by Emily Hahn
McTyeire is still the most important foreign-style school for Chinese girls in Shanghai. The old buildings on Hankow Road are gone; the school has moved out to Yuyuen Road. In those days of slow transportation, Hankow Road was a long way from the Soong house in Hongkew, but Eling made its acquaintance through the church next to it on Thibet Road, that which is now called the Moore Memorial Church. Charlie Soong was head of the Sunday school there — he remained a pillar of his Church even though he had given up preaching — and every Sunday he attended service with his wife and those children who were old enough to be brought. The choir was formed of the older McTyeire girls, of sixteen years or thereabouts. Eling, five years old, marked the fact that they had a special place to sit in; she was fascinated. When they sang she was captivated. From that time on her heart was set on McTyeire, which seemed a sort of heaven. Mrs Soong argued that her eldest daughter was too small to start out in the world on her own, but Charles Soong’s daughter would not be thwarted.
At last Charlie himself took Eling with him and went to Miss Helen Richardson, the principal, to ask if it were possible to place his five-year-old child in McTyeire. Miss Richardson looked at the child, diminutive in bright-colored trousers, with her hair in a pigtail. In English, jokingly, she asked the baby if she really wanted to join the school; in English Eling replied stoutly, surprising the teacher, that she wanted it more than anything. At last a trial was settled upon; Eling was to come as a boarder, and they would see how it worked out.
There were still only three children in the Soong household when the little girl started out on her great adventure. For a week she was at a fever heat of excitement over the preparations, the clothes and The Trunk. It was her first private, individual trunk, a beautiful black, shiny one, and her disappointment was intense when it was discovered that with all her new clothes — for it was mild autumn weather in Shanghai, and they were not heavy — The Trunk was not filled to the brim. Eling insisted upon bringing out all her winter clothes too and filling that space, and she had her way.
The day came at last. Eling pestered her father until they were actually setting out for the school, trunk and all, and then — then she didn’t feel very well. Her father, quick as always to notice her change of mood, asked her if she wanted to stay home, after all. “No!” said Eling. The family, gathered at the door, had various comments to make: her grandmother kept protesting that it was positively cruel to let a small child go off alone like that, and her mother began to waver. It was settled, said Eling, and she was determined to go, but — what about readme? They had lovely teas at home; would they at the school?
The last thing her mother did for her, then, was to pack a basket of delicacies, with one packet of Gollard & Bowser’s butterscotch and one of bitter black chocolate, by special request of Eling. Then everything had been done. The die was cast. The Trunk was loaded. Eling, in a Scotch plaid jacket with green trousers, set off into the great world by her father’s side.
In Miss Richardson’s study Charlie took leave of her. Then the floodgates broke. Eling made one great leap and clung round his neck, sobbing as if she were being sold into slavery. She cannot remember how he managed to tear himself away, but that afternoon he sent a servant to find out how she was getting along, since he could not bear to come himself. Miss Richardson took the child in her lap and rocked her back to calm.
Because there were no other babies in the school, Eling was the only pupil in her class, under special charge of Miss Richardson, who tutored her privately for two years. The principal of the San Yih Tang, a school for poor children on the Yangkingpang (Avenue Edward Seventh), was a good friend of Miss Richardson, who went every day by ricksha to see her and always took Eling along, sitting on her lap. Chinese in the streets would look at the foreign woman and the little girl and call after them, “Foreign slave! Foreign slave!”
Eling became the mascot of the school, and in a short time Miss Richardson’s loving care did a great deal to soften the shock of having left home. Eling still regrets that this wise and kind woman died before she herself was old enough to appreciate her and could thank her, however inadequately. Miss Richardson taught her the old rhyme:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead . . .
“Who is that little girl?” Miss Richardson would say. Eling always replied in Chinese, “Me, of course!” One of the older girls remembers and still chuckles at the memory of Eling’s second term, when she was at the awkward age and was losing her baby teeth. Her two front teeth were gone just then, and the older girl said, “Soong Tai-tai [Madame Soong], what’s happened to your teeth?”
“Tai-tai,” said Eling politely, “the front gates were stolen.”
Her desk was too high, and her feet did not touch the ground, and after an hour or so of good, old-fashioned schooling her legs always went to sleep. She suffered horribly from that, and nobody thought of it or of remedying the situation. The Chinese lessons saved her from paralysis, because, as she repeated the words, chanting in proper fashion, she was able to sway back and forth and so to start the blood flowing through her legs again. Also, she never had enough to eat. The bowls of food were put down in the middle of the table, and everybody grabbed at once; Eling’s grab was neither so far nor so quick as those of the others, and she was usually left behind.
Another agony was the loneliness at night. While the older students prepared their work in the evening, she lay in bed alone in the great dormitory upstairs, quaking with terror. The evening exercises always closed with the singing of the hymn, “Abide with Me.” Even today when she hears those solemn strains a quite special feeling of relief floods her heart.
