by Emily Hahn
Then too, as a woman she was up against a bigger problem than her father’s. Unfortunately for her, most Chinese resent to an extreme degree any attempt to make them depart from their norm. They had no desire to be changed by these young snips. Instinctively they were resenting more and more the returned students with their unspoken criticism and unhappy disappointment in the land of their birth. Eling was face to face with the enormous inertia of the most conservative nation in the world.
Her foreign-style dress, her manner of speaking English, which she used instinctively in the early days following her return, her very record of scholarship made matters difficult: people simply could not understand any girl of their circle becoming so changed. The period did not last long. Eling fought a gallant battle and won it, not only for herself but in behalf of her brothers and sisters who were to follow her home across the Pacific. Ultimately she won over the old neighbors and friends who had been so suspicious of her; to get along with her mother was more difficult, but she managed. The Old Guard, who had decried the new education on the grounds that it makes a girl forward and unwomanly, now retracted their words. They had not even the satisfaction of complaining that Eling had lost the tongue of her forefathers: her Shanghai dialect was clear and fluent.
Some harm had been done, however. Only a small amount of ill-humored gossip came to her ears, but it was enough. Though she was a self-possessed young woman and had developed a magnificent poise, this manner of hers hid a painful shyness, and criticism wounded her deeply, even then. Those who are chosen by fate to act on the stage of public life should be provided with thick skins or with preoccupations that help them to ignore the millions of eyes that are always following every move. Her sisters were not to suffer quite so much. Chingling was to be supported by a burning faith and a fulfilled hero-worship as recompense; Mayling was born with a vigorous confidence in humanity, which carried her through. Eling, with her keen intelligence and her unfailing ability to read character, early in her career fell victim, to a sort of stage fright that was to accompany her for many years.
History is a progressive simplification and selection. We know that Charlemagne existed, but the color of his eyes, his taste in food and music, his manner toward servants must remain like the song the Sirens sang: matters of conjecture. Abraham Lincoln, unlike Charlemagne, lived yesterday, so these engaging details have not yet been polished away from his figure. We can build up a dozen pictures of him, from a dozen angles, and the ingredients for these portraits all come from the same source — his companions. If it were not for a man’s contemporaries we would be forced in our search for his likeness to believe implicitly in his own records, a dangerous proceeding because modesty warps the memory, and mirrors are not so good as human eyes.
Yet History insidiously works her will upon Abraham Lincoln even today. Even today we believe one of his biographers rather than another because he has a more entertaining style, or because he selects his anecdotes with an eye for effect rather than truth. We are still too close to Lincoln to run any grave danger of misrepresentation; his generation is still enough with us to defend his likeness. But who knows what will happen to his name within the next century?
While the Soongs live and themselves mold their statues before the eyes of History it should be a simple matter, one would think, to know what they are really like. Facts exist: the world witnesses their actions, and can compile the records accordingly. But the trouble begins there, since the world is not an accurate witness. In one lifetime the opinion of the public may run the gamut from indifference to black hatred or wild enthusiasm. A man may be without honor abroad and yet a god in his own country, as Hitler’s biographers demonstrate. Generalissimo Chiang, considered by the friendly Powers of the West and by his own people the strongest Chinese of the age, is portrayed to the Japanese public as a grasping, stubborn opportunist who plunged his people into a hopeless and senseless war rather than lose his job. Until recently Wang Ching-wei was an honored statesman, and the public was indignant at an attempted assassination of him. Now there is a price on his head. The philosopher knows when he looks down upon a cheering mob how easily those cheers can be turned into bloodthirsty howls.
Regard the Soongs. Today they are recognized as the remarkable family they have shown themselves, even by those of their critics who do not approve of their activities. Madame Chiang is acclaimed wherever she appears, like a cinema star rather than a political figure; Madame Kung is known as a woman of foresight.
Madame Sun occupies a unique position, revered even by conservatives for her adherence to her principles and her loyalty to her husband’s ideals. China has learned to feel proud of these women. Whereas in the old days the Chinese would have admired the Soong sisters, considering them as interesting manifestations of Nature, they would not have felt any kinship for these women if they were not able to claim blood relationship. The ultimate effect of their careers would have been invisible to the shrewd, kindly eyes of the old-style Chinese subject. Yet it is in large part due to their own efforts that the Chinese today are capable of appreciating the virtues of their compatriots as something of national value, something to be proud of as well as to admire abstractly.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago the Soongs, as young returned students, occupied a different position in the public mind. What did people think of them in those days? Oddly enough this opinion depended in large part upon the fact that they were Christian.
It has already been pointed out that the Chinese are usually tolerant of any kind of religious worship. The Yangtze riots and the Boxer uprising were due to political questions rather than to any hatred for Christianity itself. The mobs who looted mission houses and burned churches were worked up to their frenzy by their leaders’ allegations against the foreign teachers of political wire-pulling, and by converts’ occasional abuse of privileges obtained through missionary influence. Some of these accusations, it must not be forgotten, were justified, though the revenge they took was not: the more ridiculous charges were made by better brains than those of the mob. There was method in their carefully nurtured madness.
