The Last Empress

by Hannah Pakula

  WHILE MAO AND his followers were on the Long March, Chiang and May-ling, accompanied by Young Marshal Chang and Donald, his adviser, were starting out on a very different kind of journey. After a year spent curing his opium addiction, the Young Marshal, accompanied by two wives, several children, and a suite of servants, bodyguards, and secretaries, traveled to Italy. When he first arrived there, he was impressed by the efficiency of Benito Mussolini’s government, but by the time he got back to China, he seems to have changed his attitude: “Oh, it [Italy] was all right,” he reported, “macaroni on every table, Mussolini on every wall.”

  From Rome, Chang and his retinue left on a motor tour of Europe. In Britain he met Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and rented a house in Brighton, where he hosted black-tie poker games that lasted all night and well into the next day. He rode horseback and played golf, although without opium he was becoming as round as his father. Throughout the trip, Donald coached his charge on European politics. It was already November and the party was in Copenhagen when Chang received a wire from his office: “REVOLT HAS BROKEN OUT IN FUKIEN STOP THERE IS A MOVEMENT UNDER WAY TO GET US TO JOIN FACTIONS AGAINST CHIANG KAI-SHEK STOP COME BACK AT ONCE.”

  Donald left immediately. He told the Young Marshal to stay in Europe and he would let him know what was going on. When Donald got to Nanking, he went to see T.V., who told him that he had resigned as minister of finance. The leader, according to his brother-in-law, understood nothing about money and insisted upon spending an excessive amount of the national budget on the military. It was obvious to Donald that Chiang Kai-shek was in trouble, that the anti-Chiang faction was gaining strength over the pro-Chiang, and that the person who held the balance of power was the Young Marshal. He called a press conference: “The return of the Young Marshal to China is desired by his officers,” Donald announced. “But, in view of conditions now prevailing in this country, it is difficult to say when he will return. I have a strong feeling that he may go to Soviet Russia.” His announcement had the desired effect, and by the next day, representatives of the KMT were waiting to speak to Donald about how important it was that the Young Marshal—previously sacrificed by Chiang Kai-shek to public opinion—rejoin the Nationalist government.

  Young Marshal Chang arrived home in China on January 8, 1934. After picking up two hundred bodyguards, he and Donald went to Nanking, where they saw Chiang. According to Donald’s biographer, “the meeting between the granite-faced, solemn Chiang and the ambitious, effervescent young man got off to a fiery start.” It ended when the Young Marshal told Chiang that Europe “doesn’t think much of either you or China,” and Chiang suggested that since he and May-ling were on their way to Hangchow, perhaps the Young Marshal and Donald would like to join them there. During one famous dinner, Donald and Chang told the Chiangs what was wrong with China. Donald, who, it will be remembered, had quit working with the government in disgust, was known for his bluntness.

  “You people sit in your yamens, and your horizon is your window sill,” he said.

  You are ignorant because no one dares to correct you. You might lose face, and what’s more, someone might lose his head.… This country is ridden with graft. It’s full of swindlers who will steal anything from American Red Cross funds to a… rake-off on every government or private transaction… opium is flooding the country. It flows up and down the Yangtze right past your front door. Thousands die of it every month. Thousands, yes millions, die because there is no flood control… because China, a nation of farmers, is really a poor farmer. There is no protection against disease, and epidemics sweep like the wind across the land. Millions more die… because you cannot stop killing yourselves in civil war. Where are your schools? Where are your fine highways… the network of railways… the industries, the steel, the hydroelectric power… your [engineers]… your skilled administrators.… There is… the obeseness of wealth on one hand—the hog wallow of poverty on the other. The ricksha man and the wharf coolie are worse off than the horse and camel in many another land.

  When Donald had finished, the Young Marshal continued, assailing Chiang for his apathy in the face of corruption and inefficiency in government. By the time the two men had finished voicing their criticisms, it was nearly midnight. Dinner had started at 7:00 P.M. As Donald escorted May-ling out of the room, she told him, “You were wonderful. We needed that.” As they walked through the lobby of the restaurant, she asked, “Why don’t you come to work for us? We need a brain like yours.” When Donald answered that he did not work for women because they “can’t take it,” she disagreed. “If I couldn’t I wouldn’t have dared translate everything you said.”

