本书作者斯特林·西格雷夫和佩吉·西格雷夫是我国广大读者较为熟悉的著名学者。20世纪80年代中期，斯特林·西格雷夫撰写的《宋家王朝》曾经引起社会各界的轰动，当时《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》等西方主流媒体均发文介绍评价此书。由于该书揭露了民国时期许多有关蒋介石政权的阴暗内幕，竟导致台湾7名著名历史学教授联名发表声明，在美国各大媒体以刊登广告的方式进行反驳。由于此书的巨大影响，当时国内有3家出版社几乎同时出版了不同版本的中文版。3年后，作者另一部大作《马科斯王朝》问世，在美国再次引起轰
作者冒着生命危险，耗时18个春秋写成的《黄金武士》，为读者揭开了20世纪一个令人震惊的秘密。二战期间，日本一直在秘密实施所谓掠夺亚洲各国财宝的“金百合计划”，战败投降前夕，在日本皇室成员亲自组织安排下，数以万吨计的黄金被分成175份，秘藏菲律宾各地。战争结束后，美国很快掌握了山下奉文黄金的秘密，但是为了政治需要，美国同日本一起掩盖了这一真相。半个世纪以来，这批黄金不断被挖掘，并被用来建立了许多秘密“反共”基金，开展“肮脏”行动。作者指出：“整个秘密驱使腐败分子滥用贿赂基金，而且直到今天，这一恶习像癌细胞一样不断繁殖。围绕贿赂基金，一个全球范围的网络已经形成。官僚、政客、间谍和将军们已经沉溺其中。……那些从中获得好处的人和机构正在通过各种手段甚至包括暗杀来掩盖这一秘密。”另外，本书还为我们道出了日本至今为何不肯向二战期间的战俘和劳工做出赔偿的真正原因。
历史和现实是相通的。今天的新闻有些就是明天的历史，同样，昨天的历史亦可成为今天的新闻。本书作者西格雷夫是新闻记者出身，新闻记者同历史学工作者有许多相通之处，他们都特别注重事件的事实本身。《黄金武士》如同作者出版的前几本专著一样，充分显示了作者非凡的史学功底。在撰写过程中，作者运用的每一个重要资料几乎都注有出处。作者在英文版出版前，提供给我们的英文稿，其资料注释几占全书篇幅的五分之一。英文版正式出版后，注释部分虽有所简化，但由此仍可窥知作者所花费的心血。我们照原文翻译了注释部分，供读者参考。另外，作为记者，作者对史料的解读十分敏锐，许多史料经过作者的条分缕析，使人阅后对许多历史之谜确有恍然大悟之感。为了保持本书的鲜明特色，使部分读者改变以前“传说”中“山下黄金”的印象，在翻译过程中，我们保留了作者最初较为详细的注释内容。需要说明的是，为了方便读者阅读，书中涉及的少数极偏僻地名和人名，我们做了必要的简化处理。
《黄金武士》中文版的顺利出版，我们首先要感谢作者在本书英文版未正式出版之前就寄来英文书稿。英文版正式出版后，作者又迅速寄来样书，并为中文版写了一篇十分精彩的序。世界抗日战争史实维护会的丁元先生热情联络此书的中文版；王选女士在工作十分繁忙的情况下，对本书倾注了最大热情，进行了一丝不苟的认真译校，本书的出版凝聚了她这段时间几乎全部的心血；作为责任编辑的宗颖女士对本书一直十分关心；胡晓丁先生对书中出现的部分日本人名的翻译也多有帮助。本书的翻译也得到了南京师范大学“211学科建设”办公室的支持，并被列入校“十五”211工程建设项目。
本书是我们继翻译《魏特琳日记》之后的又一次集体合作，在很短时间里，各位译者为此付出了许多艰辛劳动。由于作者正式出版的英文版同最初提供的书稿相比有很多补充，因此，我们根据正式出版的英文版对本书后八章又进行了重新译校。各人承担任务如下：杨夏鸣：导言、第一至六章；张连红：作者声明、中文版序、第七章；张启祥（复旦大学历史系）：第八、九章；王艳飞：第十、十一章；杨国誉：第十二、十三章；罗峰：第十四、十五章、结束语。王选女士承担了全书英文总审订的任务，杨国誉、张启祥、王艳飞为此书的出版承担了很多琐碎工作。
由于本书涉及许多美国、日本、菲律宾、朝鲜等历史及人名、地名，这给翻译校对工作带来很多麻烦，杨夏鸣和张连红为此做了大量工作。
翻译是一门永无止境的学问，本书不足之处在所难免，敬请各位专家不吝指正。
译 者
The Soong Dynasty (Hardcover)
by Sterling Seagrave (Author) "The legend of Charlie Soong is a masterpiece of twentieth-century invention..."
