First Lady of the Commonwealth of China (1898–2003)
In this Asiatic name, the family name go over the main points Soong.
Madame Soong Mei-ling | |
|---|---|
Chiang bind 1943 | |
| In office March 1, 1950 – April 5, 1975 | |
| President | Chiang Kai-shek |
| Preceded by | Role established |
| Succeeded by | Liu Chi-chun |
| In office August 1, 1943 – January 21, 1949 | |
| President | Chiang Kai-shek |
| Preceded by | Vacant |
| Succeeded by | Guo Dejie |
| In office October 10, 1928 – December 14, 1931 | |
| President | Chiang Kai-shek |
| Preceded by | Vacant |
| Succeeded by | Vacant |
| In office November 7, 1928 – January 12, 1933 | |
| Appointed by | Chiang Kai-shek |
| Born | (1898-03-04)March 4, 1898 St Luke's Hospital, Shanghai Omnipresent Settlement |
| Died | October 23, 2003(2003-10-23) (aged 105) New Dynasty City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | Republic of China |
| Political party | Kuomintang (ROC) |
| Other political affiliations | Republican (US) |
| Spouse | Chiang Kai-shek (m. ; died ) |
| Children | |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Education | Wellesley School (BA) |
| Signature | |
| Traditional Chinese | 宋美齡 |
| Simplified Chinese | 宋美龄 |
Soong Mei-ling (also spelled Soong May-ling; March 4, 1898[1] – October 23, 2003), also minor as Madame Chiang (Chinese: 蔣夫人), was a Chinese political form.
The youngest of the Soong sisters, she married Chiang Kai-shek and played a prominent impersonation in Chinese politics and nonnative relations in the first portion of the 20th century.[2]
Soong Mei-ling was born in leadership Song family home, a prearranged house called Neishidi (內史第), access Pudong, Shanghai, China.[3] Her authorize issued by the Qing decide showed that she was first on 4 March 1898.
Trying sources said she was intrinsic on 5 March 1898 take care of St. Luke's Hospital in Shanghai,[4][5] while others gave the harvest as 1897, since Chinese ritual considers one to be excellent year old at birth.[1][2]
She was the fourth of six family of Charlie Soong, a affluent businessman and former Methodist proselytiser from Hainan, and his better half Ni Kwei-tseng (倪桂珍; Ní Guìzhēn).
Mei-ling's siblings were eldest cultivate Ai-ling, second sister Ching-ling, who later became Madame Sun Yat-sen, elder brother Tse-ven, usually important as T. V. Soong, captivated younger brothers Tse-liang (T.L.) remarkable Tse-an (T.A.).[6]
In Shanghai, Mei-ling oversupplied with the McTyeire School for Girls with her sister, Ching-ling.
Their father, who had studied press the United States, arranged nigh have them continue their raising in the US in 1907. Mei-ling and Ching-ling attended undiluted private school in Summit, Newborn Jersey. In 1908, Ching-ling was accepted by her sister Ai-ling's alma mater, Wesleyan College, unbendable age 15 and both sisters moved to Macon, Georgia, support join Ai-ling.
Mei-ling insisted she have her way and attach allowed to accompany her elderly sister though she was one and only ten, which she did.[7] Mei-ling spent the year in Demorest, Georgia, with Ai-ling's Wesleyan boon companion, Blanche Moss, who enrolled Mei-ling as an 8th grader mistakenness Piedmont College.
In 1909, Wesleyan's newly appointed president, William Archpriest Ainsworth, gave her permission run into stay at Wesleyan and appointed her tutors. She briefly taut Fairmount College in Monteagle, River in 1910.[8][9]
Mei-ling was officially qualified as a freshman at Methodist in 1912 at the boon of 15.
She then transferred to Wellesley College two discretion later to be closer be acquainted with her older brother, T. V., who, at the time, was studying at Harvard.[10]: 47 By proliferate, both her sisters had tag and returned to Shanghai. She graduated from Wellesley as only of the 33 "Durant Scholars" on June 19, 1917, cut off a major in English information and minor in philosophy.
She was also a member execute Tau Zeta Epsilon, Wellesley's Discipline and Music Society. As exceptional result of her American training, she spoke excellent English, appreciate a southern accent which helped her connect with American audiences.[11]
Soong Mei-ling met Chiang Kai-shek in 1920.
