Famous Personalities in Shanghai & its Environs, 1911 to 1949

For the purposes of this listing, in the case of Western or ‘foreign’ individuals, the surname is given first and in capitals; Chinese and other Oriental individuals’ names have been left in their more recognisable form (to Western readers) but with the family name capitalised for reference, except in the case of individuals who are Manchu in origin: such people never used their real names in adulthood and went by public titles instead. Fictional characters are designated with an ‘F’.

BLAYNE, Horvath (F) (c. 1925 – 1948?)

Born Horvath Waite, Blayne was adopted by cousins in Boston after the destruction of his home town, Innsmouth. He became a student of mythology and religion and focussed his studies on the Indo-Chinese region and the islands of the Pacific. His lectures and researches frequently took him to the major universities in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Peking. After World War Two, he concentrated his efforts on the South Pacific area and won accolades for his work on the ruins of Ponape.

The last sighting of Blayne was in Singapore shortly before his rumoured departure on some secret government business. His fate remains unknown.

BROADHURST, Florence Maud (1899 – 1977)

“Both Europeans and Americans love China because it is so completely flattering to the Anglo-Saxon sense of racial superiority”

-Florence Broadhurst, from a Vogue Magazine interview, 1924

Florence Maud Broadhurst was born in Australia in 1899. At the age of 17 she toured with Dame Nellie Melba and Sir Robert Helpmann, singing under the assumed name of ‘Miss Bobbie Broadhurst’. She soon switched careers and joined a dancing troupe, ‘The Smart Set Diggers’, followed by ‘The Globetrotters’ and toured Southeast Asia, India and China into the ‘20s.

In 1926, she settled in Shanghai and founded the ‘Broadhurst Academy’, teaching ballroom dancing, etiquette and deportment. Seven years later, she moved to London and assumed the name ‘Madame Pellier’ under which she traded, running a couture dress shop. In 1949, she returned to Australia with her second husband and began painting landscapes and portraits, despite a lack of formal training. Eventually she moved into the field of fabric and textiles printing, for which she is best known and in which field her influence is compelling.

In 1977, still working at the age of 78, she was brutally bashed to death in her workshop in Sydney. Evidence at the scene showed that she knew her assailant but to this day, her murder remains unsolved.

CHAN, Charlie (F)

The literary creation of American writer Earl Derr Biggers (1884 – 1933), Charlie Chan is a Sino-American police detective connected to the Honolulu Police Force. In the early cases he is referred as ‘Sergeant’; however his rank increases by the end of the series to ‘Inspector’. Born in China, he moved to Hawaii at an early age. Chan is a cheerful and dapper character, fastidious of his appearance and ubiquitously dressed in a white suit and hat. He is renowned for having a large family, headed by his ‘Number One Son’, and also for dropping Chinese aphorisms whenever appropriate. His style of investigation is usually to disarm then outwit the villain, leaving any physical effort in the capable hands of Number One Son. The novels were written from 1925 to 1932; screen adaptations of these works and other stories were made regularly from 1926 up until 1949, with another version starring Peter Ustinov made in 1981. TV shows, comics, cartoons and spoofs have been made right up to the present day, making him as enduring a character as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.

Chan’s adventures saw him travel all over the world (with Number One Son carrying the luggage) so it is highly likely that Investigators may encounter him on the trail of villainy in Shanghai, should the Keeper feel it warranted.

CHIANG Kai-shek (1887 – 1975)

“We write our own destiny. We are what we do”

-Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek began his career in 1918 when, under instructions from Dr Sun Yat-sen he helped create and lead the Whampoa Military Academy in Kwangtung, where Sun had established his new government, the Republic of China (ROC). Chiang served as the leader of this institution, the purpose of which was to train soldiers with the ultimate aim of marching on Peking, until the death of Sun in 1925, at which point he took over as Generalissimo of the ROC as well as leadership of the Kuomintang (KMT). Between 1925 and 1928, he led his Nationalist troops on the Northern Expedition to unify the country and to eliminate the chaos caused by the Warlord Era, an endeavour from which he emerged largely – although questionably - victorious.

In 1920 he met May-ling Soong and they began a long courtship due to Chiang having to flee the country to Japan intermittently and because of objections on her mother’s side. Chiang was already married and also a Buddhist and May-ling’s mother insisted on seeing proof of a divorce and Chiang’s conversion to Christianity before allowing the nuptials to proceed. Chiang took his time in converting, telling May-ling’s mother that religion “needed to be gradually absorbed, not swallowed like a pill”. Inevitably, the two were wed on the 1^st of December, 1927.

The ideological legacy that Sun Yat-sen left to both the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC) caused a wide rift between the two groups and Chiang grew to be deeply suspicious of the Communists. During the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949) he turned his efforts to eliminating the Communist presence within the country, an undertaking which distanced him from both the Chinese and his troops, but which won him much popularity overseas. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), he again led his country to victory but at the expense of his anti-Communist efforts, which led to his defeat in the Civil War in 1949. He was forced to flee the country to Taiwan where he continued as President in exile of the ROC and leader of the KMT until his death in 1975.