CHAPTER IV
Boxer Rebellion Days
Eling was ten years old, Chingling seven, Mayling only one at the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, which incidentally was not a rebellion at all, but was so called by the Allied Powers as a euphemism, a tactful gesture toward Tzu Hsi when they were all become friends again. Shanghai was not in the area of most disturbance, but anything that affected the Christians, especially the Protestants, of China must affect the Soongs, and Charles and his wife watched the catastrophe with poignant anxiety.
Feng Yu-hsiang, the “Christian general” who has at last joined forces with Chiang’s followers, was at the time in the new military training school at Paotingfu, and his record of the period has interest as being written from the viewpoint of a Chinese who actually took part in it:
The Righteous Harmony Fists Society was originally composed of the remnants of the White Lotus Cult. At first they raised their banner in opposition to the emperors of the Ming Dynasty and carried on their meetings in secret. Then the extreme hatred felt by the Chinese people for the foreign churches dyed them an anti-foreign color: from inward they turned outward . . . . “With the Manchus to down foreigners” was their program.
The people joined in with this movement from all sides, like the wind and the clouds. Everywhere they burned churches, slaughtered foreigners, destroyed telegraph wires and pillaged railroads. It was expressive of their anti-foreign sentiment, and it showed graphically what deep-rooted and serious hatred was felt by our people against imperialism.
At its high tide, the secondary movement sprang up to mop up the “Secondary Hairy Ones.” These were the baptized Chinese, those who with foreigners behind them had always insulted their compatriots . . . foxes who carried on their outlawry with tigers behind them. But the search was not well organized; it had no standards, and anyone was allowed to make accusations without any proof being asked. If a man had a cross in his house he was immediately accused of being a “Secondary Hairy One”; if he used oil lamps, oil or matches, he was again accused . . . .
That year in the First Moon, on the eighth day, the Military Training Corps received orders to put down the Righteous Harmony Fists. At first our troops marched away from Paotingfu along the Baiku River; there we went into action. All
the people were silenced and disappeared; the society was completely quenched. But that evening our commander, Chang, a native of Tsinan, Shantung, spoke to us unexpectedly in this fashion: “We must not offend the Hundred Surnames [the citizens of China]. The Righteous Harmony Fists Society is admirable. They fight foreigners, so we must not interrupt them in their work. We were ordered to come here; we cannot help that. We were only compelled, however, to come here — but this is a secret. None of you must speak of this outside.” . . .
So it happened that when the troops forced them east, the Hundred Surnames who were Boxers drilled in the west. When our troops went west, they went east again to drill there. . . . In the beginning when the society first flared up, the Manchu Imperial Court was a little shaken. The Boxers’ program had made it clear that they were both anti-foreign and anti-Manchu . . . . The anti-foreignism could easily develop into civil war. For this reason the Imperial Court hesitated awhile. Should they destroy the Boxers? Or follow the way the wind was blowing, utilize them, lead them, transform them into a purely anti-foreign movement? At last they decided upon the latter policy, and soon the Righteous Harmony Fists were training under the government. Thus a childish movement of the people was utilized by the Manchu Court.
The rest of the story is familiar to most Westerners. Shanghai’s part in these alarms was that of a bystander. A false report that all the foreigners in Peking had been massacred on July 14 gave everybody a bad scare. Li Hung-chang, trying valiantly to save China from the Empress’ shortsighted policy, came to Shanghai to talk matters over with the consular body, but they rebuffed him, referring him to the envoys, if they were still alive, and to the home governments if they were not. Three thousand Indian troops sent to Shanghai by the British from Hongkong relieved the tension somewhat, though the Chinese government protested their landing. Then the French landed a hundred sailors and some Annamite soldiers.
By the time the news came through that the legations had been relieved on August 14, Shanghai was an armed camp. The German offering to peace and order arrived, though a little late, and a splendidly significant military review was held on the racecourse. These foreign troops were not withdrawn until 1902. The protocol was signed in 1901, a year after the relief of Peking. Once again the missionaries in China were safe.
When Eling was ten, and an old resident at McTyeire, her future husband, Kung Hsiang-hsi, was a student in Peking, in one of the colleges that were later to become merged into Yenching University. He was an adventurer in his way, for he had forsaken his family’s religious beliefs and was studying foreign culture under constant protest from home.
The Kungs are an old family in Shansi: Hsiang-hsi himself is the seventy-fifth descendant of Confucius. For generations they have been bankers and pawnshop owners, and until Hsiang-hsi’s greatgrandfather’s time they interested themselves in statesmanship. This great-grandfather decided at an early age to try to take an important degree, for which many tried but only one in a great while was chosen. According to the cruelly exacting methods of his day, he studied and studied for his examination, sacrificing his health to this one ambition, and when he was twenty-four the great test came. In the examination hall the pale boy began to write his paper, when suddenly blood gushed out of his nose and mouth. He was taken home a broken man, only one of the many who met their death in this manner. Before he died, however, he called his little son to his bedside and said:
“Swear that you will never enter public life, nor ever allow any of our family to do so.”
