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Fantasy Memories and the Lost Honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Fantasy Memories and the Lost Honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek The tale of a sexual tryst between China’s first lady Soong Mayling and the 1940 Republican u.s . presidential candidate Wendell Willkie on his visit to China in September and October 1942 has circulated in biographies and in the press. Yet there is no credible evidence of such a liaison. Drew Pearson, a political gossip columnist, probably cooked it up. He embellished an account he had learned from Gardner Cowles, a respected long-time Republican magazine publisher, who then “recovered” a memory based on his reading of Pearson’s story about the affair. The popularity of this fantasy suggests that it functions as what Sigmund Freud called a “screen memory” constructed around Soong Mayling as a “Dragon Lady” and covers over a traumatic memory of the American “loss of China” to communism. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of American-East Asian Relations Brill

Fantasy Memories and the Lost Honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Journal of American-East Asian Relations , Volume 23 (2): 109 – Jun 17, 2016

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Articles
ISSN
1058-3947
eISSN
1876-5610
DOI
10.1163/18765610-02302001
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The tale of a sexual tryst between China’s first lady Soong Mayling and the 1940 Republican u.s . presidential candidate Wendell Willkie on his visit to China in September and October 1942 has circulated in biographies and in the press. Yet there is no credible evidence of such a liaison. Drew Pearson, a political gossip columnist, probably cooked it up. He embellished an account he had learned from Gardner Cowles, a respected long-time Republican magazine publisher, who then “recovered” a memory based on his reading of Pearson’s story about the affair. The popularity of this fantasy suggests that it functions as what Sigmund Freud called a “screen memory” constructed around Soong Mayling as a “Dragon Lady” and covers over a traumatic memory of the American “loss of China” to communism.

Journal

Journal of American-East Asian RelationsBrill

Published: Jun 17, 2016

Keywords: China; World War ii ; memory; Wendell Willkie; Soong Mayling; “Loss of China”

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