COPELAND, Harold Hadley (F) (c. 1860 – 1926)

A noted anthropological researcher and co-founder of the Pacific Area Archaeological Association (PAAA), of which he later became the president. He began his studies in Cambridge, later graduating from Miskatonic University. He travelled widely throughout Asia in the 1890s and his published journals of these trips gained him some popularity. His early scholarly writings include Prehistory in the Pacific: A Preliminary Investigation with References to the Myth Patterns of South-East Asia (1902), Polynesian Mythology, with a Note on the Cthulhu Legend-Cycle (1906), The Ponape Scripture (1907) (his translation of a document discovered in 1734), The Ponape Figurine (1910) and The Prehistoric Pacific in light of the Ponape Scripture (1911). This last work met with considerable disfavour and he was forced to resign his presidency of the PAAA as a result.

In 1913, Copeland took a different tack and set off on an expedition to Central Asia, in search of the Plateau of Tsang. The Copeland–Ellington Expedition met with disaster from the outset: Ellington died in mysterious circumstances after only a few days and the group’s guides and bearers either deserted, or perished from the harsh conditions. Three months later, Copeland was found raving in Mongolia, claiming to have met with a Muvian wizard named ‘Zanthu’, who gave him ten inscribed stone tablets. These tablets were in his backpack when he was discovered, covered with ancient hieroglyphics.

After returning from his ordeal, Copeland spent the next three years translating the tablets and published his findings as The Zanthu Tablets: A Conjectural Translation; he was then confined to an asylum in San Francisco where he slit his own throat shortly afterwards. His vast collection of papers and Polynesian artefacts was left in his will to the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Studies.

DU Yue-sheng, aka ‘Big-Eared’ Du (1887 – 1951)

"Du himself was tall and thin, with a face that seemed hewn out of stone, a Chinese version of the Sphinx. Peculiarly and inexplicably terrifying were his feet, in their silk socks and smart pointed European boots, emerging from beneath the long silken gown. Perhaps the Sphinx, too, would be even more frightening if it wore a modern top-hat."

-W H Auden & Christopher Isherwood, Journey to a War (1938)

‘Big Eared’ Du started life in poverty. Born in the Pudong across from the Bund in Shanghai, he began his career as a street tough in the Green Gang. Rising up through the ranks he quickly became the leader of this notorious outfit and set about becoming the ultimate ruler of the Shanghai underworld.

With a monopoly on opium distribution, protection rackets and a string of brothels and gambling establishments, Du started a fruitful business relationship with the head of the Police in the French Concession, ‘Pockmarked’ Huang Jinrong (some say that Du was conducting an illicit affair with Huang’s mistress and that she promoted the arrangement with Huang). Between them and the forces which they controlled, they made Frenchtown the heart of opium distribution throughout the 20s and 30s.

Despite being a criminal, Du was an unfailing patriot and parochially Shanghainese: the occupation of the Old City by the Small Swords in times past had been broken by Green Gang confederates and Du was extremely protective of this part of the city. In later years, he ousted Communist factions and had links with the highest levels of the Kuomintang, including Chiang Kai-shek.

Throughout his life he was an inveterate gambler and opium addict, prone to flashy displays of his power: he often sent those who had crossed him a ‘made-to-measure’ coffin and his catchphrase was “you have my word”. He bought police officers and houses with equal ease: he lived in a magnificent mansion (now the Donghu Hotel) with a bevy of wives and consorts and even owned a bank. The Central Plaza building now on Yanan Lu near the Bund was once in his possession. In 1932 he was elected to the French Municipal Council and became a bona fide ‘pillar of society’.

During the war with Japan he threw his not-inconsiderable weight behind the Chinese army, relaying information and armaments to where they would do the most good. He fled Shanghai to Hong Kong just before the Communist takeover in 1949 and lived there until his death in 1951. If anyone could be said to epitomise the lawless, glamorous life of Shanghai, it is Du Yue-sheng.

HUANG Jinrong, aka ‘Pockmarked’ Huang (1886 – 1953)

Due to the fact that municipal government of the French Concession lay in the hands of the French Embassy in Indochina, local matters were usually left in the hands of the gendarmes. This meant that many instances of corruption or lawlessness went unpunished and examined by the French authorities. The gendarmerie was composed mainly of Chinese nationals and their leader throughout the 1920s and -30s was the sinister figure of ‘Pockmarked’ Huang Jinrong. Almost singlehandedly, Huang organised the corruption of the French Concession police force into a smoothly-oiled machine: opium dens and brothels paid the police a healthy cut of their profits in return for the protection and non-interference of the Police; a cut of this money went to the Concession premiers, who were quite happy to look the other way and pocket the proceedings ... as long as the money kept coming.

