big-eared Tu, curio Chang Ching-chang, pockmarked Huang

[franksolich]

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/14/books/books-of-the-times-092326.html?&pagewanted=1

I just got done reading this book; it's utterly compelling.

My favorite figures turned out to be big-eared Tu, curio Chang, and pockmarked Huang.

Since this is a book review from 1985, I assume it's okay to post the whole thing, instead of just an excerpt.

THE SOONG DYNASTY. By Sterling Seagrave. 532 pages. Illustrated. Harper & Row. $22.50.

Of the three Soong sisters, it is now said in China: ''One loved money, one loved power, one loved China.'' The money-lover was Ai-ling, who made a fortune as a speculator while married to H. H. Kung, the equally wealthy financier who served intermittently as Finance Minister of the Chinese Republic. The power-lover was May-ling, who married Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and, as the dragon lady Madame Chiang, helped to sell the United States on backing Nationalist China during World War II. The China-lover was Ching-ling, who married Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of the Republic of China, and who after his death became a vice chairman of Mao's People's Republic of China.

Of their brother, T. V. Soong, the Harvard-educated business tycoon who became Chiang Kai-shek's Prime Minister, it is merely said that for a time he was the richest man in the world. So as far as the influence the Soongs exerted, it is not far- fetched of the journalist Sterling Seagrave to begin his richly detailed history of the family by asserting, ''Few families since the Borgias have played such a disturbing role in human history.''

Nor is the statement an exaggeration in terms of the family's malignancy. The most dramatic revelations of ''The Soong Dynasty'' concern Chiang Kai-shek's involvement with the criminal underground - in particular one Big-eared Tu, the godfather of Shanghai's notorious Green Gang, who bolstered Chiang's regime through drugs, extortion, and political muscle, and exterminated dissenters by the tens of thousands. But except for Sun Yat-sen's widow, Ching-ling, who refused to be drawn into Chiang Kai-shek's orbit, every member of the family is convincingly painted monstrous by Mr. Seagrave in one or another special way.

If Mr. Seagrave has any problem, it lies in sustaining the drama of his revelations. As he points out in his prologue, writing about the Soongs poses ''special difficulties'' because like the Cheshire Cat, they ''were visible only when they wished to be.'' Because so much about them remains hidden, he has ''chosen a way of revealing the Soongs that is less subject to interpretation by friends or foes. Like Perseus, who avoided staring straight at Medusa, I have searched for the Soongs in the mirror of their times and in the lives of their close associates.'' He also searches for them as they have been mirrored in previous histories and biographies of the period.

The result of this approach is often successful. There is a lively portrait of the founding father, Charlie Soong, who ran off to America in 1878 and got himself trained as a missionary by Southern Methodists. Indeed the charm of the man often outshines Mr. Seagrave's attempts both to debunk him and make him sinister. On the other hand, the picture of Chiang Kai- shek that emerges is one that rivals Mussolini, if not Hitler, as the very model of a modern major dictator. And it is backed up by solid and dramatic evidence of Chiang's intimate involvement with the Green Gang.

Most appalling of all is Mr. Seagrave's study of Big-eared Tu Yueh- sheng, who, with two associates known as Pockmarked Huang Chih- jung and Curio Chang Ching-chang (for his profiteering in Chinese antiquities), ran the Shanghai underworld with spectacularly insouciant brutality. This study is highlighted by an interview with Big-eared Tu wrested from him by a Polish-born journalist named Ilona Ralf Sues, who published it in her little-noticed 1944 memoir, ''Shark's Fins and Millet.''

And this bears upon the major shortcoming of ''The Soong Dynasty'': So much of it depends on previously published books that it inevitably creates a sense of dej a vu. Despite many revelations gleaned through the Freedom of Information Act, there remains a sense that one has read much of this before - in Barbara Tuchman's ''Stillwell and the American Experience in China,'' in Theodore H. White's ''In Search of History: A Personal Adventure,'' in W. A. Swanberg's ''Luce and His Empire,'' and in the works of Edgar Snow, John King Fairbank and at least half a dozen others.

