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Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady

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This is a book to dive into, and lose yourself for days. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek is that good a story, and this is that good an account of her life. Madame Chiang used her political cunning and legendary drive to seduce supporters to her side of China's epic civil war during the middle part of the 20th century.

The Nationalist regime, headed by her husband, was hated by the Chinese people for its notorious brutality and corruption. But as portrayed by Madame Chiang, especially to American audiences, Chiang Kai-shek's government was a modern, educated bulwark of democracy and freedom for a country whose history had allowed little of either. Indeed, Madame Chiang personified the vaunted hopes, bitter disappointments and complex misunderstandings of the U.S.-China relationship, which vacillated wildly during her exceptional 105-year lifetime. Laura Tyson Li's incisive new biography, rises to the tall task of capturing this pivotal figure in all her splendor and humiliation, against a backdrop of war, revolution and unending political turmoil. Li, a journalist with a decade of experience in Asia, accurately portrays her as "beautiful, vain, witty, spirited, capricious, scheming, selfish, and driven."

What a character. What a tale.

The book opens in the waning days of China's second-to-last emperor in the late 1890s, when Mayling Olive Soong was born in Shanghai, the youngest daughter of a businessman who had made a fortune selling Bibles and presided over a family of savvy, idealistic and recklessly ambitious children. One married Sun Yat-sen, China's first president. Another became finance minister and acting prime minister of Nationalist China. Another became one of China's richest women. Mayling became Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

In an era when few girls learned to read and fewer traveled, Mayling was schooled in Georgia, then graduated from Wellesley College, where she excelled at French, violin and religious studies. She returned to Shanghai in 1917 just as China lurched into a bloody warlord period, and soon she was courted by the most severe warlord of all, Chiang Kai-shek. He divorced one wife and sent another off to Columbia University before Mayling agreed to marry him.

During World War II, Madame Chiang became a superb envoy to the United States, where her address to Congress in 1943 thrilled Washington, and her barnstorming across the country won renewed support and money to defeat the Japanese. In China, she was a poised partner to her husband, softening his imperiousness while sharpening his political machinations.

In Li's telling, husband and wife (who shared a bedroom with a screen separating their beds) could not have differed more. He was an early riser; she stayed up late watching movies. He was ascetic; she insisted on luxury. Still, they called each other 'Dar' (short for 'darling') and for years collaborated to cement fragile political alliances and keep a shaky hold on power.

The book has delicious tidbits, such as an affair with Republican presidential nominee Wendell Wilkie and her insistence on getting silk sheets when she stayed in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House.

Overall, Li delivers a thoughtful portrait of a complex woman and resists the considerable temptation to crucify her. That is a refreshing contrast to the shock-and-awe approach seen in so many recent books on prominent figures in China's recent history. Li deconstructs critical historical events with skill: the Xian Incident, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by rebellious generals; the 50-year house-arrest of the leading kidnapper, with whom Madame Chiang developed a curious friendship; Madame Chiang's mysterious disappearances for months at a time, caused, Li thinks by physical and mental illnesses, including debilitating hives, breast cancer and nervous breakdown.

More reporter than writer, Li assiduously draws on Madame Chiang's extensive personal correspondence, from archives around the world, to explain each stage of her drama. It's a spellbinding period of history. And it does not end well for the Chiangs. The Nationalist regime crumbled to the Communists in 1949. The Chiangs fled to Taiwan, admitting no fault, but blamed President Truman and vowed to retake the mainland. That dream faded gradually after Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975.

Madame Chiang's antagonistic stepson, Chiang Ching-kuo, would oversee a murderous suppression of dissidents as head of Taiwan's intelligence network. Paradoxically, as president, he later paved the way for the launch of Taiwan's democracy just before his death in 1988. That year, at age 90, she tried to rally Taiwan's Old Guard and prevent the onset of democracy she once spoke of so often. She failed.

Madame Chiang lived out her days in New York, watching China and Taiwan as one became capitalist and the other became a democracy. Despite her illnesses, she lived until 2003.

Ultimately, Madame Chiang was "a deeply flawed heroine," Li writes, "that rare creature who stuck resolutely to her beliefs, however misguided some of them may have been, through the decades and the trials."

It's surprising to note that this is the first biography of one of the most politically influential women of modern times, but MADAME CHIANG KAI-SHEK: CHINA'S ETERNAL FIRST LADY remains the only title to provide the complete story of a woman who seized unofficial and official power during China's civil war. Her position against Chinese Communism and her diplomatic relations affected decades of Chinese-American relations, so this book is key to a thorough understanding of not just the woman, but Chinese politics and influences in particular.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Laura Tyson Li has assembled a spectacular bio. It's page turner with the authority and detail of an encyclopedia. LTL has managed to keep her opinions out of the text. It isn't until the last chapter when through an informed discussion on the Madame's possible motivations that LTL becomes subjective.

While almost every aspect of this life is intriguing, certain people and episodes stand out. I had forgotten Zhang Xueliang until he emerged after a 50 year house arrest, after which he & his wife move to Hawaii. Apparently he was able to keep his pre-war fortune, or had been cared for financially; he is deemed a friend of the Madame. (Another 5 year house arrest of a physician who botches an operation of the General suggests house arrest is a common punishment for "friends" and other professionals.) Madame's war time US appeal for funds, with its cross country caravan of staff whom MCKS treats "as coolies" is certainly an episode worth a small volume. (The $800,000 she raises goes to her personal account.) While the Wendel Wilkie relationship (true or false) is intriguing, I fixed on the William H. Donald relationship, which may have been a professional friendship and refuge from her husband's authoritarianism, but her end of life treatment of him suggests something else.

