Mme Sun Yat Sen Soong Ching Ling

This volume is a collection in five parts, of the articles, speeches and statements of Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen) made between July 1927 and July 1952.

The most famous sisters in China, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power during a time of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations. Red Sister, Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen; Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek; Big Sister, Ei-Ling, became Chiang's unofficial main adviser, and made herself one of China's richest women.

With the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in the eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taiwan. An epic historical tapestry, this wonderfully wrought narrative brings to life what Americans should know about China -- the superpower we are inextricably linked with -- the way its people think and their code of behavior, both vastly different from our own. The story revolves around this fascinating woman and her family: her father, a peasant who raised himself into Shanghai society and sent his daughters to college in America in a day when Chinese women were kept purposefully uneducated; her mother, an unlikely Methodist from the Mandarin class; her husband, a military leader and dogmatic warlord; her sisters, one married to Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China, the other to a seventy-fifth lineal descendant of Confucius; and her older brother, a financial genius. This was the Soong family, which, along with their partners in marriage, was largely responsible for dragging China into the twentieth century. Brilliantly narrated, this fierce and bloody drama also includes U.S. Army General Joseph Stilwell; Claire Chennault, head of the Flying Tigers; Communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai; murderous warlords; journalists Henry Luce, Theodore White, and Edgar Snow; and the unfortunate State Department officials who would be purged for predicting (correctly) the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. As the representative of an Eastern ally in the West, Madame Chiang was befriended -- before being rejected -- by the Roosevelts, stayed in the White House for long periods during World War II, and charmed the U.S. Congress into giving China billions of dollars. Although she was dubbed the Dragon Lady in some quarters, she was an icon to her people and is certainly one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth century.

“If the story of the Soong family were told as fiction, people would say it was fascinating but too improbable. . . . A dramatic human chronicle . . . engrossing.” —The New York Times Book Review In the early twentieth century, few women in China were to prove so important to the rise of Chinese nationalism and liberation from tradition as the three extraordinary Soong sisters—Eling, Chingling and Mayling—who would each marry historic figures. Told with wit and verve by New Yorker correspondent Emily Hahn, a remarkable woman in her own right, the biography of the Soong sisters reveals the story of China through both World Wars. It also chronicles the changes to Shanghai as they relate to a very eccentric family that had the courage to speak out against the ruling regime. Greatly influencing the history of modern China, they interacted with their government and military to protect the lives of those who could not be heard, and appealed to the West to support China during the Japanese invasion. “[A] first-rate reportorial job on three distinguished women.” —Kirkus Reviews “A spirited, well-informed book . . . a fascinating saga . . . Hahn skillfully interweaves the personal material which she has collected in abundance with some indispensable background knowledge of Chinese history.” —The Atlantic

The story of Sun Yat-sen's crusade to establish the People's Republic of China, from the time he finished college to his death.