Huang, like Du Yue-sheng had his start in one of Shanghai’s notorious tongs, in his case the Red Gang of which he became the leader. As part of a criminal master stroke, they paired up (some say at the behest of Huang’s mistress with whom it was rumoured Du was having an affair) and together they manipulated the drug traffic and vice of Shanghai for mutual benefit, living large off the proceeds. Huang was rumoured to have built and owned the Great World Amusement Centre on the border of the Concession and the Settlement, a multiplex of drinking, dancing, restaurants, ice-skating and opium-taking that further enhanced his economic capital.

INGRAM, Isabel (1902 - 1988)

Along with Reginald Johnston, Isabel Ingram was one of only two foreigners allowed within the circle of the Ching Dynasty in its final days. The daughter of missionary parents, she was born in Peking and attended Wellesley College in the United States before returning to China in 1922 to become the tutor of the Empress ‘Elizabeth’ Wan Rong, the Emperor Pu Yi’s first wife. After the expulsion of the Emperor from the Purple Forbidden City she left to travel the world and wrote, during this time, several scholarly papers on China for the Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin.

JOHNSTON, Reginald (1874 - 1938)

Born in Edinburgh, Johnston joined the Foreign Service in 1898 and was initially sent to Hong Kong, after which he was despatched to the British leased territories in Weihaiwei in Shantung in 1906. In 1919 he was appointed tutor to the Dragon Emperor, Pu Yi, who enjoyed status as a non-sovereign monarch within the Purple Forbidden City in Peking. Along with Isabelle Ingram he was one of only two foreigners to have dwelled within the inner circle of the Ching Dynasty. He remained in touch with the Emperor for many years afterwards, despite the embarrassment this connexion caused after Pu Yi became the puppet ruler of the Japanese state of Manchukuo.

After Pu Yi was ousted from the Purple Forbidden City in 1924, Johnston worked for the British China Indemnity Commission until his appointment in 1927 to the governorship of Weihaiwei. He stayed there until the territory’s return to Chinese authority in 1930, at which point he returned to Britain, taking up a professorship in Chinese at the University of London, a position which he did not enjoy and from which he retired in 1937. He acquired an island in a Scottish loch on which he built a Chinese garden and died shortly thereafter in Edinburgh. His 1934 book, Twilight in the Forbidden City, was the inspiration for Bernardo Bertolucci’s film, The Last Emperor.

KEARNEY, ‘Peg-Leg’

“Strictly speaking, I am only half American”

-‘Peg-Leg’ Kearney

An ex-arms salesman and, according to his own account, a former admiral in the Chilean navy, ‘Peg-Leg’ Kearney was a notorious gun-runner in Shanghai during the ‘20s and early ‘30s. He gained his nickname due to the fact that he had had both legs amputated and replaced with wooden ones, thus the wry quote above. Working with General ‘One-Arm’ Sutton, he conducted all his business transactions from a rickshaw. Along with his economic activities, he also took the time to found a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan known as the ‘San-K’.

KUNG Hsiang-hsi (“H. H. Kung”) (1881 – 1967)

Kung Hsiang-hsi, a self-confessed 75^th generation direct descendant of Confucius, was educated at Oberlin and Yale and became an important supporter of the Chinese Nationalist movement. His first appointment after the establishment of the ROC was as Minister of Industry and Commerce from 1928 to 1931; after this he joined the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. In 1933 he became the Minister for Finance and the Governor of the Bank of China, positions which he held until 1945. His career is littered with episodes displaying a questionable lack of judgement, leading to economic chaos throughout his tenure. During this time he married Soong Ai-ling following in the footsteps of both Sun Yat-sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in marrying into this influential family. He retired in 1945 and then went to live in the United States in 1949 after the fall of the Nationalist government.

Lao che (F)

An ex-comprador gone bad, Lao Che is the quintessential Shanghai gangster, owner of several Frenchtown nightspots and a successful air-freight company. With his two sons, Kao Han and Chen, and a gang of well-armed hoodlums, he wheels and deals the night away, to the tunes of Busby-Berkeley cabaret shows.

Unknown to many, Lao Che has a mystical side to his nature: he is proud of his Manchu roots and reveres his ancestors deeply. To this end he has set out to collect artefacts and treasures connected to the Ching Dynasty, obtaining them through trade, purchase or brute force, whichever he feels best suits the occasion. To date, it is rumoured that he possesses the ‘Eye of the Peacock’, a fabulous diamond, and is said to be on the trail of the remains of the first Manchu leader, the divinely-appointed Nurhaci.

LITVANOFF, Victoria (b. circa. 1893)

Victoria Litvanoff (aka Madame Ganette, Victoria Seou, Madame Dafin Desmond, or Dauphine Desmond) was a heavy-set, dark-haired woman of White Russian extraction. She arrived in China after the death of her third husband: her first husband died on the Eastern Front during World War One; her second, a Russian baron, was killed in the Russian Revolution; the third, a Japanese Army captain, was killed in the Japanese earthquake of 1923. She has lived all over China and Manchuria and moved to Shanghai upon marrying her fourth husband, Nikolas Nikolayevitch Litvanoff, a White Russian working as an electrical contractor. Victoria was in her forties during the 1920s but she contrived to look much older.

Victoria Litvanoff posed as a clairvoyant, working in a subdivided office which she shared with a Chinese doctor named Liu Ding on Nanking Road. Her space in these premises was decorated with curtains and various occult paraphernalia including a human skull and crossed leg bones. Practicing clairvoyancy was illegal under Settlement law but since she was a White Russian, she could not be tried under this jurisdiction; there was no equivalent law under Chinese jurisdiction. When not reading tea leaves, Mrs Litvanoff performed as an escapologist in local theatres, but her stagecraft was lacklustre at best.

A more lucrative business for Mrs Litvanoff was the blackmailing of her clients through the information she extracted during her ‘séances’; as well, she did good business in kidnapping white women who came to her and selling them to brothels. She also ran several brothels herself in the French Concession before she missed a sizable payment to Huang Jinrong and was shut down. She was wanted by both Settlement and Concession police but was canny enough to jump from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and slip through the tightening legal noose.

During one escape from the Concession area, she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her hip; this left her with a pronounced limp. During her recovery from this injury, she stayed at her hideout in the Western Badlands: this house was on a side street under Chinese jurisdiction but with one side facing the Municipality road. Victoria and her husband rented it from Settlement owners by paying two month’s rent and paid nothing thereafter: the location of the hideout meant that no-one could do anything to evict them.

In 1928 having started another brothel, Nikolas started an affair with one of the brothel girls and split from Mrs Litvanoff. She initially tried to commit suicide but then decided to gain revenge by reporting the couple to the police: the police were in no way prepared to take her seriously. Nikolas in turn accused Victoria of being a Bolshevik spy by means of an anonymous letter, a trumped-up charge that the various police forces simply added to the pile of Victoria Litvanoff’s crimes.

Despite the outrageous instances of her life recorded here, Victoria Litvanoff and her husband were actual people living in Shanghai. They provide a good instance of the type of legal dance that most criminals led at this time.

MAO Tse-tung (later MAO Zhedong) (1893 – 1976)

Mao is perhaps one of the most controversial political figures of China’s history, if not the most controversial. From 1927 through to 1949 he led the Communist Party of China (CPC) against the Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War, finally achieving victory and ousting Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party. After taking control of the country he then began a systematic denigration and despoliation of the country and people, leading to the deaths of tens of millions of citizens, one of the highest peace-time death tolls the world has ever known.

While it is unquestioned that Mao recreated China as a great world power, his half-baked socio-economic policies (The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution) effectively crippled his country repeatedly, forcing other leaders such as Deng Xiaoping to step in and fix things. This inevitably led Mao to become paranoid about his advisors’ intentions and to exile, kill or imprison them. Coupled with the ruthless bloody-mindedness of his wife, Jiang Ching, aka ‘Madame Mao’, they wreaked havoc in a country completely shut off from the scrutiny of the outside world.

Mao’s tactical nous in the Chinese Civil War is generally upheld, but equally, if Chiang Kai-shek hadn’t been distracted by the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War Two and the international posturing in Central Asia, the outcome might well have been very different. In the latter period of his rule, Mao faded into the background leaving others to carry out his instructions; he died in 1976 leaving the Party in disarray. No-one questions his abilities as a poet and calligrapher.

PLOWRIGHT, Frederick Seddon, BSc (F) (c.1898 – 1953)

A well-known English photographer, cinematographer and adventurer, Plowright’s photographs  of largely unexplored territories across the planet are world famous and his film of Francis Luttrell’s major earth-boring explorations in Nevada in 1929 – To the Ends of the Earth – forms part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This last adventure was one of several – including von Hagenbeck’s mapping of the Quartz Mountains in Outer Mongolia and The Great Northern Expedition of 1933 under Scarsdale - during which he almost lost his life. He certainly lost his sanity after this last sojourn.

A self-confessed dabbler in the more outré areas of the sciences to which his degree gave him access, Plowright settled upon photography as a rewarding outlet for his imaginative nature. In 1931 at the height of his fame he was contacted by Clark Ashton Scarsdale and invited to embark upon The Great Northern Expedition along with three others. The destination of this adventure was not well-publicised and was deliberately falsified as an attempt upon the North Pole; from Plowright’s writings it is now generally assumed to have been an assault upon regions in Western China or Mongolia. Plowright was the apparent sole survivor of this endeavour, having been discovered months later in the sick-bay of a P&O liner in the Bay of Biscay with only a handful of his personal effects to identify him. Plagued by frequent bouts of ill health thereafter, Plowright dwindled in the care of friends, finally being consigned to an asylum in Surrey where he succumbed in 1953.

Pu Yi, ‘Mr Henry’, Last Emperor of China; Emperor of Manchukuo (1906 – 1968)

“Little Pu Yi, I have decided that you will be the new lord of ten thousand years. You will be the Son of Heaven.”

