The backdrop to the three fascinating, influential sisters is a landscape of China painted by three men – Sun Yat Sen (‘Sun”), Chiang Kai Shek (‘Chiang’), and Mao Tze Tung. There is a longer list of supporting characters like Charlie Soong and Chou En Lai, but the focus of this book is on the three sisters; thus, the men who complete the picture of the rebirth of a nation. Big sister is Soong Ei-Ling (‘Big Sister’), Little Sister is May-Ling (‘Little Sister’), and Red Sister is Ching-Ling (‘Red Sister’).
Jung Chang ('Chang') became famous for her earlier book on another trio of women – her grandmother, her mother, and herself, ‘The Wild Swans’. This is as riveting as her earlier books (including ‘The Empress Dowager’), and in some ways, more stunning. Chang has written a biography with the meticulousness of a historian and the subtlety of a novelist. Her style and the subject personalities make this book compelling. She has kept adjectives sparse and made strong play with verbs and nouns – truly in Orwellian style. That has also ensured that she does not go overboard with her own judgment of the personalities. She describes them and lets her readers form their own opinions.
Sun, who married Red Sister, was once revered by Chinese outside China, but his stature has been diminished by his own fallibility and ambition – faults comparable to that of his brother-in-law, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek’s. Had these two men cared more of China than their own wealth and self-aggrandisement, the history of China would have been different.
Charlie Soong, the father of the three sisters has a side of him that is Methodist preacher, and the other, a calculating businessman. A strong supporter of Sun, he objected to him marrying his second daughter, Red Sister. Sun was 48 years old and Red Sister was then only in her twenties. She adored Sun throughout her life, but Chang hinted in her book that Red Sister's love and admiration evaporated when she realised that Sun made use of her when he was escaping his enemies in Canton, risking her life for his ambition.
Big Sister married H H Kung (‘Kung’) who was a business man in name only because Big Sister was the brains and driving force behind him and Sun, both of whom she manipulated. Little Sister married Chiang, an avaricious, womaniser, and ambitious man with little scruples – exactly like Sun, his mentor. When he was captured by a warlord and about to be turned over to the communists, Little Sister, aided by Big Sister, arranged for his release.
There are good men and women in this historical too, and Chang is very clear who they were and of her own sympathies with them. Among them, Marshall Wu Pei-Fu, a warlord (not all warlords were bad), and Mu-Zhen, Sun’s first and long-suffering wife. And the sisters? They were all bright, manipulative, and ambitious. All became drunk with the power that came with the men they manipulate (the slant given by Chang, although other accounts suggest that Sun and Chiang did what they did mainly on their own, with just some influence from the sisters). They became as avaricious as their women - save for Red Sister. Sun created his own bank for China but under his name, and listed all its assets in his papers under ‘family affairs’. Sometimes, one cannot help but feel that the whole of China was a Mu-zhen.
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The book is printed incorrectly and is missing a big chunk of pages. It goes from page 38 to 279, then jumps again from page 310 to page 71. Pages 39 to 70 are completely missing.So far the book is good and I would like to keep reading it!
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