W.H. Donald and the Xi’an Incident

Has anybody in Australia even heard of William Henry Donald—W.H. to the public, Will to his family, Bill to those who thought they were his friends and Don to those who actually were his friends? Donald is one of the two Australians who strode through Chinese history of the twentieth century and whose opinions and advice were sought and listened to at the highest levels. The other, George Ernest Morrison, legendary Times of London correspondent of the Boxer Rebellion period and trusted adviser to the first President of China, Yuan Shikai, is reasonably well known in Australia. By contrast, Donald, who was a towering figure in Chinese politics of the Republican era, remains largely unknown here. If you go into bookshops all over China, you will find many books in Chinese about him, but I know of only three in English which do him justice. They are Donald of China, his memoir as told to the Hawaiian journalist Earl Selle in a Honolulu hospital shortly before his death, Craig Collie’s The Reporter and the Warlords and Peter Thompson’s excellent Shanghai Fury, a history of Australians in China in which Donald features prominently. But these books have no reference to Chinese sources, and the definitive story of W.H. Donald remains to be written.

Donald was born in Lithgow on June 22, 1875. A journalist, he worked first on the Lithgow Mercury and later on the Bathurst National Daily Advocate, the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Melbourne Argus. In 1901 he responded to an advertisement calling for a journalist with a knowledge of printing, and above all a teetotaller, to work on the Hong Kong Mail. Here Donald plied his trade for several years.

Donald became disillusioned with the parochial, Britain-centred policies of the Mail and wondered who was actually reporting on what was going on in China. So one fateful day he took the ferry the ninety-odd miles up the Pearl River to Canton, found Zhang Renjun, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs’ office, and requested a meeting. He hadn’t realised that government offices in China didn’t open until well after noon, so he just camped there. Eventually a young official asked him in English what his business was. He replied that he wanted a meeting with the Viceroy. The official said that he needed to apply through the British consulate and that the permission would take three days. Donald exploded in a way that became his standard reaction to Chinese obstructionism, and eventually he was ushered into the Viceroy’s presence. A discussion ensued about the reasons for China’s backwardness in which Donald participated with his usual bluntness. A few days later, he received a letter appointing him as adviser in all matters of government in South China. This was the first of many such appointments.

He then determined to become familiar with all aspects of Chinese politics and society. He met everybody who mattered, he spoke to everybody who was prepared to talk to him, and soon he became a recognised expert on all things Chinese. This was most unusual among Hong Kong English-language journalists at the time—in fact it remained an unusual trait among Hong Kong journalists until the mid-1990s. His level of access was all the more remarkable because he spoke no Chinese and all conversation with non-English-speakers had to be through interpreters. His excuse for failing to learn Chinese was that he didn’t want his interlocutors to think that he could eavesdrop on them. (There is some evidence that he had a basic familiarity with Chinese but certainly not enough to participate in political discussions.) He also totally eschewed Chinese food. At Chinese banquets, while all the other guests were enjoying sumptuous dishes, his specially trained cook, who travelled with him everywhere he went, would bring him steak and potatoes. This may strike you as eccentric to say the least, but in the circles in which he travelled it was usual for important people, especially generals and politicians, to provide their own food at banquets,  out of fear that they might be poisoned.

Donald had little time for the Chinese imperial system. He considered it corrupt and generally rotten and responsible for the dilemma that China found itself in. He had been strongly affected by seeing the heads of young revolutionaries displayed on pikes in Canton. In 1908, he sought out the revolutionary parties in Canton. He developed a close friendship with Hu Hanmin, later to become the leader of the Kuomintang right wing in the 1920s Canton government. Donald didn’t meet Sun Yat-sen until after the Revolution. Donald had scant regard for Sun. He described Sun as “mad as a hatter” and a “pitiful, uneducated, incapable charlatan”. As we said above, Donald was direct.

He had a higher opinion of another revolutionary figure whom he met in 1908 with his family in Shanghai. This was Charlie Soong, a former missionary who got super-rich printing bibles, hymnals and religious tracts and who became a close friend of Sun Yat-sen and funder of revolution. This would prove to be an important meeting for Donald’s future. Charlie’s daughters married China’s most influential political figures and one of them, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, became close to Donald. But more of that later on.

During the period leading up to the 1911 revolution and after, Donald crossed the line between reporter and player, as he would many times in the future. He became not merely an adviser to the revolutionaries, but an active player in the revolution. Charlie Soong described him as “Australia’s gift to the confusion of the enemy”. If we are to believe his own account as reported by Earl Selle, Donald played a central part in the unfolding of the revolution. There was total confusion as to what was going on after the rebellion at Wuhan, and Donald, who was in Shanghai at the time, arranged for Dr Wu Tingfang, former Qing minister to Washington, to become nominal head of government. He arranged telegrams to be sent to provincial governors, urging them to declare independence from the Qing but not to set up new governments until things became clearer. He also approached the British consul-general as representative of the revolution and claimed personal responsibility when, later, first Britain, then Japan declared neutrality in the matter of the revolution and undertook not to intervene on behalf of the Qing. In 1911 British or Japanese intervention could have been decisive.

But his greatest intervention, according to Selle, was at Nanjing. The capture of Nanjing was critical to the revolution. It had been the first capital of the last native dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the anti-Qing forces intended to make it their capital, a symbolic rejection of the Manchu capital Beijing. A strong revolutionary force gathered at Zhenjiang forty miles from Nanjing and there it stalled. Two generals were vying for the honour of taking Nanjing and nothing would happen until this had been resolved. Donald immediately went to Zhenjiang. He confronted the first general and threatened him with death if the troops weren’t moved. The general agreed to comply. But the second general claimed that further advance was impossible because the railway to Nanjing was mined.

Donald and a companion immediately commandeered a train. He does not appear to have considered his complete inexperience of train driving as an obstacle. He drove right up to Purple Mountain, which overlooks Nanjing, and back without incident. The way to Nanjing was clear but the armies still refused to advance on the grounds that there were artillery emplacements on top of Purple Mountain which were unassailable, and that the guns would cut them down as they assaulted Nanjing. Donald took the initiative and scaled the 2000-foot mountain, where he found not guns but a Buddhist monastery. Exhausted and hungry at the top, he accepted tea and boiled salted duck’s eggs from the monks. I mention this because it is the only record that we have of Donald ever sullying his mouth with Chinese food.

If Donald is to be believed, he led the actual assault of Purple Mountain and then paused to write a despatch to the New York Herald beginning:

A city and a mountain are in a life and death struggle this morning. Shells are singing high over a purple peak to the plains on the far side, shrapnel is bursting high and distant, rifle bullets are falling short and few among the Chinese rebels are dying …

He then manned a cannon which blew the Taiping Gate open and allowed the rebels to flow into the city.

After the Nanjing events, Donald maintained his revolutionary connections, albeit with a sense of despair as the country fell into disorder and civil war. He was present at the ceremony in Nanjing on January 1, 1912, proclaiming the republic, and in response to a request from Sun Yat-sen, he wrote the Manifesto of the Republic four days later. But his daily bread continued to come from journalism. In 1911 he moved to Beijing, where he edited the Far Eastern Review, generally considered the most authoritative source of information on China at the time. Simultaneously he was a stringer for the Times of London, the Manchester Guardian, the New York Herald and several Australian papers.

In 1920 his editorship of the Far Eastern Review reached a crisis point. In 1915, Japanese troops occupied the German concession in Qingdao, Shandong province, and took over all German interests in the province. They presented the Chinese government with a series of twenty-one demands which would, if accepted, make China effectively a colony of Japan. This led Donald to become critical of Japan. He argued with the majority shareholder of the Review, George Rea, about policy towards Japan, and resigned. Fortunately for Donald, financial rescue was at hand in the form of an offer from the Chinese government to form a Bureau of Economic Information of which he would be the head. The objective of the bureau was to be the collection and dissemination of demographic and economic data. The salary was to be $2000 Mexican silver per month. This was the equivalent of an annual salary now of half a million Australian dollars, and living in China was cheap. Donald accepted with alacrity. Note that at this time in Beijing, “Chinese government” meant an uneasy coalition between the warlords Wu Peifu and Zhang Zuolin, and that since Zhang Zuolin was supported by the Japanese, Donald was supping with the devil. But his association with Zhang Zuolin was to have important repercussions for both Donald and China.

At this stage, life in China appears to have been very to Donald. He often spoke disdainfully about money but he certainly knew how to spend and enjoy it. His house at 24 Zongbu Hutong in Beijing was described as “sumptuous”. His dinner parties were famous. He was a teetotaller himself, but he served his guests the very best French wines, Scotch whiskies and Cuban cigars. The house was decorated with Chinese antiques including paraphernalia for smoking opium. He had a gramophone with a collection of classical music records. His dinner guests included the great and the good of the world. Both sons of Theodore Roosevelt visited him, as did Harry Gullet, future Australian cabinet minister and former press officer of Billy Hughes. Gullet became a friend and correspondent.

Donald was tall with a commanding presence, and very direct. He presented a crumpled appearance, although he had an army of servants to look after him. He was separated from his wife, but enjoyed the company of beautiful women, including a Russian refugee, Irina, with whom he was described as being “close” and who became his secretary.

But some of this luxury depended on his salary from the Economic Bureau. Contracts in China, including employment contracts, are rarely anything more than statements of best intent, and this becomes relevant when the government is shaky and poorly funded. Additionally, a fat salary is a target for anybody, especially those who are allegedly paying the salary, to take a slice for themselves. These problems became apparent to Donald around 1927. Two Chinese government bodies, the Maritime Customs and the Ministry of Finance, were theoretically responsible, half and half, for paying Donald’s $2000 Mexican per month salary. The Ministry not only never paid him, but the Minister demanded $5000 of it as a corrupt payment. Donald refused to pay, and was forced to pay staff salaries out of his own resources. This forced him to rent out his house, the new lessee being the youngest son of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin. Young Zhang held wild parties which severely damaged the house. Donald complained to Zhang Zuolin, who sent his elder son, Zhang Xueliang, known later as the “Young Marshal”, to clear the matter up. Donald and the Young Marshal became friends.

On October 10, 1927, “Double Ten”, the republican national day, he resigned from the Economic Bureau. In December he took a cruise up the Yangtze, then to Dalian and finally to Shenyang where he joined his new employer, the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang.

By 1928, Zhang Xueliang had assumed a leading role in North-East China. In 1916, after several southern provinces had rebelled against Yuan Shikai, Zhang’s father, Zhang Zuolin, the “Old Marshal”, had accepted Japanese support and become military ruler of Manchuria. He became rich, with extensive property, five wives and an army of 200,000 men. The Japanese, who had taken control of the South Manchurian Railway after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, considered Zhang as their man. In June 1926, he captured Beijing and proclaimed himself Generalissimo of China. But he had failed to stop Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition, which continued its northward march and continued to make overtures to Zhang. This infuriated the Japanese Kwantung Army which guarded Japanese interests in Manchuria—we know this from Japanese evidence given to the 1946 Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. On June 4, 1928, Zhang Zuolin died when a Japanese bomb destroyed his train on the outskirts of Shenyang. Zhang Xueliang succeeded him as warlord of Manchuria.

Zhang Xueliang was one of the most brilliant and promising public personalities of the republican period. Were it not for his role in the Xi’an Incident of December 1936, he might have risen to the very top of the Republic. As it was, his personal qualities ensured that he would be eclipsed. Slight of build, but of a giant presence, he was intelligent, witty and attractive to women. He was also an opium and morphine addict.

It soon became apparent that the Young Marshal would not be the puppet of the Japanese that his father had been. In January 1929, shortly after Donald’s appointment Zhang executed two pro-Japanese officers—Yang Yuting in charge of arsenals and Zhang Yinwei in charge of railways—in front of a startled dinner party. Then in 1930, Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition prepared to engage the Northern forces in decisive battles. Unexpectedly, Zhang refused to join forces with the northern strongman Feng Yuxiang and Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan. Instead he raised the KMT standard and declared for the Republic of China. Of course, patriotism played its part and Zhang was one of the great patriots of the twentieth century. But he struck a hard bargain. In return for support of the Nanjing government, Zhang got the revenues of the port of Tianjin. This was solid money. Chinese customs were British-controlled and considered incorruptible. It is tempting to see the hand of Donald in this but Zhang was no fool. We have no direct evidence but we would be surprised if an intermediary in discussions between Zhang and the KMT was not Madame Chiang, Soong Mayling. She and Zhang had met at a Shanghai party in the early 1920s and were friends. In her writings, she always referred to Zhang by the name used only by his family and close friends, Hanqing. It was rumoured that Chiang was jealous of Mayling’s association with Zhang.

Zhang’s new alliance with Chiang and the KMT disturbed the Japanese deeply and on September 18, 1931, they staged the bombing of a Japanese-owned railway. The Japanese Kwantung Army took control of Manchuria and declared the puppet state of Manchukuo with the last emperor, Puyi, as its chief executive.

The level of trust Zhang had in Donald and the degree to which he depended on Donald’s advice are manifestly clear in the events around the Japanese takeover of Manchuria on that September evening in 1931. On the evening of the Japanese coup in Manchuria, Donald and Zhang had been at dinner at the British Legation. At 1 a.m., Zhang rang Donald to tell him that the Japanese had taken Shenyang. In theory Zhang’s army of 250,000 troops, sixty combat aircraft and 4000 machine guns should have been able to engage the Japanese. In practice it was stationed mainly outside Manchuria, poorly trained, poorly paid and riddled with Japanese agents. Zhang chose not to fight. A second shameful retreat by Zhang’s forces occurred in 1933 when Japanese forces advanced into the neighbouring province of Reher. This angered Chiang Kai-shek, who demanded Zhang’s resignation.

Donald saw this as an opportunity. Without military responsibilities, he could concentrate on Zhang’s addiction cure. He fired Zhang’s doctors, who had been making money on feeding his habit, and booked him into the Country Hospital in Shanghai where the Seventh-Day Adventist Doctor Miller, famous for his addiction work, took over. Miller locked himself, Zhang and Zhang’s two wives in a room for three days while he treated them. Donald slept in a cot outside the door. He heard violent incidents and even a threat to kill Miller and himself. But after the three days Zhang never took opium again. Newly revived, Zhang and Donald set out on a sea voyage to Europe. Zhang’s old vivacity returned. He was the life of every party and was rumoured to have had an affair with the wife of Count Ciano, Italian Minister to China, who was going back to Rome to become Mussolini’s foreign minister. Ciano’s wife, Edda, was Mussolini’s daughter.

On their return to Shanghai, Donald and Zhang had talks with all factions in China’s confused political situation. It became clear that Zhang held the balance of power. He only had to say the word and his senior officers would renounce their alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, which would bring the disunited KMT government down. Donald called a press conference where he announced, “The return of the Young Marshal to China is desired by his officers. But in view of conditions now prevailing in this country, it is difficult to say when he will return. I have a strong feeling that he may go to Soviet Russia.”

This resulted in a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek, who invited them to join him in the resort city of Hangzhou. According to Donald’s own account, he dominated the meeting with characteristically frank and direct comments which were translated by Madame Chiang. He said, “You’ve retreated into your intellectual ratholes, leaving exposed only a posterior of vanity. Goddamn it sir, you’ve all become insufferably stupid.” After this start he went on to tell Chiang what he really thought. Donald was worried that Madame Chiang had failed to translate for him properly. She insisted that she had; Zhang commented that she had even included the “goddamns”. As a result of this meeting, Zhang was reinstated as head of his army, and as head of the anti-communist encirclement campaigns, and he set off to take command, initially in Wuhan and later in Xi’an in north-western China, close to the communist front.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek had a special relationship with Donald. They first met in her father’s house in 1908 when she was eleven years old and she had called him “Uncle Donald”. Now she called him “Don”. After the meeting, as they walked by Hangzhou’s lake, Madame Chiang took Donald’s arm and asked him to work for her, saying, “We need a brain like yours.” Donald at first refused because he “didn’t work for women”, who he considered to be “heaven’s whimsies”. He joined Zhang in Wuhan, but at Madame Chiang’s requests, pounded out for her a series of papers detailing what he believed were China’s ills and his solutions to them. He had been impressed by what he had seen in his trip to Italy and Germany, and may have been responsible for the initial idea of Chiang’s Blue Shirt brigade based on Mussolini’s Black Shirts.

In October 1934, this correspondence bore fruit. Chiang and Madame visited Wuhan and once again offered him the job of adviser. Donald commandeered a Ford Trimotor aeroplane and took Chiang on a whirlwind tour of North China, reasoning that Chiang, whose experiences were all in East and South China, couldn’t rule a country that he hadn’t seen. They went to Xi’an, the cradle of Chinese civilisation, Lanzhou in the far west, Zhangjiakou where they met descendants of Genghis Khan, Taiyuan, the stronghold of the reforming warlord Yan Xishan, and back to Nanjing. Donald felt that, during this trip, he saw Chiang grow from a warlord into a statesman. On their return to Nanjing, after a brief negotiation between Madame and Zhang, Donald was installed as adviser to the Chiangs. He called them G’issimo and M’issimo. Chiang called him “adviser”. She called him “Don”.

There is some debate as to how influential Donald was with the Chiangs. He says that he was an essential part of policy formation. Some Chinese sources say he advocated several reform plans, including a unified currency system, banning opium, establishing a central bank, standardising the tax system and severely punishing corruption. Others say he was a mere propaganda mouthpiece. But Donald’s central role in the unfolding events of the Xi’an Incident of December 1936 suggests that his view is the correct one.

The Xi’an Incident, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by two of his senior officers and forced to co-operate with the communists in fighting the Japanese, is one of the seminal events of modern Chinese history. Donald’s role in it was central. In 1936, Zhang Xueliang, along with General Yang Hucheng, was headquartered in Xi’an fighting the communists in their base at Bao’an 180 miles to the north. Zhang’s troops were a thousand miles away from their homes in Manchuria. Manchuria is a land of wide open spaces and big skies; Xi’an is bleak at the best of times and it was winter. Zhang’s troops were rebellious. During one of Donald’s 1936 visits to Xi’an, Zhang unloaded his woes and suggested forcefully that, rather than fighting the communists, they should join with them and fight the Japanese. Donald told him to put his thoughts on paper for the Generalissimo. Chiang immediately flew to Xi’an where he exploded in rage and upbraided his generals with what Zhang called “vile language”. General Yang, or so Zhang tells us, suggested that if they brought Chiang to a meeting by force he might listen.

Chiang was lodged outside Xi’an in the Huaqing Palace, an eighth-century hot-springs palace where the Tang Emperor Xuanzong had wooed his beautiful concubine, Yang Guifei. This sounds glamorous but now you can go and look at Chiang’s actual room. It’s a small and ancient pavilion. Chiang’s bed, still there, is only a crude military cot. Furnishings are sparse and the room is largely open to the weather. At dawn on December 12, Chiang heard shots. Realising that there was a mutiny, he ran into the bush in his nightshirt, leaving his false teeth behind. He was captured and dragged to meetings with Zhang and Yang. Enraged, he refused to talk, demanding that they kill him. The generals presented Chiang with eight demands, which they called “points of national salvation”, which they then telegrammed to Nanjing. Essentially they were to stop fighting the communists and unite with them in fighting the Japanese.

At this stage, Madame Chiang’s memoir tells us that her first action was to “call Mr Donald” who she described as a close friend of her father’s, and ask him to fly to Xi’an to take charge. Donald is unusually discreet about his role in the matter and we rely on the testimony of Madame Chiang in her memoir, “Sian, a Coup d’Etat”. Donald appears to have acted very bravely, flying into Xi’an despite the fact that he was liable to be either killed by rebel aircraft or bombed by Nanjing planes. I think it’s fair to say that his role was largely to get the parties talking but this was no small matter given the Generalissimo’s stubborn nature and the scepticism with which the generals viewed Chiang’s patriotism. Zhang Xueliang said that for him the thing that got serious negotiations started was that Donald brought with him a copy of Chiang’s diaries which proved his sincerity in wishing to fight the Japanese.

When it appeared that negotiations might be possible, Donald flew to Nanjing and brought back with him the former Finance Minister T.V. Soong for the financial aspects of negotiations and Madame Chiang to bring sense to Chiang. Madame Chiang really showed her mettle at this point. She was a woman going into an unknown and potentially fatal military situation. She handed Donald a pistol, ordering him that if any soldiers touched her, to kill her. She was a courageous woman. From then on, most negotiations were in their hands.

Donald played a key role in two respects. First, he persuaded Chiang to accept the eight demands, after Chiang had resolutely refused to comply. Donald pointed out to him that one of the demands was that Chiang follow the terms of Sun Yat-sen’s will, and that if he accepted this sole demand, the others followed: one stipulation of Sun’s will was continuing co-operation with the Soviet Union. Donald hated the Chinese concept of face, but he pointed out to Chiang that this would be a face-saving way of complying. Donald’s other tie-breaker was suggesting to Zhang Xueliang that he invite the top communist diplomat Zhou Enlai to come down from Yan’an and join the discussions. Zhang clearly had a line to the communists. Communist historians have bestowed on Zhang the title of Hero of History for his unselfish role in the Xi’an incident, but there may be more to it. In Mainland China today it is widely rumoured that Zhang was a crypto-communist. We know that at one stage he applied for Communist Party membership, but was knocked back by the Comintern as being incompatible with the United Front policy. Stalin’s plan was the United Front and their money was on the warlord Feng Yuxiang and Chiang Kai-shek, so there was no place for the Young Marshal. Some Mainland sources also say that on capturing Chiang, Zhang had telegraphed both Yan’an and Moscow suggesting that he should become head of state.

As for the centrality or otherwise of Donald’s role in these talks, Madame Chiang later likened the talks to the building of a house. As she put it, Donald provided the foundations, T.V. Soong built the pillars and walls, and she completed the roof.

Finally, on Christmas Day 1936, agreement was reached. The communists would cease spreading propaganda and recognise Chiang Kai-shek as head of the Chinese armed forces. In return, Nanjing would regularly supply the communists with cash in silver dollars and food and armaments. Chiang was released. Donald painted for his biographer a delightful Christmas scene. He hung two of his golf stockings on the mantelpiece by the fire with a string attached to each. One string led to his present for Madame Chiang, a portable typewriter, the other to his present for the Generalissimo, a steamer blanket. Donald reported that for the first time in two weeks, Chiang smiled widely.

From this point on, Zhang’s and Donald’s paths separated. Zhang was court-martialled for mutiny and sentenced to ten years jail. However, as Zhang told us later in life, at the intercession of Madame Chiang he was put into “close supervision”. Effectively he became Chiang Kai-shek’s personal prisoner. He remained a prisoner even after Chiang died in 1975, and was only released in 1993. Of course, this was humiliating and frustrating for a man of Zhang’s talents, but it wasn’t physically challenging. Zhang lived in a series of well-furnished, well-serviced mansions, first in Chiang’s home village of Xikou, Zhejiang, then in Xinzhu to the south of Taipei and then in the Taipei suburbs at Beitou. He converted to Christianity, but was rumoured to lapse occasionally into wild nights out with drink and girls in the company of Chiang’s son Jiang Jingguo. On his release he went to Hawaii, where he made a series of fascinating DVDs about his life. He died on October 15, 2001, at the age of 101.

Donald continued working for the Chiangs until 1940, when he had a disagreement over war with Germany. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Chiang wanted to refrain from any anti-German activity in order to concentrate on fighting Japan. Donald as an Australian believed he was at war with Germany. Accordingly he packed his bags and, accompanied by his secretary Ansie Lee, climbed aboard the yacht which he had built against just such a contingency and sailed the South Pacific. He was in Tahiti when war threatened the Pacific. Madame Chiang wrote, asking him to come back, and the lure of once again being at the centre of things was too much for him. Ansie Lee’s memoir records how he arrived in Manila just in time to be interned with her in the camps at Sulphur Springs and Los Baños. Many camp inmates recognised him immediately as “Donald of China” from a Saturday Evening Post article of March 1938. The Japanese had a price on Donald’s head, but nobody betrayed him. The Japanese were looking for W.H. Donald of Australia, and he had registered as W.H. Donald of Scotland. Eventually he was freed by US forces and sent to Hawaii, where he found he had lung cancer. In hospital, he dictated his reminiscences to the Honolulu journalist Earle Selle.

He returned to Shanghai, where he was once more hospitalised. Madame Chiang visited him regularly and read her correspondence with Zhang Xueliang to him. Despite Donald’s dire health, they even managed to joke. They concluded that the difference between a woman and a soldier was “a woman powders her face, a soldier faces the powder”.

Donald died in Shanghai in 1946. The Shanghai English-language press reported poignantly:

The coffin was placed in the middle of the hall. Behind it was the cross of yellow and white chrysanthemums sent by Generalissimo and Madame Chiang. Hanging on either side of the cross was a white ribbon containing a text in English to the right and, to the left, a message in Chinese: “To Don, with deep respect, from Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling”. Two flags—Australian and Chinese—flanked the cross of flowers.

He was buried in a corner of the Soong family’s own cemetery in Shanghai.

There is much discussion as to what papers Donald left behind him. Columbia University holds an archive of Donald letters and there may be a limited family collection. Macquarie University academic Winston Lewis accumulated a substantial collection of Donald material which is held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and which has been a great boon to researchers. But much has been lost. Donald kept a diary for many years. Zhang Xueliang says cryptically that before his death, Donald gave the diary to “a trader called Li” with the condition that he not release it for fifty years. Nothing further has been heard of this diary, should it exist. In her very readable memoir, his secretary Ansie Lee recalls standing with him, shortly before his death in Shanghai, as he burned all his papers. We can only regret this as a barrier in the way of getting a closer understanding of a great Australian.

Ted Rule has written several articles for Quadrant on early-twentieth-century Chinese history