now. We have five maids and seven menservants. Let me tell you it is no joke! … I am so tired now from running up and down inspecting the house … Mother still has charge of the financial end for which I am duly grateful!

It is very annoying sometimes, as I forget myself and speak in English to the servants … At times I cannot express myself in Chinese; then I ring for the butler who acts as interpreter! … Since I have returned home, it seems to me that I am always buying clothes … I have been to a great many dinners and teas, & other affairs.'

She found herself in the warm embrace of her family. Ching-ling was in Shanghai waiting for her (while Sun Yat-sen was in Canton), and Ei-ling had come with her children from her home in Shanxi in the north-west. The two older sisters lavished affection on Little Sister. May-ling told Emma that they constantly said to her, ‘Oh we saw the most adorable dress at so & so a place. You must have one like it … They enjoy dressing me up, as I am the youngest & the only unmarried one.' They were so happy to be together that Ei-ling started thinking about moving to Shanghai, even planning for the whole family to live under one roof. They went to see a house together. It was ‘a 30-room house (not counting servants quarters). It is really an immense mansion of five floors with roof garden. To tell the truth, I don't care for it: it is too huge, and the ceilings are so high that I feel lost in it. It is like a huge hotel and very formal although elegant. It is “too much” for a girl just graduated from Wood Barn to live in! … I do hope that we won't decide to move to that huge place they are considering. Of course, I should like to have sister [Ei-ling] live with us – at the same time 30 rooms will be no joke! I am rather plebeian in my taste – at least the family think so!' They did not buy it, but living in different houses was no barrier for Ei-ling and May-ling, who saw each other all the time.

May-ling also now had the company of her two younger brothers, T.L. and T.A. Her fondness for them showed through her claims of treating them strictly:

Both my little brothers flunked last year, & the family is furious. The poor kids have two tutors (an English & a Chinese) to come every day. And believe me, they are working! I am also teaching them English grammar. One of the poor kids is learning to punctuate, & the other is learning spelling with me watching them now … Mother is so disgusted that she handed them over to me bodily. They are hard to manage, because they are deucedly clever and lazy at the same time. I have whipped the younger one several times, & they both are afraid of me. You don't know what a good disciplinarian I can be!

May-ling was madly in love with her family. ‘It seems very queer to have a family. I am so used to doing what I please without consulting anyone that it is rather hard to remember that I am not at college and cannot do and think what I please. Of course, though, I am very happy at home.'

Already, there were suitors:

H.K. has been here from Peking, and so has Mr Yang. I like them: but that's all. Oh, Emma, I might as well tell you that on board ship, I lost my head over a man whose father is Dutch and mother a French. He is an architect and was going to Sumatra. He asked me to marry him, and the family here is greatly wrought up! I have been having a rather uncomfortable time. Remember that this is a secret: don't tell it to a single soul, for heaven sakes [sic]! … Tonight, a Frenchman I met on the boat is coming to see me. We speak nothing but French … And for love of Pete do not tell anyone what I have told you …

When this cheerful, chatty and highly informative long letter eventually came to an end: ‘By the way, will you subscribe the Literary Digest, the Scribners and a magazine on child psychology & how to take care of them etc. for me. The last mentioned is for Mrs Kung [Ei-ling] as she has two growing kids of about 2 and 1 yr old. But send it in my name, & tell me how much the whole thing is & I'll refund the money.' Requests to buy American magazines and run other little errands became a staple in her correspondence with Emma.

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Every morning, May-ling took Chinese lessons. The old tutor ‘taught me when I was eight years old, and if I remember correctly, he administered the stick on my palm once when he found out that I had been eating candy all the time pretending that it was the “foreign devils' ” cough drops. Now however he is so polite to me.' She learned the language fast, finding the very complicated classical written forms easy. The rest of the morning she mostly wandered about the house, ‘in and out among the rooms fixing the flowers, picking up a book here and there'.

At lunchtime, she rang a bell. A servant looked after the floor she shared with T.V.,

whose only duty is to keep these rooms in order, and answer my bells. Often I have my luncheon sent up here on the porch. I have dismissed my maid: I have found that I simply did not need her, as Mother's maid does all my mending and picks up my clothes for me, and it grated on me to have my maid around when I could execute my own orders in less time than it takes for me to explain to her what I want done. You see, all the years in democratic America have their effects on me. I am quite contented with this one servant who attends to Brother's and my wants. He polishes our shoes, dusts, sweeps, and make up the beds etc … . The afternoon usually rounds up with a tea somewhere or tea at home.

