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

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This is what makes this book such an enormous success: that it reads like a biographical novel, with political change at the forefront and character narratives existing upstage. Each chapter focusses on a shift in power that is equal parts personal and political, and the Soong sisters are always there but rarely at the forefront, at least until the book’s final third. It is that proximity to the big decisions that makes the book worth reading. The historical figures making those decisions do so because of human failings, or wants. That is a valuable corrective to the current fashion to emphasize structures and processes over human agency, although at times Chang takes it goes too far. In this way Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister avoids the pitfalls of polemic, but doesn’t bring the intimacy of memoir. The result is a fascinating, if episodic, trip through China’s twentieth century. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work . . . Its three fairy-tale heroines, poised between east and west, spanned three centuries, two continents and a revolution, with consequences that reverberate, perhaps now more than ever, in all our lives to this day.” —The Spectator

The combined political impact and legacy of these three sisters is staggering. They had more than a hand in building the China of today: they were in so many ways its architects.

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A fascinating tale of the three Soong sisters who played a significant role in the making of 20th-century China…[ told] with lacerating honesty. Donal O'Donoghue, RTE Guide They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history. Chang’s early insertions of Mao into the narrative are there for the sake of fact and transparency (which is what makes her such a celebrated historian), but because of just who Mao is, they have the added effect of foreshadowing a villain, like those fleeting moments in a horror film where something unknown darts past the camera. One of the great challenges for authors writing biographies is their relationship to their subjects. They risk either putting them on a pedestal and explaining away their foibles, or demonizing them and finding evil intent behind every action. Jung Chang has swung to both horns of this dilemma in the past. In Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, she interpreted the historical evidence to claim that rather than the hidebound reactionary she is often portrayed to be, Cixi was a progressive visionary who, had she not been thwarted, would have presided over a golden age of Chinese democracy. On the other hand, in Mao: The Unknown Story , Chang and co-author Jon Halliday so thoroughly and unskeptically demonized Mao that they achieved the unlikely effect of bringing sinologists to write a book about their book itself, Was Mao Really a Monster? Charlie Soong being very forward thinking sent each of his daughters to an American boarding school at a young age. He made influential friends who were then introduced to his daughters. The sisters were very intelligent and interested in the politics of their country. They also believed that women should be man’s equal and the three sisters all rose to positions of influence.

She also has a good eye for an anecdote: with perhaps the most memorable one being the toilet habits of the first president of China Yuan Shi-kai (new fangled flushing toilets in the presidential palace were less comfortable than his trusty old wooden poo stool – and we can guess it wasn’t him cleaning up the mess). Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, written in a compulsive style that sweeps the story along, is much the fullest account of their remarkable lives available in English… The warts-and-all portrait of “the Father of the Republic” is a welcome corrective to Sun Yat-sen’s sheet inspection is particularly interesting. I have come across him in other books where he is presented as a slightly otherworldly sage-like politician who was a key inspiration for the creation of post-empire republican China but refused to sully himself with the direct exercise of political power.From here, the accomplishments, frustrations, and failures of Sun continue, with Ei-ling and Ching-ling’s lives weaving in and out of the narrative as necessary. Little Sister May-ling doesn’t appear until the book’s half-way point and, before that, a large focus is placed on Red Sister Ching-ling as she marries and dedicates herself to Sun completely, until his cold and callous actions create an irreparable rift between them. If you know anything at all about China, reading this book will fill in a lot of very interesting gaps. I studied Chinese history for six years, and so much for what Jung Chang has laid out here about these important sisters simply wasn't in the books. But DON'T listen to this reading of it. Joanna David has not been drilled in Chinese pronunciation, and even some English words are strangely beyond her, especially 'surveillance' and 'surveilling', which she pronounces as 'surveyance' and 'surveying'. She is simply out of her depth, and doesn't sound confident, even though the writing is.

My mother inspired me to write Wild Swans and she’s been so supportive of all my work. She lived under Chiang Kai-shek – she was a student activist, fighting his regime – and through Mao’s rule. She’s 88 now and living in China.Ei-ling became Sun’s secretary but rejected his romantic overtures to marry a businessman, H H Kung. Ching-ling, then 20, was more easily seduced. The loving Charlie Soong, seeing how appallingly his former hero treated his first wife and concubines, tried to prevent his daughter from marrying this 48-year-old narcissist constantly stalked by assassins. Chang tells us that Sun did not let his Korean concubines leave the house, expected their feet to be bound and employed two wet nurses to meet his thirst for human breast milk, which they squeezed into a bowl for him. But Ching-ling – modelling herself on “heroines with a cause” like Joan of Arc – ran away and married him. Absorbing . . . In this lucid, wise, forgiving biography Chang gives a new twist to an old line. Behind every great man . . . is a Soong sister.” — The Times (UK) While Ailing went into business and Qingling became a political wife, the youngest of the sisters, Meiling, devoted herself to Shanghai high society. In search of a successful, ambitious husband who could guarantee her access to political influence and material comfort, she settled on Chiang Kai-shek. A humourless, conservative army man, Chiang had thrust his way to becoming Sun’s heir as leader of China’s first modern political party, the Nationalists, after Sun suddenly died of liver cancer in 1925. Benefiting from Soviet support, and an alliance with China’s Communist party (CCP), in 1927 Chiang became head of a new, nominally unified nationalist state. But to secure his control of the country, he promptly purged the communists from his new regime, killing thousands. Qingling sided with the left (after 1927, she spent two years in exile in Moscow), while Meiling became first lady of Chiang’s rightwing military dictatorship. Chiang also highly esteemed big sister Ailing as a political and financial adviser. I've already read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by the same author, and I've read about the Soong sisters in Sterling Seagrave's The Soong Dynasty so I decided to give this book a try.

In the hands of master storyteller and contrarian Jung Chang, the old tale finds a new interpretation by one who knows well the intricacies of family, influence, gender, and power in modern China . . . A provocative view of the historical times that produced these extraordinary sisters" — Air Mail For a biography supposedly focussing on the three most famous women in Chinese history I found it strange that the initial chapters deal with men (Sun Yat-sen and the girls’ father). And this, I think, is the problem with the book. The sisters are viewed through the lens of their role relative to men, rather than in their own right. And so the book has become a history of Chinese politics and the roles the men in the sisters’ lives played, rather than a group biography of these three remarkable women. An enjoyable take on China’s turbulent 20th-century history, seen through the revealing perspective of three women at the centre of power Andrea Janku, BBC History While researching my book I discovered that there was a period between 1913 and 1928 when China was practising democracy – and people took to it with remarkable ease. So it’s not something completely alien to the Chinese. I’m holding my breath and waiting to see what happens.The book intertwines the intimate with the big historical picture, tying their personal stories to the deep and irreconcilable political divisions among them . . . it is stamped by her revisionist impulse.” — The Atlantic I get that this is supposed to be a review for Jung Chang's book, but given the content (and context) I feel that a comparison between the two books are necessary. Seagrave also wrote a bio on the infamous Empress Dowager Cixi/Tzu Hsi Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China which I also read and enjoyed. Chang has also written a bio on her, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China but I have not read it so I can not compare these. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters’ worlds.