-Tsai-i, Dowager Empress

Pu Yi was the last Emperor of China, appointed by the Empress Dowager Tsai-i, her last political manipulation before her death in 1908. Pu Yi was only two years old, the nephew of the previous emperor, at the time of his ascension to the Dragon Throne. As the Manchu imperialist structure self-destructed around him, lost inside the Purple Forbidden City, he was only fated to ‘rule’ for three years.

The terms of the surrender after the Chinese Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, was such that Pu Yi was allowed to remain at large within the Purple Forbidden City with a semblance of the old court structures around him, complete with eunuchs and the wives and consorts of his predecessor. He grew up learning the Chinese classics and the new Republican Government engaged the services of Reginald Johnston to provide him with a modern education. He took the English name ‘Henry’ but never learnt to speak English. In 1923, even this pretence of rulership was too much for the new government and Pu Yi was evicted from the Purple Forbidden City. He relocated to the Japanese Concession in Tientsing.

The Japanese manipulated Pu Yi with offers of a new title and, in 1932, set him up as leader of the puppet state of Manchukuo, their name for the newly-invaded state of Manchuria. In 1934 they crowned him Emperor of this, his ancestral homeland. However, the gifts they offered were bitter fruit and in 1945, after the Japanese were defeated in World War Two, Pu Yi was imprisoned by the invading Russian Army until 1950.

After this he was transferred to a Chinese prison for almost ten years, under Communist control. He was released and spent the last eight years of his life as a librarian and gardener. During the mid ‘60s he was summoned for a private interview with Mao Tse-tung but nothing is known of their conversation.

RUAN Lingyu (1910 – 1935)

“Gossip is a fearful thing.”

-Ruan Lingyu, her suicide note

Born in Shanghai in 1910 of Cantonese ancestry, Ruan Ling-yu was perhaps the greatest tragedienne produced by China in its history of film-making, able to plumb depths of tragedy and transfer them to the screen like no other. And she had plenty of tragedy in her life to inform her skills: her father died when she was six years old and her mother abandoned her in the city a year later.

She began acting in plays at her school and made her first film at the tender age of 17. She spent almost the entire following decade in the movie business, garnering a reputation for being the greatest tragic heroine of the Chinese cinema of all time. Amongst the two dozen or so movies she made, the standout films include Love and Honour, Night in the City and Three Modern Girls.

She committed suicide at just 25 years of age on March 8^th, 1935 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Her funeral procession on March 14^th was witnessed by tens of thousands of Shanghainese who lined the roads to see her coffin pass.

SASSOON, Sir Victor, ‘The Lame Sassoon’, (1881 - 1961)

“There is only one race greater than the Jews, and that is the Derby.”

-Sir Victor Sassoon.

Great grandson of David Sassoon, Sir Victor parlayed the family’s opium wealth into property speculation in the late 1920s and almost single-handedly revitalised the building industry in the city. Over the next decade the skyline changed dramatically as skyscrapers rose steadily from the Bund. Sir Victor’s residence was the Cathay Hotel, the penthouse apartment of which was a green-lit pyramid with 360° views of the Bund and the surrounding city and lined in oak panels like an English gentlemen’s club. He was famous for holding extravagant parties here well into the night.

With the success of the Cathay Hotel, Sassoon consolidated his good fortune by building other hotels and apartment complexes, such as the Hotel Metropole, Hamilton House, Grosvenor House, Cathay Mansions and Embankment Mansions, at one time the largest single building on the coast of China. Apart from hotels his other passion in life was horse-racing and his stud, the Woodditton in Cambridgeshire, boasted a series of remarkable performances in its time.

Throughout his life, Sassoon walked with two canes, a result of an injury sustained during World War One in which he served with the Royal Flying Corps. In later life he retired to Nassau in the Bahamas, converted to Buddhism and married his long-time American nurse, ‘Barnsie’. The Sassoon Baronetcy of Bombay, his official title, became extinct after his death.

Other famous members of the Sassoon Dynasty include Siegfried Sassoon the World War One poet; Sir Phillip Sassoon, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Lloyd George; and Vidal Sassoon, the famous hairstylist of the 1960s.

*****

The Soong Dynasty

“They’re all thieves, every damn’ one of them”

-President Truman

From humble beginnings, the Soong family rose to become the single most influential family in Shanghai, with ramifications across the globe in the area of politics and economics. Their true history has only recently been recorded, as the layers of scandal and intrigue slowly peel away. With a couple of notable exceptions, they were notorious in their corruption and their links to underworld crime – a true Shanghai legend.

SOONG, Charles Jones (HAN Jiaozhun) (1866 - 1918)

Han Jiaozhun was born of Hakka descent on the island of Hainan in Canton. At the age of eight he began working with his extended family in the local chiu chao brotherhood, sailing as far away as Indonesia for the purposes of trade and a little piracy on the side. At nine years of age, he was adopted out to an uncle who owned a tea dealership in Boston. Tiring of this life by the age of twelve, he stowed away on a steam ship and was discovered by the captain who signed him up as a cabin boy and named him ‘Charles Sun’ (from Jiaozhun).