As for dinner: ‘I have been so busy. During the last 2 weeks there was only one evening when we either did not give dinners or were not invited out!' When dinner was over: ‘we usually go for a spin in the car and carriage, or else take a walk, or go to the theatre'. ‘We have been having Russian Grand Opera here and I have been to six or seven different performances.' The Chinese theatre remained an un-acquired taste; she described it as ‘tooth and nail cries'. Long midnight rides were frequent. ‘And of course we never returned until after mid-night. Is there any wonder then that I am tired?'

In this pampered existence, her chief problems were things like ‘we have ordered our Buick car – but tough luck, the next shipment won't be in until another week'. One day, she discovered an infection on her face. This was a major disaster. ‘You cannot imagine how I have cried out of pure nervousness … But now at the end of this week, I shall be able to go to a party!' ‘Since I have shut myself up at home, life has become dull – dull, dull! I am seized with such unreasonable and unreasoning fits of temper that sometimes I think I am going insane.'

Shanghai parties were on a grand scale: a reception for over 1,000 people, a wedding for 4,000. ‘I am enjoying myself tremendously … Only sometimes I become quite conscience-stricken when I think how little time I stay with Mother … You would think that I am a regular butterfly.'

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Tragedy soon marred this picture of fun, when Charlie died in May 1918, less than ten months after she came home. He had been suffering from kidney disease. In the last weeks of his life, May-ling looked after him like a well-trained nurse and with great affection. She gave him a massage with olive oil every night as his skin became dry as parchment. In hospital, while her mother or other members of the family kept Charlie company during the day, May-ling spent the nights with him. Gazing at his swollen face in his sleep, she felt ‘almost more than I can bear'.

When the doctors pronounced that his chances of recovery were about twenty per cent, Mrs Soong brought Charlie home, in spite of doctors' objections. She belonged to the Apostolic Mission Faith, which believed in the power of prayer. Her fellow disciples filled their house and prayed for him night and day.

After Charlie's death, his wife arranged a quiet and simple funeral for him, with only his closest friends notified. He was buried in the new International Cemetery, where the family bought enough land for all of them. He was the very first person to be buried in what became a prestigious cemetery. May-ling was comforted, ‘he liked being the first in any kind of competition; so I know that if he knew this, he would be awfully pleased'.

May-ling mourned her father for a long time: ‘With Father's death, the family does not seem real at all – We all miss him greatly: he was such a companionable father.' ‘He has been such a wonderful father to us! And we love him even though he is no longer with us.'

That she had only months to spend with her father after she had been absent for ten years remained a lifelong regret for May-ling. This, and the fact that she had missed a home during her adolescent years, gave her love for her family a special intensity. Barely in her early twenties, she concluded that: ‘friends are very nice, but remember when you actually really get to a hard fix, the family is the one that will stand by you. Coming from me, who has spent a greater part of my life thousands of miles away from my family, this may sound green. But honestly, you will find that I am right.'

A cousin who had returned from America found life with her family unbearable. May-ling observed, again unusually mature, ‘I think the whole trouble lies in this: the family and she expect too much of each other … What a very different homecoming this is compared to mine. My family took me for granted, good and bad. And although we did not always agree, we respected each other and compromised.'

She saw her mother as the person who made her family the way it was: ‘not every one is so fortunate in having such a good mother as I have. Really my mother is so considerate of me that every day I am ashamed of myself, and of my behavior.'

Mrs Soong's love was that of an exceptionally strong mother. She could steel herself to send her nine-year-old daughter across the ocean for a decade for a superior education; yet throughout that time, she missed her daughter intensely. When May-ling visited Ei-ling in Shanxi, she wrote to Emma, ‘Mother in her heart of hearts did not want me to leave her and yet she did not want to stand in the way of my going.' ‘Mother is so afraid that sister will make me stay longer. Poor dear! She'll be lonesome without me.' ‘Mother is so good to me, and does lean on me so much that I really hate to think of leaving her.' When she grew thin, Mrs Soong reacted like a most traditional parent (who always wanted their children to put on weight): ‘Mother cried the other night, because she said that it hurts her to see me looking so pale & wan.' The weight loss was in fact intentional. Little Sister, who had been fretting about her figure, went from 130 lb to 107 lb in a matter of months, and was transformed into a slender woman (she was about five foot three and looked much taller).