Of course the point is that Mr. Seagrave - a journalist who grew up in the 1940's on the China-Burma border - has put the story together as it has not been done previously. And no doubt it bears repeating and repeating, to put in the perspective of history what Mr. Seagrave regards as the spectacular folly of the United States for having swallowed what he characterizes as a fairy tale cooked up by the Soongs and served by Henry Luce and his publishing empire.

As he sums up T. V. Soong's ''operatic courtship of America'' in the 1930's: ''The Soong family would serve as the courtiers, the handmaidens, and the compradors. They would set the terms, carry the moneybags, keep the accounting ledgers, and be responsible for identifying all enemies and villains. America's role would be to provide the funds. In return for their money, Americans would be in charge of feeling virtuous.''

Still, the greatest excitement of ''The Soong Dynasty'' lies in the author's introductory announcement of what it accomplishes: ''This book is the first biography of the whole clan, and the first to examine both their positive contributions and their long- hidden, more sinister activities. When all the clan members are brought together in a single study, it is possible to see how they helped and hindered each other in the path to power, and to see in sharp relief their regime's long involvement with and dependence upon the Shanghai gangster underworld.''

After this, the proof of the pudding is depressingly familiar. By his method of staring away from Medusa we are forced by Mr. Seagrave to look at too much of what we already known about the long and tortuous struggle for control of 20th-century China.

Again, I thought it was a great book; couldn't put it down, and I experienced a substantial increase in secretions of the lachrymal glands when I came to the end.

[Alpha Mare]

That sounds interesting. I haven't read much about China.

[franksolich]

That sounds interesting. I haven't read much about China.

Actually, China isn't my thing, either.

I know that in this day and age, to be ignorant of these countries is stupid, but I myself could never get excited about the world north of Australia, west of Hawaii, south of Siberia, east of Pakistan. 

As I said, that's not a good way to be, but damn, it just doesn't push any buttons in me.  My knowledge of this big blank hole is, generally, limited to the eras during which the British dominated them, which of course is maybe about 200 years when compared with thousands of years of history.

[Alpha Mare]

Actually, China isn't my thing, either.

I know that in this day and age, to be ignorant of these countries is stupid, but I myself could never get excited about the world north of Australia, west of Hawaii, south of Siberia, east of Pakistan. 

As I said, that's not a good way to be, but damn, it just doesn't push any buttons in me.  My knowledge of this big blank hole is, generally, limited to the eras during which the British dominated them, which of course is maybe about 200 years when compared with thousands of years of history.

I did read a few that covered India during the British rule. They were ok, and lead me to read "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford.  Now that was a pleasure to read.

[franksolich]

I did read a few that covered India during the British rule. They were ok, and lead me to read "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford.  Now that was a pleasure to read.

I myself always thought the most worthless book about British India--although it was in fact a best-seller--was Collins and LaPierre's Freedom at Midnight, about India circa 1946-1948.

It was for the general public, of course, but for anyone really into history, it was rather shallow.

[vesta111]

I myself always thought the most worthless book about British India--although it was in fact a best-seller--was Collins and LaPierre's Freedom at Midnight, about India circa 1946-1948.

It was for the general public, of course, but for anyone really into history, it was rather shallow.

I also had no interest in Australia until I came across a book of folk songs in the 1800's from down under.  Who were these people and why did the songs sound so familiar.?

As I dug in I found that American History and Australia paralleled themselves.

Both country's had the same problems and the same hope for the immigrants, be they from the prisons of England to people escaping the prisons of Europe.

The time line is extraordinary, we had train robbers so did they. We had a rail road to build so did they, both country's had gold rushes at about the same time, both had home steaders in wagons headed west, both had to fight off the Aborigines of the land.

China is another bag of worms, it seems that those born to royalty had a horrid life, while the very poor had much more freedon and joy and laughter then those poor folk raised in a palace.