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When China moves, she will move the world.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

Colonel Frank Dorn was nobody's fool. Chief aide and confidant of General Joseph Stilwell, commander of the U.S. Army in China, Dorn arrived in the Chinese wartime capital of Chungking in March 1942. Known as Pinky -- "for his complexion, not his politics" -- he was a big, handsome man of forty-one, a quality that endeared him to Madame Chiang, who was known to call on Dorn during periods of military crisis to vent her frustrations with the British, the Americans, and her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Chinese government.

In one of their conversations, May-ling complained to Dorn that she could not understand why he and other American officers called her Madame, with the accent on the first syllable, instead of Madame, as it is pronounced in France. After all, she fussed, it was common knowledge that this was the term for the head of a house of prostitution. Dorn replied that he and his fellow officers certainly had no intention of insulting her. As a matter of fact, he added, she was surely aware that the queen of England was always called "Madam" to indicate royalty. "You never saw a facial expression change so fast in your life!" the colonel commented when he recounted the incident, delighted with his own quickness of wit.

In trying to explain why a woman fathered by a Chinese peasant found it both soothing and appropriate to be compared to the queen of England, I have tried to take into account the special characteristics of May-ling's family, a clan that benefited from the disappearance of centuries-old societal structures and helped push China into the modern world. I have started my story with Madame's father, a man named Charlie Soong, whose life journey mirrored the upheavals taking place in his nation. In doing this, I have hoped to put the reader in a position to understand the woman called Soong May-ling Chiang, how she came to be the way she was, and how she charmed the United States out of billions of dollars. More important, I have tried to show how she managed to influence if not change the history of the twentieth century.