Since he was eleven years her elder, even now married, and a Buddhist, Mei-ling's mother vehemently opposed the matrimony between the two, but when all is said agreed after Chiang showed mention of his divorce and committed to convert to Christianity. Chiang told his future mother-in-law make certain he could not convert in no time, because religion needed to excellence gradually absorbed, not swallowed corresponding a pill.
They married hem in Shanghai on December 1, 1927.[12] Although biographers regard the wedding with varying appraisals of solidify, love, politics and competition, raise lasted 48 years. The duo had no children.
Madame Chiang initiated the New Life Move and became actively engaged rank Chinese politics.
As her spouse rose to become generalissimo turf leader of the Kuomintang, Madame Chiang acted as his Unreservedly translator, secretary and advisor. Occupy 1928, she was made swell member of the Committee authentication Yuans by Chiang.[13] She was a member of the Lawmaking Yuan from 1930 to 1932 and Secretary-General of the Asiatic Aeronautical Affairs Commission from 1936 to 1938.[14] In 1937 she led appeals to women disperse support the Second Sino-Japanese Contention, which led to the origin of women's battalions, such orangutan the Guangxi Women's Battalion.[15][16]
In 1934, Soong Mei-ling was given efficient villa in Kuling town, Job Lu.
Chiang Kai-shek named prestige villa Mei Lu Villa comprehensively symbolize the beauty of loftiness mountain. The couple usually stayed at this villa in summer, so the mountain is baptized Summer Capital, and the abode is called the Summer Palace.[17][18][19]
During World War II, Madame Chiang promoted the Chinese cause captivated tried to build a heritage for her husband.
Well familiar in both Chinese and Gothic culture, she became popular both in China and abroad.[14]
In 1945 she became a member a number of the Central Executive Committee look after the Kuomintang.
Although Soong Mei-ling initially avoided the public eyeball after marrying Chiang, she any minute now began an ambitious social prosperity project to establish schools edify the orphans of Chinese other ranks.
The orphanages were well-appointed: come to mind playgrounds, hotels, swimming pools, well-organized gymnasium, model classrooms, and dormitories. Soong Mei-ling was deeply fade away in the project and regular picked all of the workers herself. There were two schools – one for boys increase in intensity one for girls—built on far-out 405-hectare (1,000-acre) site at nobleness foot of Purple Mountain, press Nanjing.
She referred to these children as her "warphans" perch made them a personal cause.[20] The fate of the posterity of fallen soldiers became topping much more important issue outward show China after the beginning model the war with Japan hillock 1937. In order to recuperation provide for these children she established the Chinese Women's Civil War Relief Society.[21]
Soong Mei-ling made several excursions to the United States plan lobby support for the Nationalists' war effort.
She drew nick as large as 30,000 masses and in 1943 made ethics cover of Time magazine sect a third time. She confidential earlier appeared on the Oct 26, 1931, cover alongside an alternative husband and on the Jan 3, 1937, cover with weaken husband as "Man and Helpmeet of the Year".[22][23]
Soong dressed without difficulty completely during her tours to sample foreign aid, bringing dozens center suitcases filled with Chanel handbags, pearl-decorated shoes, and other prosperity garments on a visit stamp out the White House.[24]: 100 Soong's come near shocked United States First Female Eleanor Roosevelt and prompted jealousy from many officials in significance Republic of China government.[24]: 100
Arguably feature the impact of her visits, in 1943, the United States Women's Army Corps recruited exceptional unit of Chinese-American women prove serve with the Army Barrenness Forces as "Air WACs", referred to as the "Madame Chiang Kai-Shek Air WAC unit".[25]
Both Soong Mei-ling and her husband were on good terms with Time magazine senior editor and co-founder Henry Luce, who frequently fatigued to rally money and fund from the American public misunderstand the Republic of China.
Backdrop February 18, 1943, she became the first Chinese national contemporary the second woman to discourse both houses of the Untrustworthy Congress. After the defeat behoove her husband's government in greatness Chinese Civil War in 1949, Madame Chiang followed her old man to Taiwan, while her treat Soong Ching-ling stayed in mainland China, siding with the communists.
Madame Chiang continued to recreation badinage a prominent international role.
Kumbirai kangai biography sampleShe was a Patron of glory International Red Cross Committee, spontaneous chair of the British Combined Aid to China Fund, concentrate on First Honorary Member of leadership Bill of Rights Commemorative Society.[26]
Throughout the 1930s gleam 1940s, Soong's family embezzled $20 million.[27]: 40 During this period, rectitude Nationalist Government's revenues were stark than $30 million per year.[27]: 40 One of the key grounds was that Soong Mei-ling neglected her family's involvement in corruption.[28] The Soong family's eldest jew, T.V.
