Legend of the Dragon Lady

BIOGRAPHY: The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern ChinaBy Hannah Pakula, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 618pp. £27.50

ALWAYS FRAIL and, as she got older, constantly in and out of the best hospitals in the United States – where she took a whole floor and entertained lavishly – this tiny Chinese woman nevertheless lived to be 106, and died only in 2003. No wonder Hannah Pakula has made a huge volume out of her life, because it is the chronicle of a vast country in transition over a century.

Strictly speaking, Soong Mei-ling – Madame Chiang – is not the central figure of the book. Neither is her husband, though he is much more so than she. It is China itself, that astonishing country the western world regards with a slightly uneasy awe. Pakula has written an engrossing study of China over 100 years, of its internal wars and revolutions, as well as an account of its bloody struggle with Japan. And it is by no means a hagiography of “Madame”.

In Beijing, in 2005, I witnessed in China the silence of women. They are almost totally absent from the real power structures. I watched while thousands of them applauded their male government, as they “celebrated” the 10th anniversary of the World Conference on Women. Everywhere I went, women danced and sang and praised their “great leaders”. Not a dissenting voice was heard. One was overwhelmed by the scale of the place, and conscious of the unseen hordes of struggling Chinese, while 400 million have raised themselves out of poverty and populated vibrant cities like Shanghai.

All the more amazing, then, that Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a woman emerging from old China – her father a peasant who broke into Shanghai society after conversion to Methodism, her mother an aristocrat from the Mandarin class (who barely escaped the foot-binding forced on her sisters) – should become a world figure. Her story starts as China was in a state of flux, a volcano long dormant, about to erupt. Her father moved from his peasant world to being a convert to US Methodism and, finally, a wealthy printer of Bibles. Mei-ling (“Beautiful Mood”) was educated in Boston, graduating from Wellesley College, and was one of the three famous Soong sisters, one of whom married Sun Yat-sen, a major figure credited with overthrowing the Manchu dynasty, the last emperors of China.

When this pleasure-loving Soong sister, always beautifully dressed and articulate, a leader of Shanghai society, met Chiang Kai-shek, he was on his way to the top – a man determined to unify China. He was also much older and much married, and was told sternly by her sister Ai-ling that he would have to blank out his first marriage, his concubine and his second marriage. He duly did so, and the elaborate wedding took place on December lst, 1927, between Chiang, head of the National Revolutionary Army, and Mei-ling, in-law of Sun Yat-sen, late founder of the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party. Powerful links, indeed.

Chiang Kai-shek never learned English. That is one of the reasons why his wife became so prominent: she accompanied him as translator and wife to every important meeting with foreigners, at home and abroad, mainly with a succession of powerful US figures. She then took to travelling alone to the United States, where she was indefatigable in her advocacy of China’s need for support in every form to defeat the feared and hated Japanese. She became a media star and the darling of US high society.

While China tore itself apart between wars with Japan and internal struggles with Mao Zedong, Mei-ling was a strong and faithful supporter of the Kuomintang and her husband, who according to Pakula was a tempestuous, volatile, frequently tyrannical man. How easily her eyes were closed to the suffering of countless millions of Chinese in armies trekking across the huge country. Chiang Kai-shek never wanted to hear about such things, and all those around him – including Mei-ling – learned not to tell him. She managed, however, to convert him to Christianity within three years of their marriage.

Despite Mei-ling’s celebrity status in the US, and her access to presidents and prime ministers, she had to watch the long, bloody decline of her husband’s power and the inevitable waning of her own status. Along the way she had celebrated Pearl Harbor – it meant at last the US war with Japan that the Chinese had desperately needed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were welcomed: “Complete victory has come to us.” But political shifts meant that by 1948 President Truman had cast off Chiang Kai-shek. He later wrote: “Chiang and his gang . . . were corrupt as they come – every damn one of them ought to be in jail.”

Then came the retreat to Taiwan, where Chiang still behaved as a tyrannical despot. Mei-ling frequently escaped to the US, and stayed overly long in the best hospitals with real or imaginary illnesses. Sometimes, however, she was strong enough to travel around making speeches for nationalist China. But her star – and Chiang's – were waning. The New York Timesin 1965 said that for some she was the eloquent courageous personification of "Free China", for others the Dragon Lady: she could be the poised Wellesley alumna, the haughty empress, the lady patriot, the hard-boiled politician, even the coquettish Georgia belle.

She spent her final three decades in New York, where she occasionally emerged, immaculately coiffed and discreetly jewelled, to make brief public appearances. She had achieved legendary status. It’s a great story.

Gemma Hussey is a former minister for education, and founder member of the Women’s Political Association. She currently chairs the Ireland Romania Cultural Foundation