With assistance from his captain, Charlie (as he became known) converted to Christianity under the Methodist sect and won a position to study theology at Trinity College (now Duke University). After graduating from Vanderbilt University in 1885 he returned to Shanghai as a Methodist missionary. Tensions with his Christian sponsors nagged at him from the start: they insisted that he be put to work in areas where no white preacher would venture, but this put him at odds with the Chinese who distrusted this ‘pretend white man’. Charlie finally struck out on his own and set up a business printing Bibles.

But Bibles were not his entire stock in trade; early on in his Shanghai career and with a growing family, Charlie, used his chiu chao connexions to join the local triad, the ‘Three Heavenly Harmonies’. This organisation had strong links to the notorious Red Gang of Shanghai and while working for them Charlie met Sun Yat-sen who was also a member and who had fled trouble in Canton. Together they decided to work towards Sun’s goal of ousting the Manchu overlords. They began printing anti-Imperialist propaganda alongside scripture.

Charlie soon diversified: he became a comprador in a successful noodle factory and began manufacturing cotton products and cigarettes. By this time he had adopted the family name ‘Soong’ which he had appropriated from the dynastic family of the same name, albeit with a different spelling. In time, Charlie became Secretary for the Kuomintang and Sun Yat-sen’s greatest supporter and financial provider.

Charlie’s chickens came home to roost, however. A rift between Charlie and Sun occurred when the latter asked to marry Charlie’s second daughter, Ching-ling. Charlie refused and their relationship cooled. When Ching-ling and Sun eloped, Charlie walked away from his involvement with Sun and his Revolutionary efforts. Not long afterwards, Charlie died of suspected stomach cancer; this is now regarded as a euphemism to hide the fact that he was poisoned, most likely by triad opponents.

NI Kwei-tseng, Madam SOONG, ‘Mammy’ (1868 – 1931)

The daughter of Episcopalian Chinese converts, ‘Mammy’ Soong was a perfect match for Charlie Soong. One of three daughters, their mother had attempted to bind their feet at birth; Kwei-tseng developed a bad fever as a result and had to be excused from the process. With her marriage prospects thus reduced, her father opted to educate her instead. After meeting Charlie at a prayer gathering soon after his return to Shanghai, a marriage was quickly arranged between them: what better answer than to wed the ‘unmarriageable Chinese girl’ to the ‘pretend white man’?

Ni Kwei-tseng remained much in the background during the growth of her family and its machinations, but she was a determined influence in all their lives. She was a staunch Christian and forbade her children from dancing or playing cards. She held the whip hand over Chiang Kai-shek in his attempt to marry Soong May-ling, refusing to allow him to marry her unless he converted from his Buddhist faith (and shed himself of his other wives and concubines). Her increasingly stern aspect was most likely the result of her growing awareness of her husband’s links to crime and the willingness of her children to partake of the same iniquity.

SOONG, Ai-ling (or ‘Eling’), Madam KUNG, ‘Nancy’ (1890 – 1973)

“One loved money, one loved power and one loved China”

-Modern Chinese saying, referring to the Soong sisters

The three Soong daughters were a remarkable trio, notable for their ambition and their strong wills. Ai-ling is the one referred to in the above quote as the lover of money and she is the most shadowy and disturbing of the three.

By far the most homely of the three girls, Ai-ling showed an uncanny aptitude for finance from a young age. She would sit quietly in Charlie’s offices and watch as he conducted deals with his business partners. Her first position after leaving school was to work as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary. She left this position after meeting H. H. Kung whom she later married. As a financial partnership, this arrangement went from strength to strength.

At this time Du Yue-sheng had consolidated his hold of the Shanghai underworld and was a force with which to be reckoned. Ai-ling took the opportunity to introduce her new husband to him and they became an integral link in his power base. In her position as H. H. Kung’s wife she listened in on many high level economic discussions and used this knowledge to influence the stock exchange, making huge profits for herself in return. She is known to have engineered the deaths of many rivals and opponents, earning the sobriquet of ‘the most hated woman in China’.

During the Second World War while H. H. Kung desperately attempted to prop up the failing Chinese economy by printing paper money, Ai-ling was put in charge of a 30,000-strong force of soldiers whose role was to replace existing silver currency with the worthless paper cash. At one time she attempted to pay her and her husband’s yearly protection fee to Du Yue-sheng with this money and they were sent a gaudy coffin along with a complete troupe of mourners. ‘Correct’ payment was made shortly thereafter.

The Kung’s other ‘triumph’ was the arranged marriage of Chiang Kai-shek to Soong May-ling. In this they had to overcome the objections of Madam Soong but eventually they were successful. For their efforts they were placed in high positions within the Kuomintang and solidified the Green Gang’s connexions both to the government and to the social elite of Shanghai.

Ai-ling fled to America in 1949 taking a huge fortune with her, largely stolen from the copious amounts of foreign aid sent to China from the US. She died in New York at the age of 83.

