[quote=“Kenny McCormick”]LB,
ironically, I just remembered one of my professors at Berkeley, F. Wakeman, knew the Chiangs intimately as one of the few foreigners in China back then.
so I guess I am in your shoes after all.[/quote]
I just got an email from my professor … apparently I was wrong, they weren’t just close family friends, Madame Chiang was my professor’s godmother.
Anyway, I really have had enough of this topic now … time to get away from the computer and out of the house … 
a pox on all their houses.
but i did have one question here. today while taking the train to Tamshui, I was reading the Apple Daily, and on the front page special about Madame CKS, there were the usual family pics, etc, and some reactions of elderly people in Taiwan yesterday. But there was one small photo that astounded me. It was a of a small kid, maybe age 8 or 1o, in his class at school, and he was sobbing, after being told the news of the Great Lady’s death. Is this possible, that a young kid that age would break down sobbing crying at this news? I didn’t see anybody crying in Taipei. Did you?
Weird.
GOOD GOD! Madame Chiang is forever banned from posting on Forumosa!! 
We had lunch one day with one of the members of this family and his wife and 2 kids. I only knew their first names and didn’t know what the relationship was to CKS until much later. We even took their daughter on an outing day that day and she was very sweet and wellmannered. To me, they seemed very normal.
The China Post claimed that Taiwan was mourning her death!! I didn’t hear ANY mourning here in Taichung. My students laughed at that headline. Some mourning, there was a march by the Taichung Bus Company Employees right in front of my classroom yesterday. Some mourning.
Anyone here know the Chinese saying about the Soong sisters? “One loved money, one loved power…only one loved China.”
I don’t think you can mourn people who die so old. They’ve been waiting for her to kick the bucket for eons so they could divvy up her assets. I mean look at the Queen Mother compared to Diana. Do you think anyone was surprised when she bit it? Were their hoardes of folks laying flowers and notes around Buckingham Palace?
Same with the Soong Mei Ling. All her friends probably died years ago.
The queen mum’s dead? I din’t know that and I read the Sun every day.
So which is which? Money for the one that married that tycoon (Hung?). Power for Soon Me Ling (Mde CKS), and China for the one that marries Sun Yat Sen? I don’t know much about the Soongs. Anyone seen the movie The Soong Sisters? Is it at all historically acurate? I think Maggie Cheung’s in it.
Brian
So which is which? Money for the one that married that tycoon (Hung?). Power for Soon Me Ling (Mde CKS), and China for the one that marries Sun Yat Sen? I don’t know much about the Soongs. Anyone seen the movie The Soong Sisters? Is it at all historically acurate? I think Maggie Cheung’s in it.
Brian[/quote]
Your guesses about the sisters were correct. Try reading The Soong Dynasty sometime - it’s a real page-turner, and dishes all the juicy dirt on that family and their associates. I could barely put it down once I started getting into it. It’s a popular bestseller that’s sold in most of the Caves and Eslites.
As for the question on who gets the Madam’s house. I met (as did Kenny) Soong Mei Lin’s former press secretary this weekend. Did not get much new information, other than the fact that all of the real property (not her personal assets) is owned by her sisters family the Kungs… my understanding is that she had no real estate anyway
Sharky
One of my friends (who neither knew nor had a teacher who knew the Roosevelts by the way, he he) sent me this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt re: Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek - “She can talk beautifully about democracy, but she does not know how to live democracy.”
Especially compared to Eleanor Roosevelt. What a, er, handsome woman.
Toothache?
She’s just miffed to be upfurred.