  “That’s right,” added the Young Marshal. “She even put in your god-dams.”

  “I’m going to write you some letters.” Donald laughed as he told May-ling, “If you can get the generalissimo to act on them, then some day I might be working with you.”

  Within several weeks, Donald had set up an office in Hankow, the Central China Economic Investigation Bureau. Free to investigate anything he pleased, he wrote a letter in which he railed at “rotten officialdom,” which he characterized as “squeeze, corruption, militarism, overtaxation.” The customs police needed strengthening, he said, since smuggled goods were being protected by the Japanese. Japanese coal, mined in “so-called Manchukuo,” was cheaper than Chinese coal. “Every energy of the rulers of China,” he said, “should be bent to the one object of manufacturing all those things that Japan exports to this country.” In the same letter, he campaigned to wipe out the union bosses, who siphoned off 60 percent of a laborer’s meager wages, and urged the Chinese to forget about face, since it kept people from ever telling the truth about a situation. “The whole civil service (if it can be called that) of China,” he complained, “is crammed with dead wood, eating up small salaries amounting to millions, because face would not allow the sacking of the worthless.”

  Whenever and wherever they could, the Japanese were certainly waging an economic war. There was a special “smugglers’ freight car” attached to Chinese trains for the use of Japanese and Koreans who wanted to evade Chinese customs duties. According to Time magazine, “One can buy Japanese goods openly in China today at prices less than the Chinese duty which should have been collected on them.” While Chinese customs guards were no longer permitted to carry weapons, the “smugglers swagger about with pistols in their belts.”

  In October of 1934, Donald joined the Chiangs and the Young Marshal on what began as a three-day trip to open a new military academy in the province of Honan but was expanded on the spur of the moment to include a visit to Sian, farther west in the province of Shensi. The city of Sian dates back more than four thousand years. It was said to have been the center of civilization (not unlike China itself), and any progress made in the outer world had seeped out—above, under, or through its walls. These walls were the thickest of any in China; their gates resembled long tunnels; and a gate key was so large that it took two men to wield it. Christopher Isherwood, who visited Sian a few years later, said that in going through the city walls he felt that he was entering a huge prison. “And here, at the gate, were the gaolers, surly and unsmiling—typical soldiers of the sullen northwest.”

  The Chiangs had a different reaction to Sian, where they were met with “a tremendous ovation from both citizens and soldiers.” They had planned to spend only a few hours in the city but ended up staying for three days, during which May-ling convinced the local women to establish a clinic to cure female opium addicts. From Sian the quartet flew to Lanchow in Kansu province, located on the swiftly flowing Yellow River and noted for its huge water wheels—some more than a hundred feet in diameter—placed near the banks to provide local irrigation. The four travelers—Chiang, May-ling, the Young Marshal, and Donald—walked the streets of the city, engaging the locals in conversation, learning their views on politics, and urging local missionaries to get behind the New Life Movement. Donald said he began to “sense a change” in Chian
g. “His face was more relaxed and, if only infinitesimally, more animated. Hitherto, this far western territory had been something of a menace to him—the breeder of rebellions and mutinies. Now he found that he could walk about without fear, almost an idolized figure.”

  As their plane prepared to take off from Lanchow, May-ling and Donald talked Chiang into stopping in Ninghsia, a small province situated between the Gobi and Ordos deserts, populated by Muslims. This was the first time the inhabitants of Ninghsia had ever seen high government officials. Returning to Sian, the travelers headed out by train into provinces in the south and west. At this point, the Young Marshal left them to return north, while the three others flew to Peiping for medical checkups. From Peiping they flew to Kalgan, south of Mongolia proper, where they met the Mongolian Prince Teh, a lineal descendant of Genghis Khan. The inhabitants of Kalgan gathered in great crowds to see them, as did the residents of the neighboring provinces. Altogether, it was a five-thousand-mile odyssey—ten provinces in five weeks—that ended in the three southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Kweichow, and Szechuan. These areas, still run by warlords, were currently under attack by the Communists on their Long March from Kiangsi. In Szechuan, Chiang nearly ran into Mao.

