The Soong Sisters - The Consorts

10/12/12 • 14 min

On one bank of the Huangpu river in Shanghai stands a forest of steel and glass skyscrapers, but on the other - colonial splendour. A century ago, foreigners unpacked a whole new fascinating way of life on the docks here.

From Western ships came bicycles, engine parts and young Chinese with a vision of modernity - adventurers like Charlie Soong who had been out to see the world and had come back.

Charlie had sons, and in any earlier generation he'd have ignored his daughters but he had been educated by American Methodists and he believed in Christian virtue, democracy and the dignity of women.

From this waterfront, he sent his daughters to America to get a grounding in all three.

As Shanghai boomed, their horizons expanded. And in 1914 the eldest, Ailing, made a strategic match with a young man, H H Kung. Money was no object. He and his bride would become China's richest couple.

Qingling, the second sister, married a very different kind of politician - Sun Yatsen, the revolutionary leader of China, who had become President of China after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912.

As Sun was an older man and already married, Qingling's parents objected - so she jumped out of a window and eloped with him.

All three sisters were very much in the public eye, and in the news magazines almost as often as film stars - but life wasn't just a round of photo opportunities and jazz.

Qingling's husband Sun Yatsen died in 1925 and his movement split into warring camps.His successor, Chiang Kaishek, was a no-nonsense military man - some would say a fascist. Qingling was horrified by his tactics. And doubly horrified when she discovered her younger sister Meiling was planning to marry him.

Presenter: Carrie Gracie Producer: Neal Razzell.

From Western ships came bicycles, engine parts and young Chinese with a vision of modernity - adventurers like Charlie Soong who had been out to see the world and had come back.

From this waterfront, he sent his daughters to America to get a grounding in all three.

As Sun was an older man and already married, Qingling's parents objected - so she jumped out of a window and eloped with him.

All three sisters were very much in the public eye, and in the news magazines almost as often as film stars - but life wasn't just a round of photo opportunities and jazz.

Presenter: Carrie Gracie Producer: Neal Razzell.

Previous Episode

Du Fu and Li Bai - The Poets

China's two favourite poets were born 1,300 years ago, at the beginning of the 8th Century. The language has changed so little that they remain easy for modern Chinese people to read, and their themes are still relevant today - from friendship, love and landscape to the stench of political corruption.

Kaiser Kuo, a founder of China's first heavy-metal band, is probably one of the very few rock musicians, in any country, who draws inspiration from a poet born in 701AD.

"He was quite a drunkard... and writing some of his best poetry apparently, while completely inebriated. You know, he's wild and associated with a kind of unbridled revelry, and yeah that's part of why I love him," says Kuo.

He is talking about Li Bai, a poet born in Central Asia, who became a wandering superstar poet in China, known as "the fallen immortal" or "the immortal of wine".

Li Bai was a huge celebrity, showered with honours because of his genius. Du Fu, on the other hand, aspired to a career as a civil servant, but he failed the exam and was too prickly to network his way into a good post. In his later years, Du Fu was so poor that one of his children died of starvation.

Today, every Chinese person learns poems by Li Bai, and the country's other favourite poet, Du Fu, from childhood and their work is considered as important in Chinese literary history as Shakespeare is to people in Britain.

Presenter: Carrie Gracie Producer: Neal Razzell.

Next Episode

Qin Shi Huangdi: The Emperor

There are two Chinese leaders whose final resting place is thronged by tourists - Mao Zedong and Qin Shi Huang, the emperor of terracotta soldier fame.

But they also have another thing in common - Qin taught Mao a lesson in how to persecute intellectuals.

Chairman Mao Zedong has been dead for nearly 40 years but his body is still preserved in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square.

The square is the symbolic heart of Chinese politics - red flags and lanterns flank the portrait of Mao on Tiananmen Gate where he proclaimed the People's Republic in 1949. But the red emperor owed the idea of this vast country to an empire builder who lived 2,000 years earlier.

Claiming the title of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang kick-started nearly 2,000 years of imperial rule, unifying China through economic and political reforms, and also via the construction of a massive nationwide road system.

But this was all at the expense of thousands of lives - and to maintain power he outlawed many books and buried scholars alive.

So, over 2,000 years later does history remember him as a hero or villain?

Presenter: Carrie Gracie Producer: Neal Razzell.