SOONG, Ch’ing-ling, Madame SUN Yat-sen, ‘Rosamond’ (1893 – 1981)

In each family there is the inevitable black sheep: Ching-ling is notable for being the only Soong child who didn’t delve in the corrupt underworld of Shanghai to get ahead. A romantic and an idealist from an early age, Ching-ling fervently followed the efforts of Sun Yat-sen in his attempts to throw off the shackles of Imperialism. When the opportunity came to marry him – even against her father’s wishes – she leapt at the chance. After his death in 1925, she carried on his teachings and strove to create a new Chinese Republic.

Unfortunately, she was hampered by the efforts of her brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek, whose obsession with Communist elements within the Kuomintang whittled away her comrades and support base. But for their common family ties, it is probable that Chiang would have eliminated Ching-ling as well, but the bonds of sisterhood tied his hands. This being said, Ching-ling was forced into exile on several occasions, studying in Moscow (where she found the prevailing Communism not to her liking) and also in Berlin. She railed against the abuses of power which she saw taking place in her homeland and was scathing about her family’s involvement in them.

After Mao’s rise to power, she was appointed Vice Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, second only to Mao himself. Later on, from 1968 to 1972, she became Co-chairman of the Republic and thus the third non-royal woman to become the Chinese head of State, after her sister May-ling and Jiang Ching, leader of the Gang of Four and Director of the Cultural Revolution. In 1981 she briefly became the Chinese President.

It is of interest to note that Ching-ling never became a member of the Communist Party (despite rumours of a deathbed ‘conversion’ during which she could not have been sensible). Throughout her life she was a fervent believer in a democratic Chinese Republic, even moreso than its founder, Sun Yat-sen. While criticised by some for not speaking out enough against the excesses of the Communist regime, she remains an ideological beacon for the Chinese people.

SOONG, T. V. (Tse-ven) ‘Paul’ (1894 – 1971)

Charlie Soong’s first-born son, T. V., like all of his siblings, was sent to America for his education. He graduated from Harvard and received a PhD in Economics from Columbia University. Returning to China he assumed the position of Governor of the Central Bank of China under the Kuomintang. He later became the Minister of Finance from 1928 to 1931, and again from 1932 to 1933. He also served as Minister for Foreign Affairs (1942-5) and president of the Executive Yuan, 1945-7). He also headed the Chinese delegation on International Organisation, later the United Nations, in April 1945.

A hallmark of all T. V.’s endeavours throughout this period, is a great striving to reform the economic climate of China in tandem with major head-butting with his family. The Kungs  and the Chiangs often refused to let such idealism get in the way of their individual quests for money and power and periodically pulled the rug out from under him; Chiang Kai-shek is known to have slapped T. V.’s face in public during a particularly hysterical argument. In the end, T. V. bowed to their Machiavellian scheming and became little more than a gofer, ready to jump in and do whatever was required of him.

T. V. was instrumental in setting up an American Volunteer Flying Group – ‘The Flying Tigers’ - out of Shanghai under ace Claire Chennault, a unit which was later incorporated into the US Air Force. The first wave of fighter planes for this group was provided by Du Yue-sheng out of his own pocket. The resources of the Green Gang also ensured that T. V. was the first to see correspondence – including US State Department memos – before anyone else. As a result, T. V. was listed at one time as the richest man on Earth, valued at over a billion dollars in personal wealth.

After the defeat of the Nationalist forces T. V. moved to New York and remained an influential member of the China Lobby. During his high-flying career with the Kuomintang he managed to raise 3.8 billion dollars of American aid for China and embezzled more than half of it, salting it away in the pockets of himself and his brothers and sisters. While on business in San Francisco in 1971, he choked on his meal and died of a massive stroke.

SOONG, May-ling, Madame CHIANG Kai-shek (1897 - 2003)

“Madame Chiang was a close friend of the United States throughout her life, and especially during the defining struggles of the last century. Generations of Americans will always remember and respect her intelligence and strength of character.”

-George W. Bush

Soong May-ling was the youngest daughter of Charlie Soong and Ni Kwei-tseng and the most headstrong. By far the most highly-strung of the Soong offspring, she was plagued by screaming nightmares as a child and by severe bouts of urticaria throughout her life, resulting in painful rashes across her body whilst under stress. The most spoilt child of the brood, she was called ‘Little Lantern’ in reference to her plump form when young.

As she grew up, following her sisters to school in Macon Georgia in the US, she became vivacious and quick-witted, excelling in English which she spoke with a decided southern drawl. She rapidly became the ‘public face’ of the Soongs and devoted her life to the management of their image both in China and abroad. Marrying Chiang Kai-shek as part of a delicate negotiation by her sister Ai-ling and H. H. Kung, she became his supporter and champion par excellence.