Deeply attached to her mother, May-ling gladly did what she wished her to do. Because of Mrs Soong's objection, she gave up dancing, even though she had loved it at college. Mrs Soong gave much time and money to charities. In order to please her, May-ling became involved in charitable work. She taught at a Sunday school: ‘Mother is happy beyond words at my consent. There is so little I can do for her that I am eager to do anything I can.' She fundraised for the Shanghai Young Women's Christian Association. She visited slums: ‘I do hate nasty smells and dirty sights. But I suppose somebody has to see the dirt if it is ever going to be cleaned up.' Shanghai society considered her public-spirited and able, and fit to be an executive in a major charity organisation.

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Next to her mother, Big Sister was the person she esteemed most. She told Emma, ‘I wish you could know her, for she is undoubtedly the most brilliant mind in the family, and is unusually keen + quick witted, vivacious, quick, and energetic. She is not the sort I would consider at all fanatical; and yet she is deeply religious.'

For several years after Ei-ling had returned to China in 1914, she went through a depression. The purpose in life that she had found working for Sun Yat-sen had turned into disappointment. She was discontented, then, with her married life in a provincial city. Having thrived at the centre of the action, she felt dissatisfied just being a schoolteacher, a wife and a mother. At the time of the births of her first two children, Rosamonde in 1915, and David in 1916, she was restless and miserable. As May-ling told Emma, ‘she has gone through periods of agony … misery and sufferings'. She even lost faith in God, ‘even denied the existence of a god, and whenever religion was mentioned in her presence, she either shunned the topic or else plainly said that it was all old women's nonsense'. Although she helped her husband make a fortune – and discovered her own talent in finance – contentment eluded her, as she saw the whole activity as purposeless.

The return of Little Sister brought a ray of sunshine into Ei-ling's life: she now had an intimate friend and confidante, and this helped her clear her mind and recover her equilibrium. She realised that she needed her religion. By the time she had her third child Jeanette in 1919, Big Sister had gone back to her God, repenting that she ever doubted Him. When her youngest son Louis was born in 1921, she told Little Sister she had at last ‘found solace in life and faith in living'. As May-ling wrote to Emma, ‘She now prays to God to help the solution of her problems. More than this, she has found peace, such peace as she has never known.' She ‘is just as gay, and goes out to parties etc. just as much as before'. But ‘somehow or another, there is a difference in her. She is a great deal less critical, more thoughtful, and not so intolerant of the short comings of others.'

Ei-ling tried to persuade Little Sister to be more religious. At this stage, May-ling resisted, telling Emma, ‘You know Dada [May-ling's pet name for Emma], I am not a religious person. I am too darned independent and pert to be meek or humble or submissive.' She thought that Ei-ling ‘intentionally drugged her mind', and was irritated with her, telling her ‘to keep still'.

As they argued, their lives grew more intertwined. Little Sister often babysat Ei-ling's children and doted on them. Writing to Emma: ‘it certainly is a job looking after them. They are hungry from morning till night in spite of the amount of food they eat. As sister gave strict orders not to give them rich food, I think that is the reason why they feel the need and insistent craving for candies etc. all the time. Lately I have been giving them one piece of candy each day and that seems to allay some of their perpetual demand for food between meals.'

Ching-ling was more distant from these two, mentally as well as physically. But whenever they were together, they always had a good time. May-ling wrote: ‘My sister Mrs S. was in Shanghai from Canton for two weeks. During that time, life was a perpetual whirlwind of social gaieties.' ‘My sister Mrs Sun is giving a very large reception on the tenth of October which is a national holiday in Celebration of the Republic. I shall help her receive. I am a bit tired.' She visited Ching-ling in Canton, and found walking on the city's hilly streets in high heels rather trying.

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In those Shanghai years, a main activity for May-ling was her busy romantic dalliances, which were documented in detail in her letters to Emma. Starting with the Dutchman on the ship home, a string of suitors appeared – and then disappeared. Her family objected to any man who was a foreigner, and May-ling readily gave in to their feelings. There was a brief encounter with a Mr Birmeil: ‘I only met him the night before I sailed from Hong Kong at a friend's house, and altho we were on board ship together only three days, we became very good friends. The day we arrived in Shanghai was his birthday; and so in spite of the fact that I had been away from home these months, I spent the day with him … We had a beautiful time together, and I am so glad I was so rash for once in my life.' The family reacted with fury ‘and was scandalized … They were also furious because he is a foreigner. They literally accused me of “picking” him up on board ship … Since he left Saturday afternoon, I have received two wireless messages from him saying how much he misses me. The family tried to keep the wireless away from me, but did not succeed … In a way, I am glad he is not here, for I do not know how his presence might affect me.' But he was soon forgotten, like the Dutchman, without much pain.

