Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China

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In fact, it was Ei-ling who was her brother-in-law Chiang Kai-shek’s most influential advisor, even though much of her advice had to be funneled through her husband or a younger brother who also served in Chiang’s cabinet. Born between 1888 and 1898, the twilight of imperial China, all three went on to play dominant roles in 20th-century Chinese life, on the extremes of the political spectrum. Thus, he was content to herd the Red Army into the arid far northwest where he might later bottle up and kill them. May-ling, known as "Little Sister," became Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and first lady pre-Communist Nationalist China.

In the early 1920s, when Sun collaborated with the Soviet Politburo out of political convenience, it was Ching-ling who emerged the true believer and committed Leninist. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Seagrave offers a more negative take on the Soong family while Chang is in turns neutral or complimentary.The book was full of discoveries for me, for I knew a bit of Chinese history, but far from being anything more than an amateur. Out of her own pocket, she had converted the Lido Cabaret into a field hospital of 300 beds and set up a children’s hospital with a hundred beds. We learn how the sisters from colonial influenced Shanghai grew up as Christians and were all educated in the USA and became so "westernised" that at times they struggled to speak their own native language.

Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the ‘Father of China’, Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao’s vice-chair.Soong’s ardent support for Sun came at least in part from the fact that both men visited the West early in life and harbored admiration for outspoken, confident, learned women.