How three women’s influence went on to change the course of Chinese history
The Soong Sisters are often summarised through one of Mao Zedong’s famous sayings: “One loved money, one loved power, one loved her country.” Although very different, these three women led extraordinary lives, nurtured just as extraordinary relationships, and even changed the course of Chinese history. During the early 20th century, opportunities for women were far rarer than they are today. But one way to achieve influence was to marry into it, so the Soong Sisters did just that.
Humble beginnings
The sisters’ story begins with their father, Charles Jones Soong (1863-1918). Raised in Hainan, the smallest and southernmost province of the People’s Republic of China, Charlie Soong was a peasant boy with big dreams. Following an apprenticeship in the East Indies, he relocated to the United States to be educated and trained as a Methodist missionary. After a brief stint working as a publisher of Chinese Bibles back in Shanghai, he switched gears completely and, with the help of an American patron, he quickly became a wealthy industrialist involved in a number of different businesses.
It was during his time as a publisher that Charlie met Sun Yat-sen, who had been leading a Methodist church service in Shanghai. The two men had a fair bit in common: both were Western-educated Christians, both were members of entwined anti-Qing groups, and both sought political change in China. Hitting it off from the start, newly minted Charlie began funding Sun Yat-sen’s political campaigns (he was the founder of the Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang), with the plan being to connect their groups into a network of opposition. To the pair’s chagrin, their first attempt at an uprising in 1895 was a bust, ending in Sun fleeing the country for 16 years and Charlie going incognito in Shanghai. However, Charlie continued to fund Sun from afar, which allowed the latter to start building more connections for a second uprising attempt. In 1906, Charlie Soong was appointed treasurer of the Revolutionary Alliance. Five years later, the Xinhai Revolution brought about the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and Sun Yat-sen finally became the short-lived first president of the Republic of China in 1911.
During the hiatus, Charlie established the Soong family with his wife Ni Kwei-Tseng, a member of China’s most illustrious Christian clan, Xu. In the 1890s, the happy couple welcomed three sons (TV, TL, and TA) and three daughters (Ai-ling, Qingling and Mei-ling). Wanting his daughters to follow in his footsteps, Charlie sent each of them to be educated in the United States. The two eldest, Ai-ling and Qingling, attended Wesleyan College, a private Methodist college in Georgia and the first higher-education institution in the world to offer degrees to women. The
