SOONG MEI-LING

born March 5, 1897, Wen-ch'ang, Kwangtung province Soong also spelled Sung, Mei-ling also spelled Mayling, also called Madame Chiang Kai-shek, or Chiang Mei-ling second wife of Nationalist Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek and sister of Soong Ch'ing-ling, wife of Sun Yat-sen, and T.V. Soong, prominent industrialist and official of the Nationalist Chinese government. Soong Mei-ling was educated in the United States from 1908 to 1917 and was thoroughly Americanized. In 1927 she married Chiang Kai-shek; she helped introduce him to Western culture and ideas and worked to publicize his cause in the West. During World War II she wrote many articles on China for U.S. journals, and in 1943, during a visit to the United States, she became the first Chinese and second woman to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. She so impressed the American public that, until 1967, her name appeared annually on the U.S. list of the 10 most admired women in the world. Her published works include This Is Our China (1940), The Sure Victory (1955), and two volumes of selected speeches.