At midnight on April 5, 1975, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of a generation, passed away, and Taiwan mourned his death. A few months later, the physically and mentally exhausted Mrs. Soong Mei-ling went to the United States to settle there. In addition to her luggage, she brought with her a 14-karat gold pendant watch given to her by her husband Chiang Chung-cheng on their wedding day.
“China and the United States respect each other,”
The first to discover this secret was the famous watch repairman Mr. Yang Wenda, who graduated from the 16th grade of the Whampoa Military Academy and opened a watch shop to earn a living after he retired from the army. Because of his excellent craftsmanship, he was trusted by many government officials and Mr. Chiang was one of his clients. The 14-karat gold watch commissioned by Soong Mei-ling was the work of the Glenn Watch Company in Cincinnati, U.S.A. At that time, the factory had gone out of business, and no repair manufacturer or parts were available in the U.S.A. So the watch was sent back to Taiwan from the U.S.A. to be repaired by Mr. Yang Wen-da.
After removing the case assembly for repair, he discovered that there were four Chinese characters engraved on the inside of the case, which read “Sino-American Respect”. When she received the repaired watch, she looked at the inside of the case and saw the words “China and the United States respect each other” engraved on the inside of the case, and next to them was the date of their marriage, December 1, 16 years ago.
The Chinese characters for “Zhong” and “Mei” are taken from the Chinese characters for “Zhong” and “Mei”, which means “husband and wife”.
Looking back at the time of their marriage, the marriage was not well-received by the public because of the 11-year age difference between the two, with Jiang Zhongzheng receiving traditional Chinese culture and Japanese military education, and Soong Mei-ling receiving a completely Western education. However, both parties believed that the marriage would benefit the revolutionary cause. At the wedding, Chiang declared: “I am sure that after marrying Ms. Song today, my revolutionary work will progress, and I will be able to do my revolutionary duty at ease. ……. Therefore, today’s marriage between Yu and Song is the foundation on which the revolutionary work of Yu and Song will be built.
Within a few months after the marriage, Chiang began to lead the Northern Expedition and a year later unified the country. In addition to fulfilling the promise of revolution made in the marriage contract, Jiang Zhongzheng also quietly fulfilled the vow of “mutual respect between China and the United States” engraved in the hanging watch.
Life after marriage, mutual respect
Soong Mei-ling went to bed late and woke up late, while Chiang Zhongzheng went to bed early and woke up early, waking up at 5:00 a.m. He would wash up carefully for fear of waking up the sleeping Soong Mei-ling.
Jiang Zhongzheng only ate Chinese dishes from his hometown in Ningbo, while Soong Mei-ling ate an almost Western-style diet of lettuce and salad, but they always insisted on eating at the same table and gossiping.
Once at dinner, Jiang Zhongzheng said to his wife jokingly: “You were really a sheep in a previous life, why do you love to eat grass so much?
Song Mei-ling returned reluctantly: “What’s so good about dipping salted asparagus in a black sesame sauce?
Although she was the First Lady, Song often brought desserts and beverages to Chiang’s study, and they often cooked for each other when they traveled.
For recreation, Soong Mei-ling loved to watch movies, and she could stay up all night watching them. However, Chiang only watched movies with his wife and went to bed when it was time to rest, never being tempted to procrastinate. On the other hand, Soong Mei-ling was a smoker, but would never smoke in front of Chiang Zhongzheng.
The only hobby the two shared was traditional Chinese culture, and Chiang was a great lover of Chinese music, inviting a Chinese orchestra to play at every state banquet. Soong Mei-ling loved Chinese painting and was a close disciple of the famous Zhang Daqian.
The two occasionally quarreled, and at one point Song Mei-ling left home in a fit of pique, but Chiang would still try to persuade her to return, sometimes enlisting the help of Song’s older sister, Song He-ling, who would eventually return home. Over time, the servants around them became accustomed to the fact that the couple would not really quarrel, and that Zhongzheng Jiang was usually the one who finally “surrendered.
