The Dragon Lady who charmed the world - Madom CKS

[dArKeR]

Soong Mayling (宋美齡), known to much of the world as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, died in New York yesterday. Her life transcended three centuries, changed the course of China's history and influenced the direction and outcome of World War II. Her death brings to an end the power and the glory, the benevolence and the grievances, the beauty and the loneliness that defined that life. Madame Chiang witnessed the reclamation of Chinese land and dignity from the hands of the Japanese occupying forces. She also witnessed the corruption of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which cost the party its power in China. The Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) regime was able to prolong its life in Taiwan, but the Chiang dynasty's authoritarian rule finally caused the people of Taiwan to embrace democracy and dump the KMT. How much wealth Madame Chiang amassed in Taiwan is still a mystery. What she actually took away when she left Taiwan with 99 pieces of luggage is also the subject of much curiosity, speculation and rumor. Her life was the stuff of legend. With her death, the legend of the Soong family -- which had a massive impact on modern China -- is assigned to history. And it is history that will judge her rights and wrongs in China and Taiwan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2003/10/25/2003073291

[TennesseeWalker]

1. Amazingly well written.

It's easy to appreciate the story of someone you aren't as intimately connected to. Hard to imagine something like that written about Bill Clinton or Shrubbie....

[Snow]

2. She did a lot more than witness the corruption of KMT.......

and she alienated Stilwell, a very bad move. But a complex person, nevertheless.

[dArKeR]

3. So long and good riddance - "Madame Chiang Kai-shek"

"Of the dead say nothing but good," Plutarch advises. The problem is that in the case of Soong Mayling (宋美齡 , also fawningly known as "Madame Chiang Kai-shek," there isn't any good to be said. Many obiturists have remarked that she was the most famous Chinese woman of the 20th century. What hasn't been said is that she was also perhaps the most evil woman to wield any kind of power during that bleak 100 years and that her influence on almost anything she touched was corrupting and malign.

Soong learned to speak like a Western democrat during her years of schooling in the US, but her psychology was utterly feudal. Her hypocrisy and mendacity were astonishing, perhaps best represented by her convincing Henry Luce, the powerful boss of Life and Time magazines, that she and her husband Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石 , himself a protege of Shanghai's Green Gang and earning millions in the opium trade -- for which he used the Opium Suppression Agency's boats -- represented this religious crank's best hope for "bringing the Chinese to Jesus."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2003/10/27/2003073589

I guess I'm a coward. I didn't actually say what I felt about this women, I guess because she just died and I guess I wanted to show some kind of respect. But since this reporter has told the truth he gives me cowardly courage:

I depise every bone and every thought you ever had Madame Chiang Kai-shek. I am sure you are rotting in Hell!

[dArKeR]

4. Death evokes bitter feelings for Premier Yu

Premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) expressed mixed emotions over the passing of Chiang Soong May-ling at a Legislative Yuan hearing yesterday.

The premier said he still harbored bitter feelings against Madame Chiang and the authoritarian government led by her husband Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) but would withhold his criticism out of respect for the dead.

The premier made the remarks in the Legislature as lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union questioned the wisdom of granting Soong any national honors.

http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2003/10/29/1067390555.htm