* In 1985, Sterling Seagrave published. The Soong Dynasty, in which he cited the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s characterization of T.V. as “the richest man in the world.” Youngman wrote Seagrave a letter saying that T.V. “brought little out of China after the War… died possessed of a very modest fortune which he honestly acquired mostly in the U.S.A. by sound investment and hard and able work.” Youngman added, “You could have found the details if you had taken the trouble to look at the Surrogate records in New York after his death. With the able assistance of Sullivan and Cromwell I examined all his financial records and those of his banks and can say as certainly as anyone can that there were no undisclosed assets such as you suggest.” (Wellesley Colledge Archives: William Sterling Youngman to Sterling Seagrave, March 18, 1985.)
† Equivalent to $53,148,000 today.
* One of Madame’s personal attendants told the following story, which may or may not be true: “Of all the members of the ‘first family,’ Jeanette Kung was the most special. One summer day Soong May-ling asked me to go see her niece in the hotel in which the family was staying. ‘I haven’t seen Ling Wei [ Jeanette] for a long time. Would you get her for me?’ When I got to Jeanette’s room, heavy fumes of wine were coming from her door.… I knocked on the door and told her who I was. She said, ‘The door is open. You can come in.’ Entering her room I was really shocked by the scene: Jeanette was wearing nothing more than a very thin man’s waistcoat, and she was chatting and drinking with two doctors from Chiang Kai-shek’s medical team. ‘Madame asked me to come see what you are doing.’ Jeanette remained perfectly calm and ‘Please tell Madame I am chatting with my friends, but don’t mention that I am drinking!’ ” When the attendant returned to Madame Chiang, she guessed immediately that her niece was drinking. “Soong May-ling apparently knows Jeanette like the back of her hand. Until today, the scene of her drinking with her friends in a man’s waistcoat has stayed with me.” (Zhu Zhong-sheng, “Madame Chiang Soong May-ling and Mr. Ching-kuo,” thesis, 1999.)
* The same member of the staff repeated the most vivid—if callous—announcement of Chiang’s death: “We wanted to send a two-word telegram [to Washington]: ‘Peanut planted.’ But we decided the Ambassador wouldn’t appreciate this, even in jest.”
* Nixon had resigned on August 9, 1974.
† There were several versions of the deathbed scene. One member of the household claimed that on the evening of his death, Chiang grabbed Ching-kuo’s hand and told him that if he was obedient to his mother, May-ling, he, Chiang, could die in peace. According to a journalist, Chiang “was said to have called” May-ling and Ching-kuo to his bedside and asked them to join hands and promise that they would treat each other “like mother and son.” But since Chiang was reportedly in a coma at the end of his life, and since the scene between father and son is not mentioned in Taylor’s excellent biography of Ching-kuo, these stories, certainly Graham’s rendition, most likely inaccurate. (Ling Pei-jun, United Press, on Zhu Zhong-sheng, “Madame Chiang Soong May-ling and Mr. Ching-kuo.”)
* It will be remembered that David’s father, H. H. Kung, was a direct descendant of Confucius in the seventy-fifth generation.
* It will be remembered that she had applied for membership in the party years earlier but had been rejected. “You would play a greater role for the revolution if you stay outside the party for the time being,” she was told at the time. (“Around the World: Widow of Sun Yat-sen Given Full Membership in Party,” The New York Times, May 17, 1981.)
* It was actually the ninety-ninth by Chinese reckoning and the ninety-eighth in the West.
* Prolepsis: a “false description of an event before the event has taken place… the anticipation of your opponent’s argument.” (William Safire, “On Language,” The New York Times Magazine, January 18, 1987.)
* With all this ferment, the KMT still won almost 70 percent of the popular vote, 59 of 73 contested seats in the Legislative Yuan and 68 of 84 open seats in the National Assembly.
* An odd circumstance in the election of 2000 concerns John Chang, one of Chiang Ching-kuo’s illegitimate twin sons, who had risen in the KMT hierarchy to the positions of foreign minister (1996), vice premier (1997), and secretary-general of the presidential office (1999–2000). Chang had been considered a potential running mate for Lien in 2000 until a sex scandal having to do with a mistress scuttled his chances, and he removed himself from contention. He remains a member of the Legislative Yuan, where he serves as chairman of the Interior Affairs Committee. In 1991, Chang asked to be recognized as a member of the Chiang family but was refused; seven years later he asked if he might call on Madame Chiang in New York, but this request was also refused. Nevertheless, in 2005, he officially changed the spelling of his name to Chiang.
* Later ambassador to the PRC.
* Madame’s orphanage school.
† T.A.’s boys had spent almost every summer with their aunt, beginning in the late 1950s.
* According to a Taipei-based paper, all of her paintings were purchased by one of her nieces.
* At least that this author found.
* The Taipei Times is one of three English-language newspapers in Taiwan; it generally takes its editorial line from the Pan-Green Coalition, a political group including the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which favors a separatist identity from the mainland. It was formed in opposition to the Pan-Blue Coalition, built around the KMT and the Nationalist identity—hence the reviling of both Chiangs.
The Last Empress Page 110