Respect for each other is a traditional Chinese virtue, and the way husband and wife get along with each other is one of the five traditional virtues. “Respect” in “Shuowen Jiezi” has the connotation of “solemnity” and “loyalty”, which not only reflects the wife’s admiration for her husband and the husband’s cherishing of his wife, but also the complementary relationship between the two in their careers and life paths, and their mutual growth.
Inheriting Jiang Zhongzheng’s legacy, “I will rise again”, the two have a complementary relationship.
Although educated in the Western style, Song Meiling, with the virtues of a traditional Chinese woman, had always been a quiet complement to her husband, helping to perfect everything in his revolutionary endeavors.
During the Sino-Japanese War, Zhang Xueliang was instigated by the Chinese Communist Party to initiate the Xi’an Incident. Soong went to the enemy’s camp and negotiated a peaceful settlement with Zhang and Zhou Enlai, who were ill.
During the war, she organized women’s factories and wartime schools on the home front and sewed clothing for the soldiers at the front to encourage them to fight. During this period, she wrote a letter inviting American pilot Chen Nade to come to China to serve as an air force advisor, and eventually established the Flying Tigers to assist the national army in the war effort, which earned her the nickname “Mother of the Chinese Air Force.
At the end of 1941, the United States entered the war, and Song went to the U.S. Congress to give a speech calling on the American people to support China’s anti-Japanese war effort.
While her husband was building up Taiwan as a base for anti-communist revival, she also founded the Chinese Women’s Anti-Communist League and took care of supplementary education for young people, establishing the Hua Hsing Nursery School, the Jinde Experimental High School (later Chang Hwa Normal University), and served as chairman of the board of directors of Fu Jen Catholic University.
During her time in Taiwan, she also made several trips to the United States to conduct wife diplomacy and to promote overseas Chinese affairs. She attended a reception for overseas Chinese where she constantly stressed the importance of the Republic of China, saying in her speech.
As long as the Republic of China exists, communism will not be able to take over Asia. ……
After the death of Chiang in 1975, she lived in the U.S. She was 80 years old at the time, but still insisted on carrying on her husband’s legacy of uniting overseas Chinese. At all public gatherings, she always insisted that Taiwan was the hope of freedom for the people of mainland China and a beacon of freedom for Asia.
When her sister Soong Ching Ling died in China at the end of May 1981, the Chinese Embassy in the United States sent an obituary to Soong Mei Ling, requesting her to pay her respects in Beijing, but she sternly refused. In July of the following year, Liao Chengzhi, the Communist Party’s united front minister, sent a letter to then-President Chiang Ching-kuo, calling for peace talks across the Taiwan Strait. This is to express the righteousness of the Republic of China, the Chinese nation and the Chinese Kuomintang. At the same time, she also called on Liao Chengzhi to follow in the footsteps of his father, Liao Zhongkai, and resign from the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1986, the nearly 90-year-old Soong Mei-ling returned to Taiwan to attend the centennial commemoration of the birth of the Duke of Chiang and gave her last major public speech, “I will rise again,” to the tens of thousands of people present, in the hope that the KMT members and the masses present would allow the light of the Three Principles of the People to shine on the mainland.
We are building Taiwan as a base for anti-Communist restoration and as a central anti-communist fortress in the Far East, for the whole country, for Asia, and for humanity all over the world. Its spatial scope is not limited to Taiwan, nor is its temporal scope limited to the present. We must have a deep understanding of the far-reaching purpose and permanent significance of Taiwan’s construction so that we can overcome all the hardships and setbacks.
Both the late President and Mei Ling deeply believed that the Chinese nation has the power to survive and recover. The late President called it “the power to carry out its historical mission,” and Mei Ling believed that this great potential was sufficient to restore our nation’s strength after the trauma of the past. This power is the result of five thousand (five thousand) years of long and superior cultural and moral cultivation, and it is magnificent and will never be destroyed.
Ms. Song died on October 23, 2003 in her Manhattan apartment in New York City at the age of 105, the longest-lived of all the first ladies of the heads of state who fought in World War II. The story of her life’s work and her husband, Chiang Kai-shek’s “Sino-American Respect” will also remain forever in history.
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