by Emily Hahn
It is a long journey into the interior, even today. In those days there were no roads to Taiku, Kung’s own city. The young couple went as far as possible, to Yutse, by train, and the rest of the journey was done by sedan chair, with sixteen bearers, for Madame, and by horse for Dr Kung. It was Eling’s first experience of life in the interior of China, and she was awed and fearful of what awaited her. She had heard stories of the primitive conditions under which people lived in the country and she had steeled herself to find unknown tortures of discomfort.
The Kung family house was a complete surprise to her. Taiku was known as “The Wall Street of China,” because it was there that most of the important bankers lived, and her husband’s home was one of the biggest. It was immense, a palace built with thick stone walls, standing in an estate of eighty or ninety now. Five hundred people made up the household. The furniture was of heavy teak and had been brought by caravan from Canton. She had never dreamed that such luxury was to be found in far-off Shansi.
Those early days were busy ones for her. Dr Kung’s school was organized at last and he was about to realize his hope of modernizing his province. Everything there was ready except for the faculty, which was still shorthanded. They had been depending upon the arrival of a certain teacher from Oberlin, but at almost the last moment he sent word that he could not keep his promise to come. The staff was short of teachers, also of the time and money needed to bring a substitute from the China coast, which appeared to be the only alternative. It was then suggested by some daring freethinker that Eling was quite well qualified to teach.
Today we might consider this solution to the problem a most obvious and natural one, but this was twenty-five years ago, and in one of China’s most backward provinces. Shanghai had at last accepted Eling with her foreign education, but Taiku, Shansi, had yet to be convinced that a young woman could actually usurp the position and duties of an honored schoolmaster. In a man’s school, moreover — a school in which many of the pupils were older than the teacher! Still, it was a foreign school and thus a new departure anyway, and Eling was protected by her position as a member of the Kung family. She taught the usual subjects, with emphasis upon English, also hygiene and sanitation.
“I had no right to attempt it,” she said later when speaking of this phase of her life. “I didn’t know enough to teach in any ordinary school, I’m quite sure, but this was an extraordinary case of necessity. . . . I remember that one of the students asked me some question in English class, as to why one sometimes doesn’t repeat the noun in a compound sentence, and I answered, ‘Oh, that’s understood.’ It seemed to me a most satisfactory reply for many questions that puzzled me as well as the students. After that I said, ‘Oh, that’s understood’ whenever I thought I was getting into deep water.”
CHAPTER XI
Mayling Comes Home
General yen hsi-shan was governor of Shansi at the time of Eling’s marriage, and after the Kungs were settled down in Taiku Dr Kung accepted the position of his High Adviser. This was a chance very much to his taste, for he could now go further in his ambition to modernize the province. He was responsible for many reforms in the educational and transportation systems of Shansi.
It was in Taiku that the first Kung child, Rosamonde, was born, in 1916. Madame Kung had not been in good health during her first year in the interior, and the birth was not an easy one. Upon her recovery she found herself thinking, as we so often do after narrow escapes, about her religion and the real state of her belief. Before this experience Eling had not been what she herself considered a real Christian. She had examined the state of her mind now and then and had even written a thoughtful paper upon missions in China when she was at Wesleyan, but on the whole she had rejected the formalized methods of worship beloved by her mother. Mrs Soong and her eldest daughter had indeed discussed the subject many times, and the mother was sadly worried about Eling’s state of grace. The more they talked, the further from her mother’s religion did Eling feel herself to be.
For the first time, after Rosamonde’s birth, Madame Kung discovered within herself a desire to thank God in person, as it were, for her recovery and her baby. She thinks that she became a genuine Christian at that time, and not before. Even today she is not much inclined to profess her feelings on this subject, nor does she in her rare public speeches use God’s name overmuch or appeal to Him with many demands. Her friendly feelings for missionaries are due rather to her admiration for their goodheartedness and bravery than because she is particularly eager to Christianize China. Madame Kung’s religion takes the form of a quiet, sure faith in which there is no desire to force her convictions upon others. It is something, she believes, that comes to each person individually in its own good time, sometimes early and sometimes late.
The year 1916 was a significant one for her brother-in-law Sun Yat-sen. It was in January that the monarchy was declared and then forsworn by Yuan, and in June he died. Sun’s opportunity was at hand and he began once more to campaign for his constitutional government. The situation, however, was even more chaotic than it had been while Yuan was alive, and Sun had many foes, gangsters and small party-leaders who were quite as eager for power as the President had been. Meantime the Vice-President, Li Yuan-hung, had succeeded to the Presidency, and the North seemed hopeless as a headquarters for Sun. He looked again toward Canton.
Early in the next year the World War began strongly to affect China’s confused politics. In Peking, Parliament was against the suggestion, proffered by England, that China break off diplomatic relations with Germany and Austria, but the Premier was in favor of this action and made himself so unpopular by advocating it that he was ousted. The militarist group, whose man he was, thereupon promptly persuaded Li Yuan-hung to dissolve Parliament. The dying Republic was now dead, and the monarchist party slipped into power long enough to restore the child Emperor to the throne. He stayed there only a fortnight; then the militarists rose up and took over the capital, on July fourteenth. They re-restored the republican government, though Li refused to take on his former job of the Presidency; the Vice-President took his place, and the militarists had their way. China declared war on Germany, August fourteenth, 1917.
Sun was in Canton at this time, leading the outcry against China’s participation in the war. The country’s first need, he insisted, was a working government; if Asia entered the struggle over in Europe, both China and England would probably suffer from the aftereffects. Many were of his opinion, but their advice was unavailing.
It was in 1917, too, that Mayling came back after spending ten of her most formative years in the United States. Chingling had written, “Just think, little Mayling will graduate this June and return to China in July. How time flies! She is a popular lassie and enjoys her college life immensely.”
Few Americans can say that they know their country as well as Mayling does. In her own words, “I have been all over the United States, in practically every single State. I spent my summers either with friends of my father or visited my American schoolmates.” In the eight years that had elapsed since Eling’s return, Shanghai had become hardened to the idea of the feminine overseas student, and a few years later these girls formed a club in the city. Mayling had still a few shocks to administer to the public, however. She was then as she is now immensely energetic, and she threw herself into public and social service work. She was a slender, vivid girl, and her vitality was an immense contrast to the regulation jeune fille of the time.
At first she too used foreign dresses, until the strangeness of Chinese clothing wore off for her and her eyes became accustomed to it. Then she adopted the native dress again. She has always, however, retained certain touches of foreignism in her clothes; in cold weather she wears hats, for example, and her jackets and jerseys are shaped at the waist, though custom today decrees that Chinese girls use the straight cardigan style in their overgarments. She did not hesitate, either, to wear riding clothes of modern cut, with a smart broad-brimmed hat. Many Chine
se women today ride in breeches or jodhpurs, but Mayling was the pioneer.
One of the first things she did was to find a Chinese teacher and set to work with lessons. Her childhood memories would have been sufficient to bring back the Shanghai dialect after a very little practice, but Mayling would not have been satisfied to speak and understand Chinese. She wanted to read and to write. Her teacher was a scholar of the old style, and she studied the Classics as if she were a child at school again, chanting and swaying in the proper fashion. (Most returned students disdain Chinese literature.) Daily she studied with her instructor, and she kept it up for many years — fortunately, for today a large part of her work is in public speaking, and her fluent Chinese has gone further than have any of her other accomplishments to quiet the criticism of the old-fashioned die-hards. They may still grumble that Madame Chiang is “completely foreign,” but they cannot add that common complaint, “Why, she doesn’t even speak Chinese!”
Mayling joined the Y.W.C.A. and helped them with their social work; she also became a member of the National Film Censorship Committee. When the Shanghai Municipal Council asked her to join the Child Labor Commission they were breaking all precedent; no Chinese had ever before been offered such an appointment. Her experience on this Commission was to have strong influence upon her career in later life; the resulting contact with Shanghai’s shameful labor conditions in the factories was by way of an initiation for the girl whose training had until then been purely academic.
Today Madame Chiang has much to do with the new educational methods of China. She is particularly interested in the intensive training, primitive but efficacious, that is given to girls taken from the small towns and the countryside and then sent out in their turn as teachers to the peasants. Madame plans the classes and tries to visit them every day, giving lectures and addresses. She shows an obvious talent for teaching; she speaks clearly, choosing her words with a nice judgment as to the capacity of the listeners to absorb ideas, and her patience is inexhaustible. She has never taught, however, as a regular teacher, nor even taken a few pupils, as did Madame Kung when she first came back to China: many Shanghai schools did invite her to join their faculties, for they were eager to learn from an American-university graduate, but the Soong parents thought that her own Chinese lessons were of more importance.
Her social activities too were considerable. Shanghai was a pleasant place for prosperous Chinese families such as the Soongs and their friends. They added to the Western luxury of the city their own Chinese comforts, and when the European war came to an end there was a business boom. All the friends of the Soongs, like themselves, had motor cars. Parties were very lavish; people vied with one another in entertaining. Those were the days when families would celebrate birthdays with enormous feasts that lasted several days, importing famous actors by the troupe and having their private plays for the benefit of their relations. China proper seemed very far away. The Soongs were still outstanding in their friendships with foreigners; the other Chinese still kept themselves to themselves. Mayling’s American contacts were kept up, however.
Often, though she was so busy, she felt the same impatience that her father and sisters had experienced in dealing with the community in which she lived. A childhood friend retains a characteristic memory of the girl. They met in the street, and as they strolled toward the Soongs’ house Mayling invited the Englishwoman in for a cup of tea.