Seagrave's work is not always well documented, and he is really more of a storyteller than an historian. Having said that, his stuff is usually a quick read, and does give plenty of interesting information about the period he is discussing. This book is about the Soong family, and you will not get a grasp of the development of modern China without understanding this family. The title, of course, is a play on words, because it has nothing to do with the classic dynasties of antiquity. Rather, it chronicles the development of the family of Charlie Soong, and discusses how this family influenced the development of modern China. Charlie Soong managed to get a job on a ship, and spent some time as a sailor off the East Coast of the United States. His life took a very important turn when he wandered into a revival meeting in the old south, and became a Christian. He was subsequently educated and sent back to China as a missionary. Unable to support himself on $15 a month, he eventually became involved with the underworld in order to earn enough to feed his family. Charlie had three daughters. The oldest married a Wall Street financier. The second eloped with Sun Yat Sen. The youngest daughter married Chiaing Kai-Shek. It is not possible to study the history of China in the Twentieth Century without running into this family over and over again.
I became interested in learning more about the three Soong sisters after seeing the Chinese film, "The Soong Sisters." What I learned from reading this book was two of the sisters were far worse than as portrayed in the movie.
Sterling Seagrave in "The Soong Dynasty" reveals the unbelievable greed and corruption among most members of the Soong family and many of their associates. Given the widespread and often lengthy quoting from primary sources to support his conclusions, this is a better documented book, in my opinion, than some reviewers have claimed. Such highly regarded persons as the journalist Theodore White and United States General Joseph Stilwell, as quoted in the book, were highly critical of Chiang's regime.
It has been thoroughly demonstrated by numerous historians how Chiang's incompetence and corruption led to the downfall of his Nationalist government in 1949. However, after reading "The Soong Dynasty," one must conclude that he was one of the worst villians in modern Chinese history. As one example, as the author says and this is also pointed out by numerous historians, Chiang refused to order his armies to fight the Japanese, who were guilty of atrocities in China comparable to the Holocaust. One of the great tragedies in modern Chinese history has been the very negative effects Chiang and Mao had upon the Chinese people.
The first few chapters in the book focus upon the incredible rise to wealth and influence by Charlie Soong, the founder of the "Soong dynasty." Of the three Soong sisters, Ai-ling and May-ling were preoccupied with power and hardly imaginable greed. Seagrave shows how certain very greedy members of the Soong family embezzled hundreds of millions in United States military and humanitarian aid to China during the 1940's.
The other sister, Ching-ling was the only member of the Soong family, that also included three brothers, who actually cared about the people of China, as well as who was not greedy and selfish. I wish there had been more information in the "Soong Dynasty" about Ching-ling's life after the 1930's.
This book is truly a feast for the reader with an interest in China as it has evolved in the previous century. This is the story of the Soong family and their enormous influence on modern China. The six Soong children, three sons and three daughters, were the offspring of Charlie Soong and Ni-Kwei-tseng. These two Chinese were very religious and God-fearing Christians. Charlie was educated in the US and made his fortune selling Bibles in China. This book tells the story of these children and their almost unbelievable lives. To quote the author "Few families since the Borgias have played such a disturbing role in human destiny". One son, T. V. Soong became perhaps the richest man in history and exerted enormous influence over US foriegn policy towards China. He was also the finance minister of China. Of three Soong sisters, one, Mai-Ling, married Chaing Kai-Chek, another, Ching-Ling, married Sun Yat-sen, and the last, Ai-Ling, married into one of the richest banking families in China. Mai-Ling was educated at Wellesley and was long regarded as one of the ten most influential women in the world. An understatement, if ever there was.