  At this point in the Long March, the bulk of Mao’s forces, disguised in National Army uniforms, had managed to ferry their men across the Yangtze River into the province, subsequently destroying the boats captured from Chiang’s army. Hoping that his army could stop the Communists at a deep gorge spanned by a famous iron-chain suspension bridge, Chiang and May-ling flew to Szechuan, where he organized the defenses and gave orders for a counterattack. When the Communists arrived at the bridge, they discovered that half of the floorboards had been removed and there was a machine-gun nest lying in wait for them at the northern end of the span. Volunteers started to cross anyway—barefoot, swinging from chain to chain toward the middle. Three were shot and fell into the swirling waters below. Finally one man made it to the center, where he succeeded in crawling up on the bridge floor and hurling a grenade into the machine-gun nest. He was followed by others, running full speed over the planks, which had been set on fire, until they all reached the other side. As a result, Chiang lost his last chance to cut off the Communists on the run.*

  In spite of the Communists’ escape, Chiang’s ventures into the hinterlands did a great deal for his prestige. “He has flown to almost every province of China,” May-ling wrote after their return. “… He has been enabled… to meet officials of remote regions in their own yamen… and give them assurances of Nanking’s close interest in them and their worries. At the same time, he has been able to acquire a working knowledge of the topography and characteristics of the country such as no high official has ever been able to do before, and this… has provided him with unprecedented equipment for the performance of those duties which fall to his lot.… What the airplane has done for the Generalissimo in his official work is truly wonderful.”

  If the trip served to energize Chiang, it also added to the prestige of his wife. Even the crotchety U.S. minister (soon to be ambassador) Clarence E. Gauss wrote his predecessor, Nelson Johnson, saying he had heard that Madame Chiang had become “a tremendous factor” in China. “She sits alongside the Generalissimo and tells him what to do and he does it. She issues instructions and they are obeyed. Many reports are addressed to her; others are addressed to her and the Generalissimo. She has developed tremendous influence.” Foreign visitors were also impressed—witness the report of Sven Hedin, a Swedish explorer who met May-ling on the trip: “She is intelligent, clever, gifted, and stands at the peak of Chinese as well as occidental culture.… No doubt Madame CKS is the most remarkable woman of our time.… Long after the thunder of war has been silenced she will remain a blessed mother among her people, and her name will be mentioned with reverence and admiration.”

  It was on this trip that Donald began to help Chiang’s wife with the vast number of papers she now handled for her husband. According to his biographer, Donald would find Madame Chiang “in an unending blizzard of paper work.… She would look up, chewing the frayed end of a pencil, and he would laugh, scoop up an armful and go to work.” When the trio returned to Nanking, Donald moved into a bungalow located just outside the east gate of their residence, where he occupied a chair at a large desk across from Madame. Seated before his typewriter while May-ling sat in front of hers, he was able to help her wade through the stacks of documents that came to the generalissimo. “Missimo,” he had told her while they were still on their tour, “you think like a man.”

  22

  Chiang was one of the most controversial political figures of the age, the mention of whose name could turn a cocktail party into a shouting match.

  —RAYMOND CARROLL

  THREATENED BY Communists, greedy warlords, and voracious Japanese, Chiang was also facing a personal problem involving his only son, Ching-kuo. Born in 1910, Chiang Ching-kuo had grown up in a quiet home atmosphere with his mother and grandmother, both of whom doted on him. An obedient child, small for his age, he was ten years old before his father, who must have realized that this was the only child he would ever sire, sent his old tutor to study the boy’s potential. In his very first letter to his son, he wrote that the tutor had reported that he was “not brilliant but like[d] to study very much,” an assessment that, Chiang said, he was “somewhat comforted in learning.” He arranged for a teacher to instruct Ching-kuo in the classics and the Four Books before sending him to the Phoenix Mountain Academy. Chiang supplemented the boy’s education with self-relevatory rules for proper behavior: “in talking and walking your manner must be serious”; “never conduct yourself with levity… don’t be frivolous.”