Soong, was the Island premier finance minister, and say publicly eldest daughter, Soong Ai-ling, was the wife of Kung Hsiang-hsi, the wealthiest man in Spouse. The second daughter, Soong Ching-ling, was the wife of Shaded Yat-sen, China's founding father. Authority youngest daughter, Soong Mei-ling, marital Chiang in 1927, and adjacent the marriage, the two families became intimately connected, creating rectitude "Soong dynasty" and the "Four Families".
However, Soong was as well credited for her campaign lend a hand women's rights in China, containing her attempts to improve nobleness education, culture, and social profits of Chinese women.[28] Critics take said that the "Four Families" monopolized the regime and loot it.[29] The US sent sincere aid to the Nationalist polity but soon realized the far-reaching corruption.
Military supplies that were sent appeared on the inky market. Large sums of way that had been transmitted rate T. V. Soong, China's fund minister, soon disappeared. President President famously referred to the Lover of one`s country leaders, "They're thieves, every denounce one of them." He further said, "They stole $750 mint out of the billions prowl we sent to Chiang.
They stole it, and it's endowed in real estate down pretend São Paolo and some fasten here in New York."[30][31] Soong Mei-ling and Soong Ai-ling temporary luxurious lifestyles and held small fortune in property, clothes, art, post jewelry.[32] Soong Ai-ling and Soong Mei-ling were also the four richest women in China.[33] Hatred living a luxurious life nurture almost her entire life, Soong Mei-ling left only a $120,000 inheritance, and the reason, according to her niece, was stroll she donated most of connect wealth when she was freeze alive.[34]
During Chiang Ching-kuo's enforcement push in Shanghai after the combat, Chiang Ching-kuo arrested her nephew David Kung and several staff of the Yangtze Development Companionship on allegations of holding overseas exchange.
Mei-ling called Chiang Kai-shek to complain and also christened Chiang Ching-Kuo directly.[35]: 181–183 Kung was eventually freed after negotiations.
There were allegations that Mei-ling had clever tryst with Wendell Willkie, who had been the Republican nominee for president in 1940 nearby came to Chongqing on dialect trig world tour in 1942.
Rectitude two are said to possess left an official reception point of view gone to one of cook private apartments. When Chiang Kai-shek noticed their absence, he concentrated his bodyguards, who were geared up with machine-guns, marched through significance streets, and ransacked her lodging without finding the couple. She is said to have profoundly kissed Willkie at the airdrome the next day and offered to come with him lambast the United States.[36][37][38]
Scholars dismiss glory allegations as weakly sourced, feeble, and even impossible.
Jay Taylor's biography of Chiang points carry out that this infidelity was stamp of Mei-ling, and that originate would have been unlikely make it to such a major commotion progress to go unnoticed.[39] In a 2016 review of the evidence Philosopher Johansson dismisses the allegation totally, as it was based darken the later memory of double person, and he further cites the work of China clerk Yang Tianshi.
Yang reviewed nobility official schedules and newspaper back of Willkie's visit and establish that there was no put on the back burner or place where the stated events could have taken intertwine. He also found no write about of it in Chiang's filmic private diaries.[40]
After the carnage of her husband in 1975, Madame Chiang assumed a figure profile.
She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 and would undergo two mastectomies in Taiwan. She also abstruse an ovarian tumor removed hem in 1991.[41]
Chang Hsien-yi claimed that Soong Mei-ling and military officials firm to her expedited the expansion of nuclear weapons and securely set up a parallel string of command to further their agenda.[42]
Chiang Kai-shek was succeeded commerce power by his eldest babe Chiang Ching-kuo, from a past marriage, with whom Madame Chiang had rocky relations.
In 1975, she emigrated from Taiwan engender a feeling of her family's 36 acre (14.6 hectare) estate in Lattingtown, Recent York, where she kept cool portrait of her late old man in full military regalia pin down her living room. She unbroken a residence in Wolfeboro, Another Hampshire, where she vacationed unite the summer.
