Part of the mission of Asiapundit is to make up for the absence of an English-language pan-Asian tabloid (the format change at the AWSJ has not prompted a shift to tabloid journalism).
With that, we thank China Matters for bringing our attention to a reported affair between Madam Soong Mai-ling (Mdme Chaing Kai-shek) and one-time US presidential hopeful Wendell Willkie.:
In 1942, FDR dispatched Willkie on an around-the-world fact-finding trip accompanied by Cowles. During a brief stay in Chungking, Willkie and Mdme. Soong became powerfully enamoured of each other.
On one occasion they slipped away from a government reception, leaving Cowles to divert the attention and wrath of Chiang Kai-shek. Later that evening, the Generalissimo appeared at Cowles and Willkie’s quarters and searched it from top to bottom in a vain effort to find his wife.
At 4:00 am Willkie returned, in Cowles’ words “cocky as a young college student after a successful night with a girl…giving me a play by play account of what had happened”–though Cowles is too much the gentleman to reveal the details himself.
Then Wilkie announced to an astounded Cowles that he wanted to bring Soong May-ling back to Washington with him.
Cowles convinced Willkie such an escapade would doom his political aspirations. As repayment Cowles was delegated to deliver the bad news to Mdme. Soong. Her reaction created an indelible impression on him:
Before I knew what was happening she reached up and scratched her long fingernails down both my cheeks so deeply that I had marks for about a week.
When Mdme. Soong eventually made her historic trip to the United States the next year, she summoned Cowles to her suite in the Waldorf and proposed that he devote himself exclusively to obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for Willkie, spending whatever was necessary–with his expenses to be reimbursed by Mdme. Soong:
…she wound up her sales talk with a remark I shall never forget: “You know, Mike, if Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the Western world.” And she stressed the word rule.
Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan
