The Last Empress

by Hannah Pakula

  Donald (he was always known by his last name), a former reporter for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the New York Herald, and the China Mail, was described by W. H. Auden as a “red-faced, serious man, with an Australian accent and a large, sensible nose,” while Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt called him “as influential a white man in Chinese affairs as there is in China or elsewhere.” Donald spoke no Chinese but adored China and its people. He had served as an adviser to Sun Yat-sen, for whom he had composed the manifesto proclaiming the new republic in 1911, and those who knew him found him smart and completely trustworthy. An “adamant nondrinker,” he hated Chinese cuisine and, on being invited to a presidential banquet, took along a loaf of bread to eat. In response to a request by the Chiangs, he had established a Bureau of Economic Information that provided foreigners with statistics, books, and a journal (the Chinese Economic Monthly) about China. After several years and four attempts to resign, Donald, who was disgusted with the leaders of the Nationalist government—he dubbed them “Nationalusts”—had moved to Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, as chief adviser to Young Marshal Chang.

  The Japanese attacked Mukden on September 18, 1931. Crozier dates the most significant of Chiang Kai-shek’s mistakes to September 11, one week earlier, when Chiang told the Young Marshal, whose vast territories were on the line, to avoid direct confrontation with Japan. It was at this point that Chiang revealed his military priorities: to subdue interior rebellions first and engage outside forces only after the country was united. According to the Young Marshal, neither he nor Chiang had a choice. “There was no way we could win,” he said many years later. “… The quality of the Chinese army could not compare with the Japanese.… ‘Non-resistance’… was the only feasible policy.’” Payne agreed: “To declare war against the Japanese at this time was to invite a general massacre. China was in no position to make any effective resistance.”

  Instead of fighting the Japanese, Chiang appealed to the League of Nations. “Little did he realize,” quipped his most admiring biographer, Hollington Tong, “that the League of Nations was about as good as Westminster Abbey—merely a resting-place for great statesmen.” The League did select a commission of inquiry, but it did not arrive in China until the spring of 1932, some six months after the invasion. Headed by Lord Lytton, the members of the group were enthusiastically welcomed when they arrived in Shanghai. “Everyone, peasants, coolies, shopkeepers, even the autocratic northern military commanders, shared an almost mystical faith in the power of the League of Nations,” observed the wife of the minister of foreign affairs. “They were firmly convinced that… the Japanese would be swiftly ejected.” After two weeks in Shanghai, the commission, accompanied by Fox Movietone News, proceeded to Nanking and two weeks later arrived in Peiping, “smothered in flags” in its honor. Even the schools in the former capital had been closed so that the children could be “trotted out in squads… given flags and told to wave them energetically.”

  The commission eventually reached Manchuria, where it was dogged by Japanese spies, who trailed after the delegates and parked themselves in the lobbies of their hotels. One day, the wife of the secretary-general of the group returned unexpectedly to her hotel bedroom, where she found a man, clearly a Japanese spy, going through her bureau drawers. She asked him what he was doing.

  “I’m just tidying up your room, Madame!”

  “Oh, in that case you might as well clean up the whole room, the floor hasn’t been scrubbed in ages!” she replied, settling down into a comfortable chair to watch the man get down on his knees and refusing to let him go until he had scoured the entire floor.

  The Lytton Commission eventually issued a report condemning Japan in favor of China. Adopted by the League of Nations in February 1933, it evoked a self-righteous response from the Japanese, who resigned from the League. This did not help China or its leader, who did not seem to grasp the fact that he was being presented with an excellent opportunity to unite the country against a common enemy—a political ploy recommended at the time by at least one newspaper and used by countless politicians and statesmen since the beginnings of history. Instead, Chiang allowed inflamed anti-Japanese sentiments to fester and erupt, while he continued to fight the Communists and issue useless appeals to rebellious elements of the KMT.

  The nation’s student population, “almost insane with anger and frustration,” expressed the country’s outrage. Seventy thousand schoolboys descended on Nanking to demand that Chiang declare war on Japan, and by the end of November 1931, two months after the invasion, 12,000 students were camped in front of government buildings in the capital, demanding to see him. Chiang let them wait in the winter cold for twenty-four hours before telling them in his furious falsetto that their demands were unreasonable and they should go home. When still more students arrived from Hankow—tougher and better organized than the first group—Chiang told them that they were tools of the enemies of the government. Then a third group, this one from Peiping, arrived and attacked both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the headquarters of the KMT, while other students destroyed the printing plant and offices of the Central Daily News. At that point, Chiang Kai-shek called on the local garrison of soldiers, which drove the students out of Nanking. He then did what he often did at moments of political crisis: he resigned. This time, however, it was under pressure.

  Chiang and May-ling flew to his old home in Chikow. It is said that Chiang seemed to welcome the escape from responsibility; he probably also enjoyed showing the beauties of his native province to his new wife, something he had done with Jennie some years earlier. Their country idyll did not last long, and on January 2, an emergency meeting, held in Nanking, resulted in a request to Chiang to return as head of the government. In spite of (or perhaps because of) anxious telegrams from members of the government, Chiang took his time returning to the capital. As Time magazine put it, “With a smile that was childlike and bland Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Nanking last week. A thousand chastened members of the Kuomintang party assembled to welcome him. Only six weeks ago these same men forced him to resign… and his opponents shouted to the winds that they were heartily glad to be rid of him.”

  Wang Ching-wei met Chiang near his old village home and traveled with him to the capital, where Wang assumed the presidency of the Executive Yuan. But by the time the government had put itself together again and returned to operational status, Japan had started moving men and arms into the Japanese section of the International Settlement in Shanghai. Japan was determined to compel China to rescind a boycott of Japanese goods, effected during the last two months of 1931, that had reduced their imports by five sixths. Shanghai was the center of the boycott movement, and, as the Japanese press had announced at the beginning of the year, “The coming war will be a struggle for the domination of the world; the conflict in Manchuria was merely the curtain raiser.”

  In the middle of January, five Buddhist monks from Japan were attacked by a group of Chinese as they were leaving the International Settlement in Shanghai, and one was killed. As a result, a group of Japanese residents rioted, leaving one Chinese policeman and one Japanese dead. According to Chiang’s most recent biographer, Jonathan Fenby, the incident was planned by the Japanese; the Japanese military attaché in Shanghai had hired the Chinese (a group of thugs) and paid them $20,000* to attack the monks. Nevertheless, the Japanese government demanded apologies, reimbursement for all hospital bills, and the disbanding of all anti-Japanese groups. On the evening of January 24, the Japanese navy sailed into Shanghai, claiming that it was “extremely anxious about the situation in the Chapei [a district of Shanghai], where Japanese nationals resided in great numbers.” Their Japanese consul general said that they would take action if the mayor of Shanghai did not respond to their demands by the morning of January 28. The following report, issued by the League of Nations, describes what happened on the night of January 27.

  Japanese marines and armed civilians… advanced along the North Szechuan Road… dropping parties
at the entrance of alley ways as they went along, and at midnight, at a given signal, all those parties advanced… in the direction of the railway… Japanese were harassed by a Chinese armoured train which issued from the station.… It subsequently took refuge in the station, which was also strongly defended by Chinese troops. Thereupon the Japanese… bombed the station and destroyed the train with airplanes. Other buildings… were also set on fire by incendiary bombs.… The Mayor of Greater Shanghai… lodged a protest against the Japanese action with the Consular authorities. The Japanese authorities contended that their action was not connected with the demands they had made and which had been accepted, but was based on the necessity of protecting the Japanese population living in a part of the area they decided to occupy.

  In other words, some 70,000 Japanese soldiers had landed at Shanghai, attacked the Chinese garrison there, and destroyed Chapei, the area they claimed they were worried about protecting. In so doing, they bombed an encampment of 8,000 Chinese refugees established by the International Flood Relief Commission. Edgar Snow, who was in Shanghai at the time, was appalled by the destruction:

  It was dark midnight, January 28, 1932. Suddenly Japanese rifle and machine-run fire laced Jukong Road up which I hurried from the Shanghai North Station.… The street emptied like a drain; iron shutters closed as if clams lived inside, and the last light disappeared.… Outrage piled on outrage: cases of banditry, kidnapping, homicide and brutality. Obviously certain Chinese had been marked well in advance; these were leading merchants or businessmen who had declined to trade with Japanese. Some were abducted, not to be heard of again; their families were attacked and wiped out completely. I saw a helpless old Chinese woman dragged from her home and kicked in the face.

  During the battle, more than 600,000 people were forced to abandon their homes, and an estimated nine hundred factories and shops were closed or destroyed. Three divisions of the Chinese Nineteenth Route Army fought furiously but, lacking supplies and reinforcements,* were finally forced to retreat. Nevertheless, their three commanders became heroes, compared by the Chinese to George Washington and Lord Nelson, and one of them (T’sai T’ing-k’ai) was immortalized as a brand name for cigarettes. In spite of the fact that $40 million was contributed to the war effort by local and overseas Chinese, China was defeated within a month and on May 5, signed an agreement with Japan, establishing a demilitarized zone around the International Settlement and ending the boycott of Japanese goods. Feelings were running so high that the unfortunate man who had to sign the agreement was beaten up by a mob of students.

  In February 1932, the Japanese announced the occupation of the three eastern provinces of Manchuria. Putting them together with the province of Jehol, overrun the following year, they created a new country they called Manchukuo, naming Pu-yi, the last emperor of the Ch’ing dynasty, now in his late twenties, as regent. (Two years later, they made him their puppet emperor.) The governor of Jehol, a onetime bandit named Tang Yu-lin, had refused to fight. He commanded a tenth-rate army of 20,000, stole artifacts from the days of the Manchus, and had an opium factory on the grounds of his palace. When Donald and the Young Marshal arrived in the capital of Jehol, they discovered that Tang had loaded several hundred trucks with his personal belongings and dispatched them to safety. Moreover, the only soldiers they could find were guarding his opium factory.

  IN THE SPRING of 1933, the month after the creation of Manchukuo, Chiang, who needed someone to blame for China’s failure to retain Jehol, met Young Marshal Chang in a town south of Peiping and told him that he had to sacrifice himself by taking responsibility for the loss. After several long conferences with Donald, Chang handed over his army, planes, and war material to Chiang, directing his soldiers to “obey Generalissimo Chiang’s orders and support the government unanimously.” In doing this, Donald told his biographer, the Young Marshal “spoke with a patriotism that was rare” in the world of warlords. The reasons he gave for his resignation—among them the failure to inspire confidence in his troops and direct the campaign properly—sound as if they were dictated by Chiang Kai-shek himself. But the Young Marshal got no thanks for his selflessness from Chiang. When he tried to arrange a press conference in Shanghai, he arrived to find that many journalists had boycotted it, since they had to be frisked before entering, and someone had posted a sign on the door saying “Do you remember that you have lost Manchuria? And now, through you, Jehol is lost to China.” Deprived of the chance to explain his sacrifice, the Young Marshal did what most warlords did when they were in trouble. He left China to travel abroad, and Donald went with him.*

  Two months later, Japan forced China to sign the Tangku Agreement, which took its name from the “ramshackle village” of Tangku, said to be “one of the most unattractive seaports of China.” This odd choice of venue and a superfluity of armed Chinese soldiers were, according to Hallett Abend of The New York Times, “inspired by the terror of the Chinese delegates, who fear assassination by their enraged countrymen.” The terms of the treaty—so humbling that it was kept secret from the Chinese people—included the establishment of a boundary line just ten miles north of Peiping, beyond which no Chinese troops were allowed to be garrisoned; the use of Japanese planes to inspect the enforced retreat of the Chinese troops; and the establishment of a no-combat zone south of the line. Abend described what he called “one of the most humilating spectacles I ever witnessed”—the signing of the Tangku Agreement:

