The Chen Family Party of the Jiang Family, the Song Sisters Kong Jia cai - the four major families of the Republic of China
In addition to many revolutionaries during the Republic of China period, there were also Jiang, Chen, Song and Kong, who were known as the "four major families". Each of these four families has its own property and is intricately interconnected, controlling the country's politics, party and finances. Among them, the representative figure of the Song family, Song Ziwen, went from a bullying youth to a politician and economist, controlling almost the entire national economic lifeline during the Republic of China period.
The descendants of such a big capitalist have all turned away from the political center. So, how are Song Ziwen's descendants doing now? Why do they choose to stay away from politics and pursue a career in finance?
01 Young scholar lost his first love because of Mendi
In 1894, Song Ziwen was born in Shanghai Tongren Hospital, the third in line, the eldest sister and the second sister were Song Xialing (Mrs. Kong Xiangxi) and Song Qingling (Mrs. Sun Yat-sen), and the younger sister Song Meiling (Mrs. Jiang's wife), all of whom were in power of the four major families. The two younger brothers, Song Ziliang and Song Zi'an, served as important officials of the Nationalist government, respectively. It can be said that the entire Song family is intertwined with the country's politics, economy, and finances.
The sons and daughters of the Song family were so outstanding, mainly because their father, Song Guangyao, founded a factory in Shanghai in his early years as a missionary and obtained the first pot of gold. The Song family and his wife attach great importance to education, hired tutors for the children, received Western-style family education from an early age, and both went abroad to stay abroad. Soong Kuan Yew was also a patriotic revolutionary youth, who secretly participated as a missionary in some of the work of overthrowing the Qing government and raised funds for Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolution.
After graduating from St. John's University in Shanghai, Song Ziwen went to Harvard in the United States to study and obtained a master's degree in economics. After graduating from an internship at Citibank in New York, while also pursuing a Doctorate in Economics at Columbia University, he is a typical young scholar today. It was also this experience that exposed him to the economic operation mode of the Western capitalist market, laying the foundation for returning to China to engage in financial work in the future.
In 1917, Song Ziwen returned to China with a doctorate in economics, and at this time, the warlords in China were in a scuffle, and the economy and politics were in chaos. Song Zi's father's relationship entered the Shanghai office of the Hanzhiping Company founded by the bureaucrat Sheng Xuanhuai in the late Qing Dynasty, serving as a secretary and in charge of more than 7,000 people in the country's largest steel company.
Song Ziwen has a beautiful appearance, has stayed in the ocean and has his own aura of learning, and soon becomes happy with Sheng Xuanhuai's daughter Sheng Jianru. The relationship between the two deepened, and Sheng Jinru made it clear to his father that he wanted to marry Song Ziwen, but he was strongly opposed by Sheng's father. Father Sheng did not look down on this young man who was far from him, and transferred him to Jiangxi as a small secretary.
He also quickly found his daughter to marry each other. Song Ziwen was greatly stimulated, directly resigned, and decided to return to Shanghai to work hard for a career. I don't know if Sheng Xuanhuai saw that Song Ziwen, who would be in power and politics in the future, had a hint of regret?
02 Entered the political arena and took charge of finances
At this time, Sun Yat-sen established the Grand Marshal's Office in Guangzhou, and on the occasion of employing people, Soong Ching Ling recommended this doctoral brother in economics to him. Song Ziwen came to Guangzhou to take charge of the central bank's fundraising work and served as vice president. He combined the cases of revitalized funds he saw on Wall Street and formulated taxation policies for different industries in light of the current revolutionary government.
It is what we often call "crowdfunding" today. With the financial support of Soong Tzu-wen, Sun Yat-sen was able to devote himself to the revolution. After that, Song Ziwen served as the minister of finance and the governor of the central bank of the National Government in Guangzhou, directly grasping the lifeblood of the national finance.
Until Mr. Jiang came to power, at this time, Jiang was bent on suppressing the Communists, and every time he asked Song Ziwen to raise funds for the army, Song Ziwen opposed the civil war and hoped to unanimously resist Japan. But Song Ziwen's financial path has not stopped, and he was running for fundraising and the economy during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War.
03 talent with beauty, daughter career success
Although the first love of his beloved did not bear the right fruit, Song Ziwen still met his own woman at first sight, Zhang Leyi. The daughter of this builder, beautiful and talented, graduated from Nanjing Jinling University, and the two can be called talents and beauties, a match made in heaven. Song Ziwen and Zhang Leyi had three daughters after marriage, all of whom had a happy family and a successful career, but they died of suffocation due to eating at the age of 77.
The eldest daughter, Song Qiongyi, was born in 1928 and married Feng Yanda, the son of Song Ziwen's friend Feng Zhizheng, in 1952. Feng Yanda's maternal grandfather Guo Biao is the founder of Shanghai Yongan Company, and the two families are both family friends and door-to-door pairs. This Feng Yanda is also an economics bully who has stayed in the West, and has also helped Song Ziwen take care of banking affairs, which is deeply appreciated by his father-in-law.
After marriage, the two had two sons: Feng Yinghan and Feng Yingxiang, who worked in the media industry and the financial industry respectively. In addition, Song Qiongyi served with her husband as the Chinese Consul General in Calcutta, India, the Consul General in San Francisco, and the Ambassador to Mexico. In his later years, his life was happy and uneventful. The second son, Feng Yingxiang, lived with his grandfather Song Ziwen for more than ten years since he was a child, and thus also embarked on the road of business.
The second daughter, Song Manyi, married Yu Jingpeng, a wealthy Singaporean businessman, and had a son and two daughters after marriage. The Yu family runs a traditional Chinese medicine business and has a number of large department stores, but their family is very low-key after marriage, has not appeared in the public eye, and the current situation is unknown.
The youngest daughter, Song Ruiyi, married Yang Chengzhu, a Filipino overseas Chinese with a well-to-do family. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Yang Chengzhu's family business manufactures cars primarily for General Motors and sells the General Motors business in the Philippines. After marriage, there are two boys and two girls, both of whom have grown up and become families, working and struggling in their respective industries, and the current situation is unknown.
A few years after Song Ziwen's death, his three daughters gave all of their father's private materials, notes, etc. to historians to study, which was a very admirable move. After all, the father's life was more controversial, and the daughters also hoped that their father would get an objective and fair understanding of society.
Song Ziwen entered politics because of finance, controlling almost the entire economic regime of the Republic of China period, and the evaluation of him by future generations of scholars was even more mixed. And his daughters are also very low-key, married to excellent entrepreneurs or overseas Chinese, settled overseas, and never used the reputation of their fathers to seek attention and benefits for themselves.
None of his descendants have entered politics, perhaps because the Western open education advocated by Song Ziwen and his wife from childhood has given their children a democratic and free environment to grow up. More importantly, it should be affected by the negative evaluation left by Song Ziwen in history, even if his descendants want to enter politics, there is no good mass base.
The husbands of his daughters are entrepreneurs or financial workers, on the one hand, they are influenced by Song Ziwen's interpersonal network, and most of the contacts around them are in the same field, so they will be more inclined to marry in the same industry. On the other hand, his daughters and grandchildren have heard from an early age that the elders have been engaged in business, and they will probably be particularly outstanding in this regard, of course, they are inseparable from their father's accumulation.