The house of the Soong sisters

A farmhouse under coconut palms

The house stands in the village of Gulu Yuan near Changsa, in the north-east of Wenchang, half an hour's drive from town. You reach it along a narrow avenue lined with coconut palms, longan trees and fields. Nothing suggests that one of the most influential families in Chinese history has its roots here.

The family that lived here was called Han. According to tradition their ancestors came from the mainland to Hainan in the 12th century, in 1197, and settled in the Wenchang area. Many generations later one branch of the family moved to this village.

Wenchang, the island of emigrants

To understand the house you need to know where it comes from. Wenchang is considered the homeland of Hainan's overseas Chinese. For generations young men left from here for Singapore, Malaya, Siam, Java and Vietnam, worked as traders, cooks and sailors and sent money home.

That's why many villages in the area have houses built with that money, some with columns and arches in Southeast Asian style. The Han family house isn't one of them — it stayed a plain farmhouse. But the story of its most famous son begins just like that of thousands of others: with leaving.

The little tiger called Han

Around 1861 a boy named Han Jiaozhun, nicknamed “Tiger”, was born here. The family was poor, like most in the area. Even then Wenchang was a region young men left because the land couldn't feed them.

At about eleven, Han Jiaozhun left the island too. First he went with his older brother to the Dutch East Indies, today's Indonesia, like so many Hainanese before him. There a relative with the surname Soong took him under his wing; he ran a tea and silk shop in Boston. The man adopted him — and the boy from the Han family became a Soong.

From Java to Boston and North Carolina

In Boston the boy was supposed to work in his uncle's shop. But he wanted to learn, ran away and signed on to a US Coast Guard ship. The captain took care of him and brought him to North Carolina. There he was baptised a Methodist in 1880 and from then on called himself Charles Jones Soong, Charlie for short.

Supporters from the church paid for his education. He studied at Trinity College, today's Duke University, and then theology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. In 1886 he returned to China as a missionary — a Chinese from a village on Hainan who spoke fluent English and had American manners.

Bibles, machines and a revolution

In Shanghai Charlie Soong soon grew dissatisfied as a missionary and went into business. He founded a printing house that printed Bibles and religious writings, and traded machinery as an agent for American companies. Within twenty years he was a rich man.

He put a large part of his fortune into the revolution of Sun Yat-sen, whom he had met in Shanghai. He financed his movement, organised secret meetings and also printed revolutionary writings on his presses. When the empire fell in 1911, Charlie Soong was one of the new republic's most important financiers. He died in Shanghai in 1918.

Three sisters, two Chinas

Charlie Soong had six children, three daughters and three sons, and sent them all to study in the USA. The eldest daughter, Ai-ling, married the banker H. H. Kung, a descendant of Confucius, who later became finance minister. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the republic, against her father's wishes. Mei-ling married Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist government. Their brother T. V. Soong became foreign minister and premier of the Republic of China.

After the civil war in 1949 their paths parted. Ching-ling stayed in the People's Republic and was named honorary president shortly before her death in 1981. Mei-ling went to Taiwan with Chiang and died in New York in 2003 at the age of 105. Two sisters, two states that still don't recognise each other. In China people like to quote the saying that one loved money, the second power and the third her country.

What you see on site

The house itself is a typical Hainanese farmhouse of brick and wood, with main house, kitchen and outbuildings, furnished with simple furniture, millstones, a plough and rain capes. The golden inscription over the gate was written by Deng Xiaoping. Family photos hang in the main house.

Right next to it stands a memorial hall from 1985 with a golden-yellow roof, dedicated mainly to Soong Ching-ling. In front stands her white marble statue, in the courtyard a bust of Sun Yat-sen, a little further on a statue of Charlie Soong. The staff often wear school uniforms from the Republican era.

What the exhibition leaves out

The exhibition tells the story from the People's Republic's point of view. Ching-ling is at the centre, as “mother of the nation” and ally of the Communists. Mei-ling and Chiang Kai-shek, Ai-ling and her husband hardly appear, although they were at least as important to China's history.

If you know that, you can read a lot from this very gap. The house is a place of pilgrimage for school classes and Party groups, but also for visitors from Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora looking for a shared origin here.

How to approach the visit

An hour is enough for the house and memorial hall. It's best to come in the morning, when it's quiet and cooler. Admission is around 15 yuan in high season. At the entrance they sell freshly baked little flatbreads, two for a few yuan.

The house is in the countryside; buses run only a few times a day. Go by Didi and book the return trip in advance. The exhibition is mostly in Chinese; a translation app helps.