  It was a day of muggy, oppressive heat. On a siding at the Tangku station stood a long train.… At each end of the train were two armored cars, and between them a long string of Wagons-Lits compartment coaches.… Presently from the curtained coaches there descended nearly a score of high Chinese officials. No automobiles or carriages had been provided. They had to walk down the narrow, dusty… street which had no sidewalks. At the gate of the Japanese Consulate they were brusquely challenged by the Japanese sentries, and were then kept standing in the broiling sun for nearly ten minutes. At last they were admitted, and were received by a group of Japanese officials, all of whom had been selected with studious care from ranks below those of the Chinese delegates. A paper was produced and signed.… Then the Japanese served champagne.… And then the Chinese, having virtually signed North China over to the Japanese, trudged through the dust back to their special train.

  Keeping the terms of the agreement from the people was not easy, and the Chinese government punished newspapers that mentioned it and students who spoke out against it. But Chiang himself was still obsessed with the Communists and the KMT rebels. “Internal security,” he insisted as the Chinese were forced to withdraw behind the Great Wall, “must precede foreign aggression.”

  JUDGING FROM CHIANG’S telegrams to her, May-ling was ill throughout the late winter of 1932 and spring of 1933. “What is the result of your exam?” he wired on January 8. And two months later: “It has been one month since you had your operation.* Do you feel well? Has the incision healed?” While she was laid up, May-ling must have heard a great deal of political gossip, because the next day her husband wired again: “Shanghai is full of important information as well as rumors. If you stay there too long after your illness is cured, you will hear many unfortunate things. If you can move now, why don’t you leave the hospital as soon as possible and come north to help me?”

  We do not know when or even if May-ling managed to get to Shanghai. What we do know is that the Chiangs were together to celebrate their sixth anniversary on December 1, 1933, and spent Christmas Day of that year traveling from his old home in Chekiang south to Fukien. It was a long trip—more than three hundred miles—two hours by plane and eight hours in a heavily armored car, described by May-ling as “very powerful but so weighty that the brakes were not much use.” They traveled on a road that had just been cut through the mountains: “we were on such a high and narrow strip of plateau that the least swerve would have sent us dashing like atoms over the precipice.… Curiously enough, it was not until I had time to re
trospect [sic] that I began to realize how dangerous the trip had been, especially when my husband began to reproach himself for submitting me to such hazards.”

  On New Year’s Eve the couple took a walk in the mountains of Fukien, where they found a tree of white plum blossoms in full flower—a good omen, since the five petals of the winter plum stand for joy, good luck, longevity, prosperity, and peace. “He carefully plucked a few branches,” May-ling wrote in a letter to one of her professors at Wellesley, “and when we returned home and lit the evening candles, he presented them to me in a little bamboo basket. A real New Year gift! I think from this perhaps you will understand why I am so willing to share life with him. He has the courage of a soldier and the sensitiveness of a poet!”

  21

  The Kuomintang had become a symbol of pessimism, stagnation and repression.

  —EDGAR SNOW, 1935

  LIKE THE late-nineteenth-century Emperor Guangxu,* who encapsulated his proposed reforms in the slogan “Self-strengthening,” Chinese leaders often wrap their political and economic drives in neat bundles with soul-stirring titles. Thus, in February of 1934, Chiang Kai-shek delivered a major speech in which he introduced a campaign to solve China’s current problems, called the New Life Movement. Based on an unlikely mélange of Confucianism and Methodism, the New Life Movement dictated four basic principles that Chiang commanded the Chinese to follow: li, yi, lien, and ch’ih (propriety, loyalty, integrity, and honor). “Cultivate these high qualities in your daily living,” he ordered. “Show your indomitable courage, and carry on the task for which your comrades in the trenches are fighting and dying.” The reasoning behind these four concepts, augmented by ninety-five rules for daily behavior, was explained in an essay on the New Life Movement, said to have been composed by Chiang and translated by May-ling. The explanation, however, sounds far more Western than Chinese: