宋家王朝: 全译本 / (美)斯特林·西格雷夫原著

The Soong Dynasty (Hardcover)
by Sterling Seagrave (Author) "The legend of Charlie Soong is a masterpiece of twentieth-century invention..."


Seagrave's work is not always well documented, and he is really more of a storyteller than an historian. Having said that, his stuff is usually a quick read, and does give plenty of interesting information about the period he is discussing. This book is about the Soong family, and you will not get a grasp of the development of modern China without understanding this family. The title, of course, is a play on words, because it has nothing to do with the classic dynasties of antiquity. Rather, it chronicles the development of the family of Charlie Soong, and discusses how this family influenced the development of modern China. Charlie Soong managed to get a job on a ship, and spent some time as a sailor off the East Coast of the United States. His life took a very important turn when he wandered into a revival meeting in the old south, and became a Christian. He was subsequently educated and sent back to China as a missionary. Unable to support himself on $15 a month, he eventually became involved with the underworld in order to earn enough to feed his family. Charlie had three daughters. The oldest married a Wall Street financier. The second eloped with Sun Yat Sen. The youngest daughter married Chiaing Kai-Shek. It is not possible to study the history of China in the Twentieth Century without running into this family over and over again.


I became interested in learning more about the three Soong sisters after seeing the Chinese film, "The Soong Sisters." What I learned from reading this book was two of the sisters were far worse than as portrayed in the movie.

Sterling Seagrave in "The Soong Dynasty" reveals the unbelievable greed and corruption among most members of the Soong family and many of their associates. Given the widespread and often lengthy quoting from primary sources to support his conclusions, this is a better documented book, in my opinion, than some reviewers have claimed. Such highly regarded persons as the journalist Theodore White and United States General Joseph Stilwell, as quoted in the book, were highly critical of Chiang's regime.

It has been thoroughly demonstrated by numerous historians how Chiang's incompetence and corruption led to the downfall of his Nationalist government in 1949. However, after reading "The Soong Dynasty," one must conclude that he was one of the worst villians in modern Chinese history. As one example, as the author says and this is also pointed out by numerous historians, Chiang refused to order his armies to fight the Japanese, who were guilty of atrocities in China comparable to the Holocaust. One of the great tragedies in modern Chinese history has been the very negative effects Chiang and Mao had upon the Chinese people.

The first few chapters in the book focus upon the incredible rise to wealth and influence by Charlie Soong, the founder of the "Soong dynasty." Of the three Soong sisters, Ai-ling and May-ling were preoccupied with power and hardly imaginable greed. Seagrave shows how certain very greedy members of the Soong family embezzled hundreds of millions in United States military and humanitarian aid to China during the 1940's.

The other sister, Ching-ling was the only member of the Soong family, that also included three brothers, who actually cared about the people of China, as well as who was not greedy and selfish. I wish there had been more information in the "Soong Dynasty" about Ching-ling's life after the 1930's.



This book is truly a feast for the reader with an interest in China as it has evolved in the previous century. This is the story of the Soong family and their enormous influence on modern China. The six Soong children, three sons and three daughters, were the offspring of Charlie Soong and Ni-Kwei-tseng. These two Chinese were very religious and God-fearing Christians. Charlie was educated in the US and made his fortune selling Bibles in China. This book tells the story of these children and their almost unbelievable lives. To quote the author "Few families since the Borgias have played such a disturbing role in human destiny". One son, T. V. Soong became perhaps the richest man in history and exerted enormous influence over US foriegn policy towards China. He was also the finance minister of China. Of three Soong sisters, one, Mai-Ling, married Chaing Kai-Chek, another, Ching-Ling, married Sun Yat-sen, and the last, Ai-Ling, married into one of the richest banking families in China. Mai-Ling was educated at Wellesley and was long regarded as one of the ten most influential women in the world. An understatement, if ever there was.

Covers the chaotic years of modern China and the long brutal wars against the Japanese and the savage conflicts between the Nationialists and the Communists. Has a lot of great information on the American involvement here, Stillwell, Claire Chennault (who was almost the only American in China who was not a fool) and the Flying Tigers (the Flying Tigers are venerated in the China of today), Hurley, Morgenthau, Henry and Claire Booth Luce and many, many others. This book is so jam packed with information that it is almost mind boggling. The Green Gangs, Big Eared Tu, a host of warlords, the dreaded gangster Tongs, drug empires, murderers, adventurers, Soldiers of Fortune, prostitutes and thieves. The cast of characters in this book is almost endless, however it all fits together very well and will leave the serious reader a changed person as far as China and our own endlessly bumbling government is concerned. Everything I have read in this books dovetails nicely with the study I have done on China.

The author, Sterling Seagrave, spent most of his life Asia and knows his subject well.

I can only say read this remarkable book. It is an absolute must have for the China history buff and scholar.




I've read this book several times since it was first published, and while I agree that Seagrave's sources aren't always documented as well as they should be, the author's conclusion is inescapable: the Soongs were largely as bad for China as were the communist leaders they struggled against so ardently. Even Ching-ling, who I agree, was used as a pawn by the Soviets, however unwittingly.

Most of the negative reviews of Seagrave's "The Soong Dynasty" that state that it is too partisan maybe correct. However, the opinions and writings of General Joseph Stillwell, and the results of Freedom of Information Act inquiries by researchers (revealing the investigations by the by the Truman Administration and the F.B.I) are difficult to dismiss. My wife is Chinese, and her paternal grandfather was a member of Chiang Kai Shek's officer corps. We also have friends who married into the extended Soong family in California, and all of them bridle at this characterization of Chiang, his wife and her siblings. However, the Soongs' collective behavior as leaders of modern China cannot be so easily excused by those who cite that all of this occurred "during a difficult period of Chinese history" so they should be judged less harshly and/or more fairly. Of course it was difficult; they helped to make it so along with their communist counterparts.

Having lived and worked in Taiwan for a number of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was able to observe first hand how modern politicians conduct themselves and how the elections are handled, and I must state that little has changed since the halcyon days of the Soong clan. Government goon squads are sent out by the incumbents, prior to the actual elections, intimidating potential dissenters and reporters, party campaign volunteers travel door-to-door offering voters cash in exchange for their support, opposition party members die in mysterious accidents, etc. These incidents, I saw personally, and read about in the daily periodicals. Even today with a different party than the Kuo Ming Tang in power, there are dubious things afoot such as the questionable 'assassination attempts' on the eve of a potentially disastrous election for the incumbent.

Yes, again, I would state that little has changed in the way the Chinese conduct themselves politically since the 1911 Revolution and the establishment of Communist China. The subsequent economic successes of Taiwan and now Mainland China are a testament to the resilience, diligence and inventiveness of the Chinese people, rather than the foresight and thoughtfulness of their politicians (e.g. Chinese tanks at Tiananmen, Taiwanese boxing matches in sessions of their Parliament, etc.).

Rather pointedly, there is kind of a running joke in Taiwan and China comparing the economic successes of the Japanese with that of the Chinese. It goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing, of course):

10 Chinese entrepreneurs start 10 different small businesses as do 10 Japanese entrepreneurs. However, by the end of the year, the Japanese businessmen have consolidated each of their individual operations into a conglomerate, to take advantage of the economics of scale which benefits all, while the Chinese continue to operate their mom & pop ventures, individually, each owner unwilling to relinquish the reins of ownership and power, regardless of the potential benefit to the group.

This may be a cultural pathology of the Chinese, and how this behavior often manifests itself politically can be disastrous for a nation. That's how I see the Chiang Kai Shek, the Soongs, and Mao and his cronies: interested in bettering things for themselves first, with the welfare of their nations' populace a distant second.