There are a host of issues worthy of their own books. Perhaps these books exist but I don't know about them. One issue is the "arrival" of 2 million mainlanders to the island of Formosa, who's 7 million citizens seemed to have some degree of prosperity under the Japanese. While the Chaings arrive with resources, others huddle in makeshift places and cry at night. "Invasion" appears to be a better word for this arrival (particularly after 2/28), but it is certainly not portrayed as such (or allowed to be portrayed as such) by the Nationalists who felt entitled to rule and had the resources to make it so. Even later, Madame objects to the appointment of Taiwanese to government posts.

Another issue deserving its own book is Madame's money. Whether or not the NYC exterminators actually saw it, a closet of gold bars is not far fetched. For maybe 30 years, Madame's "charity" received a % of all imports to Taiwan. There were several "vacation" homes in Taiwan, one built at a cost of $2 million. Then, the resources brought from the mainland to Taiwan. This money provided Madame with luxury and a large staff until her death. How large was it? How was it acquired (any from the US war assistance?) and where did it go?

MCKS can be noted for her longevity alone. There must be something Guinness-worthy about her survival despite many years in a war zone, continued medical treatments, operations including several for breast cancer, nervous afflictions, a late in life automobile accident, lifelong cigarette smoking (and potential drug abuse) and at least one assassination attempt. Any one of these factors would tend to predict an early demise, not a life of 103 years.

If you read this book, it's riveting, so be prepared to give it time. Also, the level of detail might make continuity difficult if you have to make gaps in your reading time.

This was a fascinating read, especially the first half. However, despite the author's attempt at sounding objective, subjective bias surfaces repeatedly. Obviously, politics must occupy a large part of Mme. Chiang's biography, but it's ridiculous to spend so many pages on oppression and so little on achievement during the years in Taiwan. After chapter upon chapter on "white terror", Tyson Li regretfully (seemingly) includes all of one paragraph (page 396) on Taiwan's economy. And part of the next paragraph on CKS's musings on the fact that this could not have been achieved on the turmoil-ridden mainland. Whenever the land reforms are mentioned, Tyson Li makes sure to mention it was reluctant on the part of Chiang, or it was nudged or pushed by the US. She describes an extra-marital affair as if this is fact, and only unveils towards the end of the book that this story stems from someone's private diary who might or might not have known or told the truth.
For those unfamiliar with modern Chinese history, this book is likely to twist their understanding. For those who know it, however imperfectly, it's a nice nostalgic walk down memory lane.

Laura Tyson Li has succeeded in that rarest of achievements when it comes to political biographies: to perfectly interweave the history of the person with the history of the nation, in this case Nationalist China. Madame Chiang Kai Shek's history is, of course, never boring and the book, of necessity set in one of China's most turbulent periods, is so well written that it almost reads like a PD James novel. The only observation that tempers that very merited praise in my view is that the author at times seems torn between her - sometimes critical - affection for Madame and her obvious loathing for seemingly everything that the Nationalist government that Madame did so much to support and promote stood for, including its anticommunism. For example, what does it matter that Chiang Kai Shek was a aloof and humorless and that Mao was a pleasant charmer? To me, that doesn't count for much in the light of the fact that Mao was a mass murderer and Chiang wasn't. Throughout the book, sometimes visibly popping up from between the lines, the reader encounters Tyson Li's references to anything and anyone conservative or Republican as either inept, corrupt, or both. While there was a good deal of influence peddling in Washington DC (hardly improved since), it defies belief that it was limited to Republicans favoring the Nationalists in China. However, this (subjective) remark is the book's only flaw, and I can warmly recommend it.

This book is very difficult to get into. It should be very interesting reading, but the author begins with pages and pages of unimportant and uninteresting information. I tried skipping over the first couple chapters, but that didn't seem to help. I'm sure the story of Madame Chiang Kai-shek is in there somewhere, but I don't have the time or the patience to sift through all the superfluous details.

Reading "Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady" was like going through everything in the attic and leaving nothing unexamined. Tyson-Li covers every aspect of Madame Chiang's life without ever letting us forget that life's relevance for today. The "Dragon Lady's" significance never disappears in the wealth of the personal, historical, political, psychological, medical, and religious dimensions of her complex life. Her fanatical anti-Communism calls to mind Richard Nixon's personal crusade. Her use of religion to define her and her husband's sense of destiny parallels certain leaders who employ religious language for similar ends. Her manipulation of people and events exceeds the ambitions of any demagogue who has come to believe his or her own public statements.

All this and more the author achieves with vivid prose that takes you into private parlors where Madame Chiang herself has invited you to tea, but leaves you feeling that just maybe everything you've heard is really true and that your hostess is neither monster nor statesman, but an enigmatic individual using the world as a stage to work out her insecurities.

I read non fiction the way some people eat vegetables. I know it is good for me, but it is often not very exciting. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek is a very interesting book about a time that is moving from the era of current events into history, and reading the book gave me much greater insight into Chinese and American issues of today.
Laura Tyson Li does a good job of telling the reader how Madame Chiang's ambitions for her country effected America's foreign and domestic policy and show the effect one charismatic spokesperson can have on human events.

Fascinating woman in a momentous and turbulent period of Chinese history. The book is well written and well researched - her life was influenced by many world famous people.

P42
pp1
``Like her father before her, Mayling carried back to China not only the language, manners, and the mores of the people among whom she had sojourned, but an unshakable belief in the quintessentially American notions that one can shape one's own fate and that one has a moral obligation to better the fate of others.''

Why someone would claim this ``unshakable belief'' ``quintessentially American'' is beyond me. Doesn't the rose of Self-Reliance by any other name, or no name at all, smell just as sweet? Wouldn't it blossom anywhere in the world?

The Madame might carry the rose back to China, but if she bothered to look, e.g., among the coolies, it had been there long before. What she and others did not see, Mao did.