An instance of her public relations skills can be seen in the famous photograph of herself, Chiang, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Cairo Summit in 1940: in the foreground Chiang and FDR seem to be swapping an amusing anecdote; behind them, Madame Chiang is laughing delightedly, seemingly in response to a dry quip from Churchill. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek could not speak English and Churchill was angered by the Chiang’s presence at the talks and refused to acknowledge them at all. The photo opportunity was an elaborate staging, meant to convey a sense of co-operation and ease amongst these world leaders. Madame Chiang worked tirelessly to create the impression that Chiang Kai-shek was a world leader on par with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.

One of the most important weapons in her arsenal was TIME publisher, Henry Luce, who had grown up in China, the child of missionaries and who was ever after blinkered in regard to the true state of things in that country, particularly about the Chiangs. He relentlessly published glowing tributes to the Soongs and their efforts, sacking reporters who dared to cast shadows on their lustre. May-ling appeared twice on the cover of the magazine – once dubbed ‘The Dragon Lady’ – and featured often in lists of the ‘10 Most Influential Women in the World’ throughout the 50s and 60s. The Dragon Lady quip, meant to be a reference to Tsai-i, the Dowager Empress, had unforeseen repercussions as Madame Chiang was caricatured as ‘The Dragon Lady’ in the popular newspaper cartoon Terry and the Pirates.

Politically, May-ling had a busy career. She was Chiang Kai-shek’s interpreter and everything that went to him passed through her. She formed the New Life Movement, dedicated to reforming China in the wake of the ousting of the Imperial leadership and was a member of the Legislative Yuan from 1930 to 1932; she took over from T. V. Soong as Secretary General of the Aeronautical Affairs Commission and ran the ‘Flying Tigers’ from 1936 to 1938, when they were absorbed into the USAF; in 1945 she became a member of the Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. Her influence and involvement in all areas of Chinese government led Gen. Joseph Stilwell to remark (and it was not kindly meant) that “she ought to be appointed Minister of Defense”.

In 1943 she made a memorable trip to the US and her presence drew crowds of up to 30,000, although often she was elsewhere while her Chinese maid acted as a stand-in. She was petulant and behaved like a spoilt rock star during most of this visit, but nevertheless managed to successfully voice her appeal for assistance to China in the form of foreign aid donations and she became the first Chinese national and the second woman to address Congress. The funds generated by her speeches and articles as well as the rallies she ‘attended’ were huge and were largely purloined by her brother T. V. Soong.

In later life, after the Communist takeover and Chiang’s philandering while in exile in Taiwan, Madame Chiang assumed a prominent role by chairing committees in many high profile international aid efforts, usually focussed on China. She ended her days in a private apartment in Long Island, New York and, when news of her death was broadcast, many people were surprised to find that she had still been alive.

SOONG, T. L. (Tse-liang) (c.1898 - ?)

The younger two Soong children – Tse-liang and Tse-an – were the most inscrutable. Born last and in the period when Madame Soong’s stern character was asserting itself, these two were reclusive and close-mouthed. Like the other children, they were educated overseas and returned to Shanghai as wheeling, dealing financiers. Like T. V., they were able to be moved about the economic playing board of China according to the whims of Chiang Kai-shek, H. H. Kung and Du Yue-sheng; unlike their older brother however, they lacked any idealism in the area of economic reform for their homeland. What they lacked here however, they made up for in loyalty to the Kuomintang and the Green Gang.

Not much is known about T. L., other than that he fled to the US after the Communist takeover and became a New York businessman. It is believed that he aided the Federal Treasury in the ‘50s but that agency claims not to know about him at all.

SOONG, T. A. (Tse-an) (c.1900 – 1969)

Like his brother T. L., T. A. was a good soldier for the twin causes of the Kuomintang and its Green Gang engine. At one time he was handed complete control of the National Salt Monopoly, a tariff on this commodity which generated millions of Chinese dollars; an army of soldiers dedicated to protecting this revenue was controlled by T. A.’s wife.

Before the Communist takeover he transferred himself and his wealth to Hong Kong, where he became the chairman of the Bank of Canton until his death from apoplexy in 1969.

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SUTTON, General Francis Arthur ‘One-Arm’ (1884-1944)

A British gun-runner and adventurer, Sutton organised the smuggling of weapons and other contraband into and out of Shanghai throughout the ‘20s and early ‘30s, working mainly with the American ‘Peg-Leg’ Kearney. He lost a hand during the fighting at Gallipoli and thus gained the nickname ‘One-Arm’. He began life as an engineer, building railroads in Argentina and Mexico prior to World War One; later, he spent time gold-mining in Siberia, during which he became an advisor to several Chinese warlords, earning the rank of General in the Chinese Army. He speculated heavily in railroad building in Canada but lost everything in the Great Crash of 1929. Afterwards, he returned to China as a war correspondent in 1931 and began exploring mining options in Korea, while running armaments on the side. His golf clubs accompanied him everywhere he went, labelled as “Theodolite; Legs Of”. There are reports of him running guns as late as 1941 from Shanghai to Chungking, shortly before his expulsion by the Japanese. He fled to Hong Kong where he later died as a prisoner of war.

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