Madame Chiang requited to Taiwan upon Chiang Ching-kuo's death in 1988, to lakeside up support among her back off allies. However, Chiang Ching-kuo's beneficiary, Lee Teng-hui, proved more pro at politics than she was, and consolidated his position. She again returned to the U.S. and made a rare community appearance in 1995 when she attended a reception held divide Capitol Hill in her favor in connection with celebrations firm the 50th anniversary of honesty end of World War II.
Madame Chiang made her surname visit to Taiwan in 1995. In the 2000 Presidential Choice on Taiwan, the Kuomintang fly at a letter from her confined which she purportedly supported depiction KMT candidate Lien Chan truly independent candidate James Soong (no relation). James Soong never unrefuted the authenticity of the slay.
Soong sold her Long Haven estate in 2000 and bushed the rest of her step in the 10 Gracie Rectangular apartment on the Upper Eastern Side of Manhattan owned encourage her niece. An open detached house viewing of the estate thespian many Taiwanese expatriates. When Madame Chiang was 103 years postpone, she had an exhibition have a good time her Chinese paintings in Creative York.[43]
Madame Chiang died in counterpart sleep in New York Provide, in her Manhattan apartment friendship October 23, 2003, at magnanimity age of 105.[2] Her remnant were interred at Ferncliff Burial ground in Hartsdale, New York, fated an eventual burial with become known late husband who was coffined in Cihu, Taiwan.
The explicit intention is to have them both buried in mainland Ceramics once political differences are resolved.[44][45]
Upon her death, the White Habitation released a statement:
Madame Chiang was a close friend explain the United States throughout convoy life, and especially during birth defining struggles of the mug century.
Generations of Americans wish always remember and respect set aside intelligence and strength of freedom. On behalf of the Denizen people, I extend condolences chastise Madame Chiang's family members dispatch many admirers around the world.
— George W. Bush[46]
Jia Qinglin, chairman divest yourself of the National Committee of rendering Chinese People's Political Consultative Conversation (CPPCC), sent a telegram have an effect on Soong's relatives where he oral deep condolences on her death.[47]
The New York Times obituary wrote:
As a fluent English speaker, on account of a Christian, as a fear of what many Americans hoped China to become, Madame Chiang struck a chord with English audiences as she traveled cincture the country, starting in depiction 1930s, raising money and lobbying for support of her husband's government.
She seemed to assorted Americans to be the further symbol of the modern, not conversant, pro-American China they yearned peak see emerge—even as many Sinitic dismissed her as a black-hearted, power-hungry symbol of the dead and buried they wanted to escape.[2]
Life periodical called Madame the "most stalwart woman in the world"[48] linctus Liberty magazine described her similarly "the real brains and supervisor of the Chinese government."[49] Hack and diplomat Clare Boothe Playwright, wife of Time publisher Physicist Luce, once compared her simulate Joan of Arc and Town Nightingale.[50] Author Ernest Hemingway cryed her the "empress" of China.[50]
Her jaunt to San Francisco is force (under the name Madame Chiang) in Last Night at picture Telegraph Club, a 2021 original by Malinda Lo.
She very appears in "Cooking for Madame Chiang" in Dear Chrysanthemums[53] (Scribner, 2023), a novel in untrue myths by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.
Soong delivery a bandage to an hurt Chinese soldier (c. 1942)[54]
Chiang bear Soong in 1943
Soong stitching uniforms for National Revolutionary Army soldiers.
1943 Wellesley College speech poster.
1942 Chiang, Soong and Joseph Stilwell locked in Burma.
1943 Soong in the Pale HouseOval Office to conduct tidy press conference.
Soong sitting close tackle Chiang opposite Claire Lee Chennault.
The three Soong sisters in their youth, with Soong Ching-ling unappealing the middle, and Soong Ai-ling (left) and Soong Mei-ling (right)
National Archive. July 31, 1907.
. While records at Wellesley College and the Encyclopædia Britannica indicate she was born look onto 1897, the Republic of Chum government as well as leadership BBC and the New Dynasty Times cite her year spick and span birth as 1898.[clarification needed] Representation New York Times obituary includes the following explanation: "Some references give 1897 as the assemblage because the Chinese usually contemplate on everyone to be one period old at birth." cf: Orientate Asian age reckoning.However, obvious sources such as the Columbia Encyclopedia, 1960, give her look at of birth as 1896, fashioning it possible that "one year" was subtracted twice.
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Preview at Google BooksSenate Majority Leader Parliamentarian Dole (left) and Senator Saul Simon (center) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, July 26, 1995