Proud of having an ardent foreign convert, the Communists still do not trust Dr. Hatem politically, although they use him wherever they need information from Americans. Because of his ingratiating manner, he is a natural to make lonely Americans open up their hearts to an old friend from home. He enjoys strutting about among his Chinese and foreign friends and bragging about his connections. His chief value to the Communists, however, is his ability to evaluate American newscasts. In the summer of 1946, he was seen almost daily at the fashionable Peking Hotel, immaculately groomed and wearing well-tailored clothes. There he spent hours eating and drinking with the foreign diplomats and correspondents.
Married to a Chinese movie actress—they all lean in that direction—he has a son about three or four years old. Mrs. Ma is a graduate of the Lu Hsun Art Academy, formerly the Catholic Church in Yenan, and is accustomed to wearing silk and using cosmetics. She finds it quite a bore to obey the Communist dictates of “cotton clothes and no make-up,” and on several occasions she has been called down for making a “spectacle” of herself. Being a Russian-language student and much younger than her husband, she was constantly in the company of a young Russian doctor who was part of the Soviet liaison group in Yenan.
Dr. Ma is a most enthusiastic Communist worker, who has remarked many times that he would gladly “kill for the Cause.” He has been known to add with emphasis, “And I would just as soon kill Americans as anyone else!” He is said, despite his loose tongue, to stand well with Moscow because he is such a willing tool.
No panorama of Communist personalities can be complete without the name of Madame Sun Yat-sen, famous in Chinese history as the wife of the founder of the Revolution that overthrew the Manchu Dynasty. Madame Sun, sister of the celebrated Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and the slightly less illustrious Madame H. H. Kung, is known widely as “one of the famous Soong Sisters.” The middle one of the three—Eiling, Chingling and Meiling—Chingling is listed on the new governmental roster as Soong Chingling, perhaps to cause less embarrassment to her family. She is in charge of the so-called “independent liberals” in the Party.
Under her maiden name, this clever conniver has had a somewhat stormy career. Claiming that she shuns publicity, she has, nevertheless, managed to stay in the limelight a large part of her life. The daughter of Charlie Soong, a wealthy merchant who had been reared by a missionary and educated in America, she was one of six children and is said to have been her mother’s favorite. Chingling has been called a pretty child and a not-so-pretty child, so that one might infer that her beauty lies rather in her personality than in her face. As a young girl, she was on the “dreamy” side, rather shy but highly emotional. When she is deeply aroused over a person or a cause, she becomes enthusiastic to the point of fanaticism, a quality that has proved alarming and distressing to the other members of her family.
Educated in the United States, she adopted the American name of “Rosamond,” by which her classmates at Wesleyan College, in Macon, Georgia, called her affectionately. Her teachers said that she was “very studious, had high ideals and was extremely interested in moral and philosophical ideas.” No timid flower, she showed a fiery temper when provoked. Very proud of her country and interested in its affairs, she often said that she considered the Revolution of 1911 the “Greatest event of the Twentieth Century.”
“Rosamond’s” English was excellent, and she wrote numerous articles for the college paper, one of which read: “When China moves, she will move the world. The Revolution has established China in Liberty and Equality, those two inalienable rights of the individual....” A copy of this was sent to her father, who was so pleased with his daughter that he forwarded to her one of the new five barred flags of the Republic of China. On receiving it, Chingling shouted with joy, climbed up and pulled down the dragon banner from the wall of her bedroom, and stomped on it crying, “Down with the dragon! Up with the flag of the Republic!”
While still in college, Chingling began a hero worship of Dr. Sun. When she returned to China, she shocked everyone by announcing her determination to marry him—this, although he was married to a woman his own age who had borne him three sons, of whom Dr. Sun Fo undoubtedly is the best known. Subsequently she became his secretary and, with skill and determination, aided by her youth and beauty, she finally overcame all obstacles and, in 1915, became the second Madame Sun Yet-sen. Basking in all the excitement and publicity she so “abhorred,” she wrote to a classmate back at Wesleyan, “Being married to Dr. Sun is just like going to school all over again, only there are no examinations to take!”
The marriage lasted until Dr. Sun’s death, in 1925. They had the usual ups and downs, but she reported to her friends from time to time that “it never lacks excitement.” The Revolution inspired by her husband, Communistic in its original structure, shifted back and forth from reactionary to conservative to reactionary.
On the death of Dr. Sun, the reins of the revolution were put into the hands of Madame Sun’s brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek. Never in harmony, politically or emotionally, Chiang and Mme. Sun had had many violent disagreements. Finally, in 1927, two years after her husband’s death, she confirmed her leftist sympathy by going to Moscow. There she remained for three years, studying Communist doctrines in the World Anti-Imperialist League. In self-justification, she claimed that the Nationalist Government had distorted the meaning of her husband’s original ideas, that they had always been similar to those of the Russian Revolution.