Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling

27 Flapper “princess"

27 Flapper “princess” As Dr. Sun was being laid to rest outside Nanjing, in a China which seemed to have finally been brought under control by Chiang Kai-shek, Der Ling was preparing to pull up her Chinese roots and embark for the country she had always wanted to visit, America. She would be doing so as the wife of an American and the mother of a seventeen-year-old son, Thaddeus Raymond White. And she would also be doing so as the author of two memoirs and a biography of the Empress Dowager Cixi which had already brought her both renown and criticism, in and outside of China. In the two decades between her 1907 marriage to Thaddeus White and their removal to America at the end of the 1920s, Der Ling had watched China pass through not one major upheaval but several, including not only the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty but the establishment of China’s ill-fitting republican government and the chaos of the warlord takeover preceding Chiang Kai-shek’s seizing of control. But for Der Ling, life had already made an abrupt change with her father’s death. He had been her supporter in all the ideas and actions that put her outside the rules and regulations of conservative upper- 260 Imperial Masquerade class Chinese society. Without him, she understandably felt lost, but the loss was even greater than this, because with Yu Keng went one of the few Chinese who understood and sympathized with Der Ling. Even in death she obeyed him, keeping her promise to him that she would never marry a Manchu. In the Yu Keng household, things American would have ranked as the most modern of all, and thus an American husband would seem to satisfy all criteria. Der Ling clearly believed she had found the perfect catch when, at one of Shanghai’s glittering foreign social entertainments, she met the American to whose fate, for better or worse, she would tie her own destiny. According to one source, Der Ling first encountered Thaddeus while dancing at a benefit for a singer friend who had fetched up penniless in the city. That this was within the lifetime of the Empress Dowager Cixi demonstrates further that Der Ling’s nerve was, if anything, strengthened by her time at court. If Cixi was shocked that her former court lady was dancing in Shanghai in Isadoran shifts, neither Der Ling nor any other source informs us, nor does Der Ling seem to have cared. In his preface to Der Ling’s 1911 book, Two Years in the Forbidden City, Shanghai newspaper publisher Thomas F. Millard noted that with her engagement to White, who was called T.C. by Der Ling, some time in late 1905 (and therefore prior to the death of Yu Keng), Der Ling “took a step which terminated connexion with the Chinese court.” As with her parents’ marriage, Der Ling’s union with T.C. broke one of the cardinal rules of a young Chinese woman: she did not accept a man chosen for her by her parents — or recommended by the Empress Dowager — but instead fell in love with a man on her own, and that man was not even Chinese. But according to text Thaddeus wrote for the catalog of items to be auctioned after Der Ling’s death (in 1944), he refers to Cixi not only approving the match but giving the young couple elegant bedchamber accoutrements and a pair of pearl-studded ruyis (good-luck scepters). Probably Cixi took her maternal feelings for Der Ling to their natural conclusion and, like her mother, acceded to what was best for her “daughter.” “She is mine,” the dowager had told Louisa. Now Der Ling belonged to her husband, and Cixi would have respected that. (Interestingly, however, given the fact that they claim Cixi gave her permission for the marriage to take place, Der Ling and T.C. only returned to Beijing to live on a permanent basis after Cixi’s death.) 261 Flapper “princess” Marriage took place on May 21, 1907. Despite the disapproval this union may have raised in conventional quarters, in and out of Der Ling’s family, she had made a good move in allying herself with a foreign national and setting up housekeeping in foreign-controlled Shanghai: with her father dead and no longer able to protect her, she must have...