Entrance: Tour RMB TBD (RAS members), RMB TBD (non-members)

Book Club: RMB20 (RAS member), RMB50 (non-member)

(Book Club free for those who participate in tour)

If you are unable to make the entrance donation but wish to attend

please request exemption when registering for this event.

RSVP: bookevents@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Reservations essential as space is limited for this event.

Membership applications and renewals are available at this event.

 

Watch here for tour description.

Note from RAS Book Club: The Soong Dynasty was written in 1985. Since that time much new information has become available about the China’s Republican period, war with Japan and civil war between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communists. The Soong family members and their spouses played important roles during the period. While we recognize that this book has flaws, we have chosen it book because, to date, it remains the only non-fiction work to provide biographical information on the extended Soong family. Book Club selections have included, and will continue to include, non-fiction works that explore the period based from other perspectives.

From 1985 New York Times book review: This book is the first (RAS: and still the only) biography of the whole clan, and the first to examine both their positive contributions and their long- hidden, more sinister activities. When all the clan members are brought together in a single study, it is possible to see how they helped and hindered each other in the path to power.

Because so much about them remains hidden, (Seagrave) has “chosen a way of revealing the Soongs that is less subject to interpretation by friends or foes. Like Perseus, who avoided staring straight at Medusa, I have searched for the Soongs in the mirror of their times and in the lives of their close associates.” He also searches for them as they have been mirrored in previous histories and biographies of the period.

Sterling Seagrave an American historian (b. 1937) is the author of numerous books which address unofficial and clandestine aspects of 20th Century political history of the countries in the Far East.

As an investigative journalist in Asia, Seagrave contributed to many major newspapers and magazines. His books include The Yamato Dynasty: The Marcos Dynasty, The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family, Opération Lys d'or (Operation Golden Lily in English), Yellow Rain: A Journey Through the Terror of Chemical Warfare, and Dragon Lady.

Born in Columbus, Ohio on April 15, 1937, Seagrave grew up on the China-Burma border, the fifth generation of an American family living in the Orient for nearly two centuries (his father was Dr. Gordon Seagrave, author of Burma Surgeon). He and his wife and collaborator. Peggy Sawyer Seagrave, live in Europe.