A quarter of a century earlier, her father, Charlie Soong, had also left China for America – but under vastly different circumstances. Then a Hainan merchant’s son known as Han Chiao-shun, Charlie left an apprenticeship in the East Indies to join his uncle on a voyage to the West. During a few months in Boston, employed in his uncle’s tea shop, Charlie set his sights on obtaining an education in America.
The shopkeeper’s life did not appeal to Charlie, and in January 1879 he shipped aboard a Coast Guard cutter plying the Eastern seaboard. The ship’s captain, a staunch Methodist, took the boy under his tutelage, and Charlie learned the precepts of Christianity. It was also under Captain Gabrielson’s influence, Sterling Seagrave surmises, that “Chiao-shun” was transmuted to “Charles Sun.”
In the Coast Guard’s service, Charlie followed Gabrielson to Wilmington, North Carolina. There, in November 1880, Charlie attended revival services at the Fifth Street Methodist Church. It was a fateful occasion – for Charlie professed his faith in Christ as savior. The Wilmington Star carried the unusual news: “This morning the ordinance of Baptism will be administered... a Chinese convert will be one of the subjects of the solemn right [sic], being probably the first ‘Celestial’ that has ever submitted to the ordinance of Baptism in North Carolina” (quoted in Seagrave, 27).
Charlie found a new life and a new identity: Upon baptism, his name was anglicized to Charles Jones Soon (the “g” was added later). He announced his wish to be trained in the Christian tradition so that he could return to his native country as a missionary. Both Charlie and the church could see the advantages: Charlie would get an American education, and the Methodists would gain a powerful witness among the Chinese people they were fervently seeking to convert.
The Wilmington Methodists helped Charlie gain admission to Trinity College (later Duke University) and introduced him to tobacco and textile magnate Julian S. Carr. “General” Carr underwrote Charlie’s education at Duke and Vanderbilt. He remained a lifelong friend and supporter even after Charlie’s return to China.
In 1886, Charlie returned to China to begin missionary work, spending some time in Shanghai and rural Kunshan under the direction of pioneer Methodist missionary Dr. Young J. Allen. It was during Charlie Soong’s days of missionary service and teaching that he met Ni Kwei-tseng, the daughter of a Chinese Episcopalian family. Miss Ni herself was educated in the Western tradition in Shanghai. She was an excellent counterpart to Charlie, whose Americanized speech and mannerisms made him an anomaly in his native country. Her marriage to Soong brought him status within the community and opened up to him new possibilities for accomplishing his dreams for the “new China.”
During the late 1880s, Charlie grew more influential in his ministerial role as well as more prosperous in a business sideline he had launched: the selling and printing of Bibles in Chinese. Charlie devised ways of publishing Bibles, using local materials, at an even lower cost than they could be supplied by the American Bible Society. Before long, he was taking on job printing as well and was amassing a good profit.
And none too soon – for Charlie and Kwei-tseng had started their family. Their first child was born in 1890. They named her Ai-ling (“pleasant mood”), but she was also known by the Christian name Nancy, after General Carr’s wife. A second daughter, Ching-ling (“happy mood”) was born in 1892 and was called Rosamond – after the daughter of the Wilmington minister.
Charlie’s business ventures prospered as his family grew. Son Tse-ven (styled T.V. in the Western form) was born in 1894; third daughter May-ling (“beautiful mood”) was born in 1897. Two more boys followed, Tse-liang (T.L.) and Tse-an (T.A.). The daughters began their education at Shanghai’s exclusive McTyeire School for Girls, founded in 1892 by Dr. Allen and an 1864 Wesleyan alumna, Laura Haygood. Ai-ling started school at age five and Ching-ling at seven.
By the turn of the century, Charlie had become extremely wealthy. He had also begun a surreptitious involvement with the revolutionary movement spurred by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Revolutionary sentiment was growing against the old dynastic rule, and Charlie was right in the midst of it.
A Ten-Thousand-Mile Journey To School
The political climate in China became increasingly dangerous following the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Charlie foresaw the need to send his children to safety as well as to provide for their higher education. He asked the advice of his missionary friend William Burke for an appropriate college for Ai-ling. Burke, whose family had connections to Macon’s Mulberry Street United Methodist Church, highly recommended Wesleyan College, where his friend Judge DuPont Guerry was then president. Charlie arranged for Ai-ling to enroll as a sub-freshman in 1904.
That summer, Ai-ling, for safety reasons traveling under a Portuguese passport, undertook the long Pacific crossing under the protection of William and Addie Burke. But Mrs. Burke became fatally ill with typhoid, and the couple left Ai-ling in the care of another missionary, Anna Lanius, to see her safely to America. When the ship arrived in San Francisco, Ai-ling was detained for nineteen days until she could obtain clearance to make the rest of the trip by train to Georgia.
Ai-ling was described as precocious, a serious and determined student who was clever with finances and business. Ching-ling and May-ling joined their older sister at Wesleyan in the fall of 1908 – Ching-ling because she was college-age, and May-ling because, the story has it, she insisted she have her way and be allowed to accompany her older sister though she was only ten. (Mounting tension in China, too, probably had a good deal to do with Charlie’s decision to allow her wish.) During the summer before their arrival at Wesleyan, Ching-ling and May-ling spent time being tutored in missionary families in Summit, New Jersey, and Demorest, Georgia (at Piedmont College).
Upon coming to Macon, May-ling was entrusted to the care of President W. N. Ainsworth’s household, while Ching-ling enrolled as a regular college student. The 1908 school term marked the only year that all three sisters were at Wesleyan at the same time. Their signatures – in English – appear together in the college’s Matriculation Book for 1908–09.
May-ling was privately tutored by two older Wesleyan students: “Miss Margie” Burks, daughter of Wesleyan’s professor of English, and “Miss Lucy” Lester. Whereas Ching-ling was quiet and profound, May-ling had the reputation for being mischievous and sharp-witted.
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