Chiang Soong Mei-ling, << jyahng sung may LIHNG >>, or Mayling (1897-2003), the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, was a Chinese social leader. She was born on March 5, 1897, in Shanghai, and graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 1927, she married Chiang Kai-shek and supported him through difficult crises of his career (see Chiang Kai-shek). During the mid-1930’s, she was a force in the New Life Movement, an attempt to modernize the Chinese.
In 1943, she served as her husband’s interpreter at the Cairo Conference, when he met with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. During World War II (1939-1945) and the civil war in China that followed, she pleaded the Nationalist cause in the United States. She won much sympathy for the Chiang government against the Communists. She died on Oct. 23, 2003.