Hsiang-hsi’s grandfather kept the vow and saw to it that his son in turn stayed home and attended to the private family business. Hsiang-hsi himself was raised according to the same precept and might have been in Shansi now but that he was a delicate child with a tendency to goiter. His parents took him to many native doctors, and when their skill failed he was brought to a mission hospital. There an American doctor operated on him and brought him back to health. The influence of this man was responsible for Hsiang-hsi’s conversion to Christianity.
Keeping his secret, he merely requested permission to attend school in Peking, and this was reluctantly granted. He was there when the Boxer trouble flared up, and his history at this time is particularly interesting, for Hsiang-hsi was already a revolutionary at heart, though he had not yet made the acquaintance of Dr Sun’s Three Principles. As a fifteen-year-old he had watched the troops marching north to fight the Japanese. Most of the men he saw happened to come from Szechwan, and they marched barefoot, as they always did. Now Hsiang-hsi came from Shansi in the north, where the poorest coolie is careful in cold weather to have shoes, and he was appalled at what he considered the cold-blooded cruelty of the Ch’ing, to allow their soldiers to suffer in such a manner.
When the Empress Dowager put a stop to the reforms of the Hundred Days and incarcerated Kuang Hsu, all Hsiang-hsi’s dislike of the Ch’ing recurred to him and crystallized in a hatred for the Empress. Kuang Hsu he looked upon as a tragic nobleman, an exception to his family. At the university he made friends with a large number of students who shared his views, especially with a man named Li who was several years older than himself, though also in the first-year class. Li’s ideas were more practical than those of the others; he had imbibed a number of revolutionary principles and liked to proselytize. He was more or less a leader among the boys, and Hsiang-hsi was his special friend. The group formed a secret society the chief object of which was to get rid of Tzu Hsi and replace Kuang Hsu on his throne; they met at night, and each one swore a solemn oath never to abandon his emperor.
It was Li who came to Hsiang-hsi one day with a fully developed plan of action. He had made friends, he said, with one of the Palace eunuchs. He wanted Hsiang-hsi, as the wealthiest boy of his acquaintance, to finance the venture he had thought of; namely, to bribe the eunuch to allow him into the Palace, where he could get close to the Empress Dowager. If only he could accomplish this, he said, he would manage somehow to assassinate her. The main thing was to get into the Palace.
Hsiang-hsi agreed and scraped together all his money: book allowance, railway fare and clothes money. Then the Boxers started their war and put all other ideas out of the minds of the students. Hsiang-hsi hurried to the side of his good friends, an American mission family, and tried to help them to escape. One of the women sprained her ankle just as they were preparing to get away, and because she could not go, the others too remained, knowing that they would be killed. To the Shansi boy they entrusted their last letters home, then forced him to go into the country. They died; the details of their death are unknown.
Hsiang-hsi, carrying the letters that were practically his own death warrant, made his way through many difficulties to his home, to which his frantic relatives had summoned him. In an inner room he confessed that he was a Christian and said that he could not stay with them for the sake of their own safety. It came as a double shock to the Kungs, but they would not let him go. By night they smuggled him from one place to another, and his grandmother kept the letters, the nature of which he did not dare tell her. Hsiang-hsi and his people survived the Boxer Rebellion, but he was haunted by the thought of his duty to the dead, and as soon as he could he sailed for America with their last messages. He was to stay there for years.
The future Madame Sun was just starting in at school when Sun Yat-sen in 1900 returned to Japan from Europe, where he had been living in prudent obscurity since his flight from China in 1895. His first attempt to overthrow the Manchus had failed, but he was back at the same work, now making friends with the liberal Japanese, consulting with them and listening to their promises of help. Sun, the same age as Charlie, had by this time adopted the foreign style; four years before, he had cut off his queue and now looked rather like a Japanese himself.
Mayling was one year old: Chiang Kai-shek, a fourteen-year-old boy in the country of Chekiang, was looking purposefully toward the new military training school at Paotingfu . . . .
McTyeire on Hankow Road consisted of two b
uildings, and owing to the haphazard state of growing Shanghai at that time, one was lit by gas and the other by electricity. Chingling, the second little Soong girl (Madame Sun), whose foreign name was Rosamond, did not emulate Eling’s Spartan behavior; she appeared at McTyeire at the age of seven. She was a quiet child with a great aptitude for English. Her hair was short and did not make very impressive plaits, and the other girls called her “Little Pigtail.” A former schoolmate says that, of the three as she remembers them, Eling had the most sophisticated air; she had great poise for a child of her age. No doubt those early years away from home had something to do with it.
A similar experiment was made when Mayling was five years old. Partly because Eling had survived and partly because they thought the little girl would be better off with her sisters, another special arrangement was made with McTyeire whereby she was to attend the kindergarten that was now connected with the school, and live in the dormitory with Chingling. (She was six years younger than Chingling, remember.)