Another man for whom she professed she cared ‘more than words can tell' was not a foreigner – but he was married. ‘For the past few months, we both have been too miserable for words … you know how my family feels towards divorce, and besides there is nothing the matter with his wife except that he does not care for her … it is terrible to care so much. I never knew before what it means … But everything is hopeless.' Again, she got over him easily.

Little Sister relished her conquests. When one man said he had not heard from her for ages and was ‘worrying to death', she wrote mockingly to Emma, ‘The [First World] war is killing so many people that one more or less dead doesn't make much difference, does it?' She would moan: ‘Oh deliver me from such trouble! I wish the man had sense enough to leave me alone or go hang himself.' She would sniff: one man had taken ‘on a most irritating and aggravating turn of falling in love and bothering me'. And another ‘showed decided symptoms of proposing'; but ‘I guess I have gotten rid of him for good.' The ‘town of Shanghai is at present is [sic] full of rumors about my being engaged, each rumor roping in different men … What makes the situation so funny is that none of the men are either denying or acknowledging the rumors. I am quite put out.'

Though not a great beauty, Little Sister had abundant charm and allure. She had other more tangible, even pragmatic, attractions, about which she was completely frank: ‘I am also known as being “intellectual” and “brainy”, rather proud but pleasant … a good sport but somewhat apart from the “common herd” because of my family's position, and because of the fact that I dress very well, and in foreign clothes, ride around in a motor, and does [sic] not have to teach to get my living.'

As time went by, a frantic social and romantic life lost its attraction. May-ling began to be filled with discontent: ‘I am busy all day yet I don't seem to get anywhere.' ‘I am bored, horribly and unspeakably so.' She could see that there was ‘so much sickness in China … so much misery is everywhere! Sometimes, when I look at the dirty, ragged swarming humanity in our slums, I feel the sense of bitter futility in hoping for a great and a new China, and the sense of my own smallness. Dada, you cannot conceive how useless one feels in such surroundings. The percentage of poor here is greater than any you could conceive of in America.'

Voluntary work failed to satisfy her. It ‘is not real work, it is too much of a makeshift … I simply am not able to feel that I am accomplishing anything.' ‘We do a lot of gabbing; but I see no practical results. Oh, I suppose we do some good; at the same time there is nothing tangible.' She yearned ‘to get a real size [sic] job and try to find some satisfaction out of living', and longed to ‘amount to something'.

At one point, the idea of returning to America to study medicine occurred to her, but it came to nothing. She did not want to leave her mother, and the family could no longer afford to fund her studies. In 1921, her mother lost a large sum of money on the gold exchange, which affected the Soongs' lifestyle.

May-ling wanted marriage and children. ‘I think women lose interest in life … if they do not marry … And then too, really what has one to look forward to if one does not have children?' But she did not envy any of the married women she knew. ‘I cannot see … that they are any better satisfied or had gained something more precious from life. They seem cramped, either indifferent, lackadaisical or bitter. Their lives seem so empty – empty.'

She was tormented by bouts of ‘agony'. Ei-ling asked her to give religion another try. May-ling wrote to Emma: ‘She told me that the only way for me to conquer this lassitude of mind is to become religious, and to really commune with God.' May-ling conceded to Emma, ‘now I am trying her advice, and so far I cannot say how it will work out. I will say this, though, since I tried her advice, I feel a great deal happier – as though I no longer am carrying a heavy bundle alone. When I pray now, I am in a receptive mood, so to speak.'

Still, discontent shadowed her. She remained ‘so tired of life', and felt ‘so keenly the futility'. She yearned for ‘that vibrant joy of life, and of living'. Ei-ling realised what Little Sister needed: a suitable man, the man who could give her a purpose and fulfilment.

So she looked out for that man. In 1926, Ei-ling brought her twenty-eight-year-old sister together with Chiang Kai-shek, who at thirty-eight had just been appointed commander-in-chief of the Nationalist army. A whole new world opened up to Little Sister.