As to the unconverted upper classes of the Shanghai Chinese, many of them were prejudiced against Christians for a special reason. At the time few people among them took religious questions very seriously. For generations under Manchu rule the Chinese had lost hope and integrity, and those who should have been devoting their talents to official work had gone to seed, mentally and morally. It was customary, even fashionable, to quote Confucius’ “Virtues,” but scarcely anyone tried to live up to the Sage’s ideal. They sought influence, money or power, reverting to a completely egotistic philosophy. Among themselves they respected only the wealthy and powerful.
In the beginning, Charles Soong’s family was neither. Their only notable quality was that they were Christian, and the fact that Charlie was beginning to make a success in his work was his one recommendation to his associates. Mrs Soong’s piety was almost a mystery to the non-Christian women, of her acquaintance, who used to say that converts to Christianity had taken this step merely in order to eat at the missionaries’ table. A cynical expression was quoted regarding converts: “He eats religion.” Mrs Soong’s clan had already attracted adverse criticism when the Widow Hsu, of another branch of the family, a Roman Catholic, bequeathed a large tract of land at Siccawei to the Jesuits. It was said that she had cheated her descendants, which according to common belief was as bad a crime as that of neglecting her ancestors.
“Not only do those Hsus forget their ancestors, but their children too!” gasped Shanghai. “And such a good property, too!” The missionaries were widely known as wicked, dangerous, grasping people who attempted to do away with ancestor-reverence, the only cult still taken seriously by the Chinese. It was not easy to shock those good folk, but the Christians succeeded in doing it.
“These converted people,” said the terrible old ladies who governed their families with iron hands, “simply have no ancestors, that’s t
he truth of the matter. They have sacrificed their fathers; they look upon foreigners as their ancestors. They have deliberately transformed themselves into bastards!”
So when Mrs Soong and other ladies of the church went calling on their grim old relations and in-laws, they were treated with the exquisite politeness that is only possible when it is intended to chill the heart. As was natural, the moral outcasts began to depend more and more upon one another, less and less upon the old-fashioned conservative element of the town. They formed a tight little circle of the elect, and their old-lady critics promptly said:
“Now they have ruined their children’s prospects, just as I prophesied. No man of good family will ever marry those poor girls. No wonder they’re sent abroad to school! It’s their only chance to get off with some innocent.”
The point of view of the Christians was as a matter of fact ludicrously similar. They looked down on the Old Guard as criminally selfish people who cared only for the good of the family group, and who ruined their children’s chances in life by spoiling them . . . . “Beasts of burden,” said the iconoclasts, “for their sons and grandsons.”
Many a growing child had the opportunity to hear such argument, for and against, about it and about, whenever some straying sheep wandered into the fold of the church and elected to stay there. Not all of the families were as unanimous in their beliefs as were the Soongs. Many quarreled and split up on the rock of Christianity. Eling, therefore, was fortunate in that she was supported and encouraged by the most important group of all, her own people. Her mother understood her difficulties, surprisingly well considering that she herself had never been abroad. She was one of the leading spirits of her group, and these people had realized that they must begin to look toward the West. The progressives of Shanghai who admired Charles Soong now watched his children and wondered if they, too, might not make the modern gesture of educating their daughters. After all, if you ignored the croakings of the older people and took a fair view, it hadn’t seemed to hurt Eling a bit . . . .
Only Charles himself protested.
“Don’t send your children abroad,” he said to a friend, in whimsically rueful tones. “Nothing’s good enough for them when they come back. They want to turn everything upside down . . . . ‘Father, why can’t we have a bigger house? Father, why don’t we have a modern bathroom?’ Take my advice; keep your children at home!”
CHAPTER VIII
The Revolution
A fluke brought on the Revolution too early. Sun Yat-sen counted this effort as the eleventh attempt, and as the successful one — for two years. Actually it was not the Revolution of his first plans; it did not overthrow such tyrants as those he had inveighed against, years before. The old Empress Tzu Hsi was dead, having expired the day after her unlucky nephew Kuang Hsu departed this earth — helped on his journey, it was said, by his grim old aunt, an intrigante to her last breath. The new Emperor was a child.
Since 1900 the Ch’ing, realizing the inevitability of change, had been trying to reorganize their government to meet those demands, at least, which they could not ignore. Yuan Shih-kai, an experienced statesman, headed this last-minute reform; the Army organization was changed and the civil service examinations abandoned, just as Kuang Hsu had tried to do during the Hundred Days. The Ch’ing government also drafted a new code of laws that were never carried out, and even planned to introduce representation by popular vote in the Palace. Given time and a little common sense these compromises might have saved the Ch’ing; as it was, they were overthrown. It was too late.
