Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China

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In some chapters, there seems to be more on the two key husbands - Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek - than on the three women themselves. Time and again she directed towards the CCP educated Chinese whom the party needed to run its state, and drew to the cause useful, impressionable foreigners. However, you can’t understand twentieth-century Chinese history without knowing about the role of this remarkable family.

Big Sister married H H Kung who was a business man in name only because Big Sister was the brains and driving force behind him and Sun, both of whom she manipulated. A former imperial concubine, this extraordinary woman had seized power through a palace coup after her husband’s death in 1861, whereupon she had begun to bring the medieval country into the modern age. The pictures provided more information and make the book interesting so we can see these people as they are. He was ready to give Manchuria to Japan twice: once asking for their backing against the Manchu dynasty and then to fight against the republic.Chiang Kai-shek started his political career as an assassin, and went on to also put his own desire to be leader at the forefront of his concerns. Ik ben echt compleet in awe van dit boek en vind het ontzettend jammer dat ik dus eigenlijk tijdens de geschiedenislessen op de middelbare school bijna niks over de vorming van 'modern' China heb gehoord.

this book has indeed educated me on the history of China and introduced me to the historical figures behind the founding of CCP and the Nationalist Party. Córki poczciwego kaznodziei o imieniu Charlie, który bardziej przesiąknął kulturą Stanów Zjednoczonych niż Chin. Chang has written a biography with the meticulousness of a historian and the subtlety of a novelist. The title clearly emphasizes on the sisters but we were given a whole lot introduction to the men: Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek. The author, who grew up in the People's Republic of China, has no love for the Communists, but she has no love for the Kuomintang, which also has violent history, either.

Little Sister May-ling would become Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and, arguably, one of the most notable sisters for her contributions to the war efforts against Japan, her publicized mission in the United States, and her crucial role to Chiang Kai-shek as an interpreter during post-WW2 peace talks.

He was said to be raising money in Hawaii and elsewhere but what funds he got for this seem to come from his Maui based brother. There is some description of Chaing and his 2 million nationalists taking over the 7 million people of Taiwan and how his dictatorship was set up. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey from Canton to Hawaii to New York, from exiles’ quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan.She adored Sun throughout her life, but Chang hinted in her book that Red Sister's love and admiration evaporated when she realised that Sun made use of her when he was escaping his enemies in Canton, risking her life for his ambition. The lives of the three Song sisters – the subjects of Jung Chang’s spirited new book – are more than worthy of an operatic plot.