They went into the living room. Mayling rang the bell and gave the order, then as she glanced around she made an impatient little sound. “Dust!” she said in explanation. “These servants simply don’t know how to clean a room.” She called one of the women, pointed to an offendingly dusty table, and told her to clean it again. Shamblingly the amah went and fetched a cloth with which she began to flick the surface of the table. Mayling waited for as long as she could endure it, then she took the cloth herself. “No, that’s not the way,” she said. “Here, like this . . . . ” She began briskly dusting the room, rubbing wherever it was necessary to rub, and speaking rapidly over her shoulder to her guest:
“You can’t expect them to know how until they’ve been taught. . . . I suppose most people would say I’m losing face” — she spoke with tremendous scorn —“by doing this. But I can’t stop to think of those things.”
Many a visitor to China can recall similar experiences of his own when he has seen Madame at work in hospital or training school. Twenty-three years have not given her more love either for dirt or for misplaced dignity.
That summer the Suns went to Canton, the Doctor determined to re-establish the true constitutional government of China. He invited the members of the Parliament that had been dissolved by Li Yuan-hung, suggesting that they convene again in the South. A number of them responded. Then Li himself was asked to come down and take his old place as President. He never did come, as a matter of fact, but for a time he considered the possibility, and things looked hopeful. Sun Yat-sen himself was appointed “Generalissimo” of the provisional military government.
For the past two years Madame Sun had been with the Doctor at all his appearances in public, and his followers had long since accepted the situation. Among the Chinese people opinions, where there were any opinions at all on the subject, were sharply divided. The old-timers still stood by their guns and declared the matter disgraceful, but most of the young people, those with revolutionary sympathies, were heartily in favor of the marriage. News of Chingling reached even into Szechwan; the students there heard tales of a beautiful young girl from an American school, the daughter of Soong, Sun’s first and most faithful friend. They hailed their Leader’s action in marrying this fabulous girl. She would help him with his progressive program and his reforms, they agreed among themselves: moreover, his defiance of the old-fashioned notions of propriety appealed to them simply because they were young and iconoclastic.
“You know how I dread publicity!” wrote Chingling to America. “But since my marriage I have had to participate in many affairs which I’d otherwise escape. The Chinese are not like Europeans. They always thrust greatness and honor, not upon those who deserve them, but upon the timid. I see people every day; in fact I’m simply pulled out of my shell by circumstances. I was dumbfounded at some of the reports that have been manufactured about me in Macon. For instance, I learned that I was once a spy of the revolutionists before my marriage! And the various exciting and thrilling incidents that I have gone through must have been my nightmares, though I’m sure I never told about them!”
Sun Fo, the Doctor’s son, had been in America at the time of the marriage of his father and Chingling. Evidently no one had told him of the domestic rearrangement in his family, and he was incredulous. He gave an interview to the press of San Francisco, denying that there was any truth in the story. Now, however, he did not allow his natural sympathy for his mother to keep him away from what he considered his duty, and he came back to China to offer his services to the new government, returning from Columbia University, where he had been doing postgraduate work in journalism. He was appointed Secretary to the National Assembly.
The inevitable cliques soon made trouble in Canton and managed to take control out of Sun’s hands. His opponents created an Administrative Committee and made him one of the members instead of placing him at the head; even as a member he was comparatively powerless. Sun went back to Shanghai in disgust. For two years thereafter he and Chingling lived quietly in their house in Rue Molière, seeing their friends and producing books of his addresses and articles.
It was in 1918 that Charlie Soong died, on May third, of cancer. The three girls and two of his sons were with him at the time. Soon after this the Soongs removed to another house in Seymour Road.
Mayling had already begun to carry most of the responsibility of housekeeping, and now there was the added duty of helping her mother with business, winding up Charlie’s many affairs. Mrs Soong elected to give up most of his interests, and busied herself more than ever with church work.
The first thing Sun set out to do was enlarge his domain. As President of China, even of Southern China, it behooved his people to get at least one more province under their control, and Chen Chiung-ming promptly took Kwangsi, the twin-province to Kwangtung, in July of 1921. Sun Yat-sen then proposed a Northern Expedition. General Chen did not think the idea a very good one, but the President overruled his objections and himself started out the following winter, leading the army. Chen thereupon refused to supply his troops with either money or arms; the expedition promptly collapsed, as he had known it would, and Sun returned to Canton, where he dismissed Chen from the Governorship in punishment for his non-co-operation.
Up in Peking, important things were happening. Wu Pei-fu took control of the Northern government in 1922, announcing that he intended to restore the constitutional form of legislation. He went so far as to replace Li Yuan-hung in the now familiar Presidential chair, and actually invited Sun Yat-sen to come to Peking and help him unify China.