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CHARLIE JONES SOONG “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Jones Soong HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES JONES SOONG SOONG DYNASTY 1866 His adventures as a missionary to China definitively over, the Reverend Issachar J. Roberts (“Old Roberts,” “His Grace the Archbishop of Nanking”) took safe haven in the United States of America. The “Archbishop of Nanking” as a “white ghost” Charlie Soong, who one day would be arguably the richest man on earth, had been born by this point in Weichan (or Kuisan) on the island of Hainan off south China. (His name at the time seems to have been Hann Card-son or Han Jiaozhun. He was the 3d son of a Hakka man, Han Hongyi.) SOONG DYNASTY NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Charles Jones Soong “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SOONG DYNASTY CHARLES JONES SOONG 1878 Dr. Samuel Kneeland, Jr. left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to return to literary work and lecturing, in Boston and later the Philippine Islands. After having spent some time with a brother in east India, in this year Sòng Jiashù or Soon Yao-ju or Soon Chiao-chun or Charlie Jones Soon was apprenticed in an uncle’s tea and silk shop in Boston. However, in order to obtain an education, Charlie Soong would run away from his apprenticeship and join the organization that eventually would become the US Coast Guard. NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Jones Soong HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES JONES SOONG SOONG DYNASTY 1880 November: Completion of serial publication of Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski’s THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in The Russian Herald: Epilogue (Alesha’s speech at Iliusha’s stone.) Early in this month Soon Chiao-chun (or Soon Yao-ju or Charlie Jones Soon) arrived at Wilmington, North Carolina aboard a US government cutter, possibly the Colfax. While there he would attend the 5th Street Methodist Church and be converted to Christianity by its pastor, the Reverend Thomas Page Ricaud. SOONG DYNASTY LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. November 7, Sunday: The Sunday Star of Wilmington announced that “A Chinese convert will be one of the subjects of the solemn rite [of baptism], being probably the first Celestial that has ever submitted to the ordinance of baptism in North Carolina.” The young Celestial was given the baptismal name of Charles Jones Soon. (“Charles Jones” was perhaps an English-language alliteration of “Chiao-chun” — bearing in mind of course that in the America of this period any Chinaman might be referred to by a white speaker as a “Charlie” when and if the speaker was too politically correct to refer to him as “the Chink.”) CHARLIE SOONG “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Jones Soong HDT WHAT? INDEX SOONG DYNASTY CHARLES JONES SOONG 1881 The eastern portion of Orange County was combined with the western tip of Wake County to form a new county centered on the growing city of Durham, North Carolina, named of course Durham County. W. Duke Sons and Company introduced a “Duke of Durham” brand of machine-manufactured cigarette. Duke’s factory alone would be producing 9,800,000 cigarettes, seizing 1.5% of the existing market.1 April: Sarah Minturn Grinnell died at the age of 77. Charlie Soong entered Trinity College in Randolph County, North Carolina as a “preparatory” student.2 His expenses would be paid by the Sunday School, and the college was granting a scholarship. The young Chinaman would reside in the home of Professor W.T. Ganway and study in the home of President Braxton Craven, under the tutorship of Mrs. Craven. 1. Interestingly, near the mansion of Buck Duke in Durham, North Carolina was the mansion of General Julian Shakespeare Carr, one of Buck Duke’s competitors, the manufacturer of the Bull Durham line of tobacco products — and at this time Carr was in the process of acquiring a protégé of sorts, a teenager by the name of Hann Card-son (1866-1918) or something like that who had run away from his boat family in South China and gone to sea and made his way to Boston and who for various interesting reasons was beginning to use the name Soon Chiao-chun or Soon Yao-ju or Charlie Jones Soon. While at Trinity College (Trinity College had not yet relocated to Durham) the yellow young man romanced Ella Carr, white daughter of white Professor O.W. Carr, that college’s instructor in Greek and German. When their romance was detected, his yellow ass was abruptly thrown out of the house and out of the college. Charlie found himself enrolled overnight at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee — because that was far away from his Ella. The official explanation was of course pious, as shown by this Methodist Church version of the Soong legend as recounted in the Raleigh News and Observer in 1936: “Dr. Craven, with whom [Charlie Soon] had many long talks about his missionary career, took the matter up with the members of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church and they advised him that the young Chinese would make more progress at Vanderbilt, where he could at the same time continue his education and receive training for the mission fields through contacts with members of the board and returned missionaries in Nashville.” The suitor-reject would go on to sell Bibles and become arguably the richest man in the world. His children Eling, Chingling, Tseven, Mayling, Tseliang, and Tsean would marry well: eventually Charles Soong would have Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek as sons-in-law. You can read about this at the beginning of Sterling Seagrave’s THE SOONG DYNASTY (London: Korgi Books, 1996). SOONG DYNASTY HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES JONES SOONG SOONG DYNASTY 1882 Fall: Charlie Soong was abruptly transferred from Trinity College in Randolph County, North Carolina to the Biblical Department at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The Raleigh News and Observer would explain away the suspicious suddenness of this in 1936: Dr. Craven, with whom [Charlie] had many long talks about his missionary career, took the matter up with the members of the Board of Mission of the Methodist Church and they advised him that the young Chinese would make more progress at Vanderbilt, where he could at the same time continue his education and receive training for the mission fields through contacts with members of the board and returned missionaries in Nashville. (If you are prepared to believe this, I have some nice beach property in Arizona I’d like to sell you.) WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF 2. Trinity College had begun as “Brown’s School,” a school to educate male teachers, and in 1839 had been renamed “Union Institute” to recognize a collaboration of Methodist and Quaker educators, and in 1849 had been renamed “Normal College,” and in 1859 had been renamed “Trinity College” in special recognition of the Methodist contribution. The faculty, fearful of the economic hegemony of the northern states and perceiving a need for southern economic independence, had hosted a series of debates about slavery and discussions of differences between the northern and southern economies. In an 1860 speech it had been maintained that the southern states had never become free because all the federal Constitution had brought was a change of their master from England to New England. The school had become a forum in which speakers might call for imitating the success of the North through industrialization and a Market Revolution in the South. When civil war had broken out and some 40 students hade volunteered to fight for the Confederacy, in an effort to keep these young warriors enrolled, and paying tuition the school had formed a “Trinity Guard.” For a few weeks these student warriors had done duty as guards at Salisbury Prison. The young warriors had helped hold down conflict between secessionists and unionists in the Piedmont, but there hadn’t been any actual fighting and killing. After 1882, Trinity would transition into a liberal-arts college. In 1890 would cut a deal with George Washington Duke: for $85,000 and 60 acres it agreed to relocate a hundred miles away, in Durham. This would come about in 1892, and it would change its name again, a final time, to Duke University. In 1896 its Board of Trustees would cut another deal with Mr. Duke: for a additional $100,000 the college would admit female students, as academic equals with the males. HDT WHAT? INDEX SOONG DYNASTY CHARLES JONES SOONG 1885 Spring: Charlie Soong graduated in theology with a certificate of some sort not amounting to a degree (due to the nature of his educational experience). He was to be sent out to China “on trial” without the usual two-year period of preliminary church work. He would not be paid as a white man, but as a “native,” at a rate of $15 per month with which he could not conceivably start a family. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Jones Soong HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES JONES SOONG SOONG DYNASTY December: Charlie Soong sailed with Doctor W.H. Park for Shanghai. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Jones Soong HDT WHAT? INDEX SOONG DYNASTY CHARLES JONES SOONG 1886 January: Charlie Soon and Doctor W.H.

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