Covers the chaotic years of modern China and the long brutal wars against the Japanese and the savage conflicts between the Nationialists and the Communists. Has a lot of great information on the American involvement here, Stillwell, Claire Chennault (who was almost the only American in China who was not a fool) and the Flying Tigers (the Flying Tigers are venerated in the China of today), Hurley, Morgenthau, Henry and Claire Booth Luce and many, many others. This book is so jam packed with information that it is almost mind boggling. The Green Gangs, Big Eared Tu, a host of warlords, the dreaded gangster Tongs, drug empires, murderers, adventurers, Soldiers of Fortune, prostitutes and thieves. The cast of characters in this book is almost endless, however it all fits together very well and will leave the serious reader a changed person as far as China and our own endlessly bumbling government is concerned. Everything I have read in this books dovetails nicely with the study I have done on China.
The author, Sterling Seagrave, spent most of his life Asia and knows his subject well.
I can only say read this remarkable book. It is an absolute must have for the China history buff and scholar.
I've read this book several times since it was first published, and while I agree that Seagrave's sources aren't always documented as well as they should be, the author's conclusion is inescapable: the Soongs were largely as bad for China as were the communist leaders they struggled against so ardently. Even Ching-ling, who I agree, was used as a pawn by the Soviets, however unwittingly.
Most of the negative reviews of Seagrave's "The Soong Dynasty" that state that it is too partisan maybe correct. However, the opinions and writings of General Joseph Stillwell, and the results of Freedom of Information Act inquiries by researchers (revealing the investigations by the by the Truman Administration and the F.B.I) are difficult to dismiss. My wife is Chinese, and her paternal grandfather was a member of Chiang Kai Shek's officer corps. We also have friends who married into the extended Soong family in California, and all of them bridle at this characterization of Chiang, his wife and her siblings. However, the Soongs' collective behavior as leaders of modern China cannot be so easily excused by those who cite that all of this occurred "during a difficult period of Chinese history" so they should be judged less harshly and/or more fairly. Of course it was difficult; they helped to make it so along with their communist counterparts.
Having lived and worked in Taiwan for a number of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was able to observe first hand how modern politicians conduct themselves and how the elections are handled, and I must state that little has changed since the halcyon days of the Soong clan. Government goon squads are sent out by the incumbents, prior to the actual elections, intimidating potential dissenters and reporters, party campaign volunteers travel door-to-door offering voters cash in exchange for their support, opposition party members die in mysterious accidents, etc. These incidents, I saw personally, and read about in the daily periodicals. Even today with a different party than the Kuo Ming Tang in power, there are dubious things afoot such as the questionable 'assassination attempts' on the eve of a potentially disastrous election for the incumbent.
Yes, again, I would state that little has changed in the way the Chinese conduct themselves politically since the 1911 Revolution and the establishment of Communist China. The subsequent economic successes of Taiwan and now Mainland China are a testament to the resilience, diligence and inventiveness of the Chinese people, rather than the foresight and thoughtfulness of their politicians (e.g. Chinese tanks at Tiananmen, Taiwanese boxing matches in sessions of their Parliament, etc.).
Rather pointedly, there is kind of a running joke in Taiwan and China comparing the economic successes of the Japanese with that of the Chinese. It goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing, of course):
10 Chinese entrepreneurs start 10 different small businesses as do 10 Japanese entrepreneurs. However, by the end of the year, the Japanese businessmen have consolidated each of their individual operations into a conglomerate, to take advantage of the economics of scale which benefits all, while the Chinese continue to operate their mom & pop ventures, individually, each owner unwilling to relinquish the reins of ownership and power, regardless of the potential benefit to the group.
This may be a cultural pathology of the Chinese, and how this behavior often manifests itself politically can be disastrous for a nation. That's how I see the Chiang Kai Shek, the Soongs, and Mao and his cronies: interested in bettering things for themselves first, with the welfare of their nations' populace a distant second.