  During the previous year Chiang’s concubine, Yao Yi-cheng, had arrived at the family home with Chiang’s adopted son, Wei-kuo. It will be remembered that Chiang had agreed to adopt the boy, since his real father already had a family. But, knowing Chiang’s reputation with women, many people still maintained that Chiang Wei-kuo was Chiang’s biological son. In any case, Yao, who had apparently had what was euphemistically referred to as “good emotional relations” with both Chiang and his friend, moved into the Chiang family home with her child. Chiang’s first wife, Fu-mei, resented Mama Yao and put her and her son in a room in back of the house normally used for wood and hay. The place was full of fleas, which tormented Wei-kuo—so much so that an uncle eventually moved Yao and Wei-kuo to his own house.

  It was during the lengthy Confucian rituals surrounding the death of Chiang Kai-shek’s mother in 1921 that Chiang had paid more attention to his sons, noting that “Ching-kuo is teachable and Wei-kuo is lovable.” At the end of that same year, Chiang had married Jennie and brought Ching-kuo to Shanghai to continue his studies. Always nervous in the presence of his father, Ching-kuo was not a good-looking boy but an extremely courteous one. He was required to write a letter to his father every Sunday, reporting on his studies and the books he had read. When Chiang did not have time to answer the letters, he simply sent along more reading assignments, recommending that his son read each of the classical works “more than one hundred times.” Concerned with his own inelegant brushwork, Chiang berated Ching-kuo: “Your calligraphy has not yet improved. You should copy one to two hundred characters every other day.” He also insisted on Ching-kuo’s studying English, remarking from experience that “those who don’t speak English are like being mute.”

  In 1925, the year of the great wave of Communist demonstrations around the city, Ching-kuo entered high school in Shanghai. Having decided that the Communists were the only people who could help him eliminate the Hakka General, Chiang was then known in the West as “the Red General,” and Ching-kuo was selected by his fellow students to lead them in four “mass uprisings.” When Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow asked China’s revolutionary government to send it some Chinese students, Chiang included Ching-kuo in the group.* Chiang Kai-shek was Stalin’s current darling. Whenever Ching-kuo went to the mo
vies in Moscow, he saw news-reels of his father, and when he read Russian newspapers, they were full of admiration for Chiang. According to Ching-kuo’s biographer Jay Taylor, “Every Chinese student at Sun Yat-sen University knew that the youngest one among them was the son of the famous General Chiang.” An ardent revolutionary, Ching-kuo wrote an article that so impressed the university staff when it appeared on the university bulletin board (“the Red Wall”) that they made the fifteen-year-old editor of “the Wall.”

  Two years later, when Chiang turned on the Communists, Ching-kuo denounced his father from the stage of Sun Yat-sen University. “Chiang Kai-shek,” he told his fellow students, “was my father and a revolutionary friend. He has now become my enemy.… Down with Chiang Kai-shek. Down with the traitor!” Ordered home along with the other Chinese students in Moscow, Ching-kuo sent a message, dictated by the head of the Chinese Communist Party delegation in Moscow, in which he refused to obey. He began an affair with the Christian General Feng’s daughter, considered one of the prettiest girls in the school. Short, broad-featured, and muscular with a husky voice, Ching-kuo was a natural leader, and the Feng girl wrote him letters in which she expressed love and wonder that he could care for her. According to Taylor, Chiang’s son had started on “a long and varied romantic career,” pursuing women who were his peers rather than the singsong girls who had attracted his father.

  Selected as one of the top five students to be trained in advanced studies at the Military and Political Institute in Leningrad, the top academy of the Red Army, Ching-kuo excelled in his work and graduated in 1930 with the highest grades in his class. His file described him as “very talented… the best student at the academy.” Although he expressed a desire to return to China after graduation, he was sent as an apprentice to the Dynamo Electrical Plant in Moscow, a manual job in which he could “learn about the life of the proletariat.” He attended engineering school at night and, by suggesting certain technical improvements at the plant, more than doubled his meager salary. But he made the mistake of criticizing Wang Ming, the Chinese Communist leader who had written his original letter of refusal to return to China, and the Comintern tried to send him to a mining plant in Siberia—a fate he avoided by pleading his poor health (he was a diabetic).