Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek talk together on the White House Lawn, February 25, 1943.
A bit of living history for a Monday morning.
Posted on 07/29/2002 5:53:14 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
Overcast, a breeze off the East River thwarting humidity. Buster and I go on a walk. Parked in front of one of the Upper East Side’s most prominent addresses: a blue van idling at the curbside, its backdoor open, with a ramp extending from door to the sidewalk, obviously for a wheelchair. Behind the van, a black limousine, also idling, with two security men standing alongside, waiting. I stop to chat with the doorman whom I’ve been stopping to chat with ever since I moved into the neighborhood almost ten years ago. A few minutes pass. The cars remain idling, the men waiting. Then out of the building comes an entourage of white starched uniforms and men in shirt and tie. Then, wheeled from building, across the sidewalk and up the slightly inclining ramp into the van: a little lady, tiny almost to the point of disappearance, immaculately got up, impeccably made up, sleek, chic, jet black hair. A little bit of a thing. entirely unnoticed by the joggers, the cell-phoners oblivious to the world around them, the Sunday strollers, and the young parents attending to the smaller strollers.
The lady transported into the van was Madame Chiang Kai-shek, one of the fabled Soong sisters of what was then called the Far East, one of the most famous women of the 20th century, and, until the coming of Chairman Mao, the most powerful woman in all of Asia. All history buried now, she’s long outlived her siblings, her husband, Chairman Mao and all who came with him.
Recently she celebrated her 105th birthday. She’s outlived all of her enemies, all of her detractors and many of the historians who tracked her. Today she resides in a comparative solitary splendor, looked after by a retinue of a score or more, and surrounded by her three adored and adoring canines. All little ones, like Buster who often runs into them on the walks.
On Sunday late afternoons in New York just before the sun begins to go down and while the city still snoozes before the weekenders return, Madame Chiang likes to go out for a ride. Around the Park. A Sunday ride, we used to call it in the long ago. Get out of the house. See the City. See the people, live a little. Good for what ails ya.
Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek talk together on the White House Lawn, February 25, 1943.
A bit of living history for a Monday morning.
I had the honor of attending the first peaceful transition of power in Chinese history in May of 2000 when President Lee turned over the government of Taiwan to President Chen Shui Bian. Both are remarkable men. Lee in many ways is the embodiment of the "Philosopher King".
Thank you for this post and have a wonderful Monday.
One of the reasons we will have more than relative success in this country keeping safe, is the fact that every outhouse country sends us their children for schooling, their wives and daughters for shopping, their soldiers for training, their parents for healthcare, their smuggled cash(after laundering it out of US foreign aid) in the form of investments, and so on. To cause a mess here, requires the harm of those outhouse nationals. This country is where they come to enjoy life, not like at home.
In the mid 90's my brother (he's a homebuilder) was hired to add to the servants quarters. Not her servants mind you, but the servants who served her servants.
Wow.
Actually it was Madame Nhu, Diem's sister in law, wife of Ngo Dinh Nhu. She was very much the manipulative mistress of intrigue which was portrayed in Terry.
And our post-Reagan/Thatcher epoch seems like a time of Lilliputians.
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