Soong Ching-ling

Soong Ching-ling was a Chinese political figure and the second wife of Sun Yat-sen. After his death, she aligned herself with the left wing of the Nationalist movement and later supported the Chinese Communist government.

She held senior honorary offices in the People’s Republic of China and was presented as a guardian of Sun’s revolutionary legacy. Her career also reflected a lasting political break with members of her own influential family.

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.