Soong Ai-ling

Soong Ai-ling was the eldest of the three influential Soong sisters. Educated in the United States, she married the financier and politician H. H. Kung and became part of the family network surrounding the Chinese Nationalist government.

Ai-ling was associated with banking, business and philanthropy, but also with accusations that the Soong-Kung circle used political access for private enrichment. Her life illustrates the intersection of family, wealth and power in Republican China.

Jung Chang’s Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister tells the intertwined lives of the three Soong sisters, daughters of a wealthy Christian family whose marriages placed them at the centre of twentieth-century Chinese politics. Ai-ling married financier and government minister H. H. Kung, Ching-ling married revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, and May-ling became the wife and political partner of Chiang Kai-shek.