Most of the preparation for the eleventh revolt was made in Szechwan, that distant wild province that had been misgoverned for so long. A local rebellion broke out there in September, 1911, but it was the Hankow incident that brought matters to a head. In readiness for the Revolution and against the return of Sun Yat-sen, bombs had been stored in various places in Hankow; one of these in a house in the Russian Concession went off by accident, on October ninth. Foreseeing embarrassing complications, the conspirators decided on the bold course and allowed everything to blow up prematurely. The Revolution began, officially as it were, the next day.
The district troops, already prepared, threw in with them; in a short time Wuhan (Wuchang and Hankow) fell to the rebels, and the revolt spread quickly over tinder that had long awaited the burning. Peking sent government troops, hoping to crush this manifestation as they had the preceding ones, but the fire had spread beyond their sphere of power. The Imperial forces did indeed recapture Wuhan, but on the eve of this triumph came news of the Revolutionists’ occupation of Nanking.
In Shanghai, Chen Chi-mei was one of the leading spirits among the rebels, and Chiang Kai-shek returned from school in Tokyo to report to him for service. Chiang had made Sun’s acquaintance in Japan at the meeting of Chinese students there; as soon as he heard of the Revolution he had slipped out of Tokyo and come back to China. Chen detailed him as Chief of Staff to take care of matters at Hangchow, and himself started operations in Chapei, a district of the native city of Shanghai, on November third. They captured the arsenal and then the Woosung forts, and on the fourth Shanghai was declared in the hands of the reformers.
In the International settlements, the foreigners were frightened or blase, according to their natures and their individual experience. It was just another war to the old hands. There was some frantic talk of helping the existing Government, on general principles, with man power, but everything went quickly and from their point of view harmlessly: they accepted the fait accompli. A couple of shells did fall into the Settlement, but no important national was harmed.
One American confesses to a moment of realization only when he saw the changing of the flags on the Custom House. When the Dragon Flag came down and the Five-Barred Flag went up, “This,” he said to himself, “is probably important.” That was all.
Among the Chinese there was more excitement. The men who had worked for so long under cover now came into the open at last and proudly hung out their flags. Flags were everywhere, fluttering from windows and over the fronts of shops.
Meantime Sun Yat-sen, father of the Revolution, was not to be found. He was in America, and happened at that time to be traveling through Colorado, working as usual to collect funds for his cause. On his way to breakfast in a Denver restaurant he first saw the news in a headline:
WUCHANG OCCUPIED BY REVOLUTIONISTS
Alone, thousands of miles from the scene of his success, he made a characteristic decision: his friends still needed money, no doubt, and he could do best by continuing to canvass for money. Sun continued toward New York. In St Louis he read in the newspapers that he was to be first President of the Republic. He decided to go to England and work for recognition of the new state; he was fairly sure of the friendly attitude of Japan and America, but England was not such a simple proposition.
He did not disclose his identity until he reached London. There he received a telegram addressed to “Sun Wen, London,” formally asking him to accept the Presidency, and it had been delivered at the Chinese Legation! A foreign friend to whose house the telegram was taken had prudently copied it out and then sent it back, saying that Sun was not with them. Thus it was from a copy, stolen out of the official correspondence of the Ch’ing Legation, that Sun learned of his country’s invitation.
The Four-Power Consortium group had already paid over one sum to the Imperial Court for railway construction in the East.
Sun arrived in London in time to stop a second loan. His actual request was that this amount be paid to the new Republic, and the Consortium did not refuse outright, but said that a recognized government would receive consideration. Sun was satisfied with this. He sailed from Marseilles for China, at last. In Hongkong he landed freely and under his own name for the first time in sixteen years of hiding and wandering. He arrived in Shanghai on Christmas Eve.
Meantime, as might be expected, there had been a lot of discussion and arrangement between the Imperialists, under the directi
on of Yuan Shih-kai, and the Revolutionists. Yuan, frantically summoned by the Peking Court to assist them, had taken his time about replying, which is one reason that the war had dragged on as long as it did. He was now working as liaison officer between the opposed factions, trying to persuade the Court to come to terms. The Peace Conference opened in Shanghai six days before Sun’s return.
In Nanking on January first, 1912, Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated the first President of the Provisional Government of the Republic. The Soong family, all of those who were in China, attended the ceremony; Charlie had been in a pleasant state of excitement and happiness ever since the return of his friend. He and his daughter Eling were in Nanking most of the time at this period.
In Georgia, the news of the successful Revolution inspired Chingling to write a paper about it. The article was published in the school paper in 1912. Mayling was not quite so stirred; she was still so young that the school limits were the boundaries of her universe, but Chingling’s paper is interesting.
THE GREATEST EVENT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
One of the greatest events of the twentieth century, the greatest event since Waterloo, in the opinion of many well-known educators and politicians, is the Chinese Revolution. It is a most glorious achievement. It means the emancipation of four hundred million souls from the thralldom of an absolute monarchy, which has been in existence for over four thousand years, and under whose rule “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” have been denied. It also signifies the downfall of a dynasty whose cruel extortions and selfishness have reduced the once prosperous nation to a poverty-stricken country. The overthrowing of the Manchu government means the destruction and expulsion of a court where the most barbaric customs and degrading morals were in existence.