China's sister act

Jung Chang’s first book Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China caused a sensation in the West. Published around the time the Soviet Union imploded and China’s economic miracle presaged the country’s swift rise to superpowerdom, it was the first semi-autobiographical account by a Chinese citizen of three generations of women — her grandmother, her mother and herself – during a seminal period of Chinese history. Unlike in China, where Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping shrewdly kept the cult of the Great Helmsman intact as he systematically dismantled his ideology, Wild Swans provided a triumphant capitalist West with compelling evidence of Mao’s (and communism’s) malign regime.

This latest offering, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, could be considered a complement to Wild Swans because it covers the story of three women over roughly the same span of Chinese history, though all were from the same generation. The similarity ends there, though, because the Soong Sisters came from a background that are as distant from the author’s as the earth is from Mars. They were what we would call a “Page 3” family, from a western-educated, comfortably circumstanced Christian elite (their father made a fortune printing Bibles). Ms Chang’s background was rooted in dutiful, mid-level party functionaries (she was born Chang Jung and reversed the surname later). Over the course of their lives, spanning the last days of the empire to the death of the youngest in 2003, the sisters became part of a powerful dynasty that dictated the fate of modern China. The sisters also remained the focus of intense scurrilous gossip in China (example: one bathed in milk every day, another had an affair with her young bodyguard). What made them worthy of a joint biography?

Two things, as Ms Chang explains in the introduction. First, they were all married to men who played a critical role in 20th century Chinese history. And second, by virtue of those marriages, the lives of all three intertwined with the tectonic changes in the fortunes of China in first half of the 20th century.

The youngest, May-ling, Little Sister, was the best known to the outside world. She married Chiang Kai Shek, who styled himself Generalissimo, resisted the Japanese, forced Mao on the Long March and became the United States’ wayward wartime ally. Then there was May-ling’s confidante, Ei-ling, the protective Big Sister, who married H H Kung, Chiang’s venal finance minister. Finally, there was Ching-ling, who married Sun Yat Sen, known (erroneously if this book is to bebelieved) as the “Father of China”, and leveraged that status to acquire a powerful position in Mao’s regime. In Chinese lore, one loved money (Big Sister Ei-ling), one loved power (Little Sister May-ling) and one loved her country (Red Sister Ching-ling).

Book details

Ms Chang explains that her book initially started out as a biography of Sun Yat-Sen but the “depth of character of his wife and sisters emerged” and captured her imagination. It is a pity that she did not persist with Sun’s biography because there are few popular histories about him. Ms Chang’s book suggests that his role in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and the creation of the republic is overrated, the artificial construct of, first, Chiang and, then, Mao to serve their own political ends. (It is ironic that the current Chinese administration is trying to resurrect Chiang’s reputation — deservedly flawed -- as part of its outreach to Taiwan.)

The result, however, is a somewhat lightweight, gossipy narrative history, worthy of a casual weekend read. The subject is fascinating enough to keep you turning the pages. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is how the three sisters remained extremely close even though Ching-ling aligned herself with Mao and eventually actively worked against the interests of her youngest sister after World War II. Ching-ling’s fraught relationship with Mao, trading on her status as Madame Sun, is also well told.

But Ms Chang does not contextualise the story sufficiently within the fabric of Chinese history. How did China’s absolute monarchy morph into a republic? What role did the warlords play in this transition (they must have, because Sun certainly aligned himself with some of them)? She tells us that Chiang decided to align himself with the Soongs because he could not trust anyone else. Why should someone who had won a civil war (also given the lightest of treatment) not have confidants outside his in-laws’ circle? She writes that Big Sister, Ei-ling, became an influential advisor to Chiang but does not offer any examples of what this influential advice might be.  

Ms Chang may have been hampered by the fact that she needed to keep the focus on the sisters, who were actors at one remove — bar May-ling, undoubtedly the most extraordinary of the three and deserving of her own biography. My own takeaway from the book is that Sun Yat-Sen, far from being a wise Confucian-type figure we are given to believe, was a horrible fellow who conspired with gangsters and mistreated his concubines and his wives (including Ching-ling, his second wife, whom he once used as cover to escape his rivals). All of this is useful for future drawing room gossip. But my attempt to learn more about a critical period of Chinese history, which is surely the responsibility of any professional historian-biographer, did not make much headway.