Searching the early lives of the Soong sisters in Macon, Georgia: three Chinese overseas students in the American South

Abstract

AbstractThis article uses local history approaches to reconstruct the early lives of the Soong sisters at Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sisters' experiences as Chinese overseas students were situated in the histories of American South and of Asian Americans. By examining the sisters' transition to Wesleyan, their everyday lives on campus, and their occasional off-campus encounters with Maconites, the article argues that the “Southernness” of Wesleyan and Macon distinguished the sisters' experiences from other Chinese overseas students that are more familiar to Chinese historians. Because of the relative absence of Chinese residents in this small Southern town, the girls were rarely categorized with Chinese laborers and hardly felt the strong anti-Chinese sentiments that were experienced by students who went to Western states and large cities. Similarly, the slow adoption of new utilitarian courses at this elite Southern female college also meant the sisters were neither trained as qualified homemakers nor as career women like many other American-educated Chinese women in their generation. They were taught to become housewives that played important, unpaid social roles – a path that they would later follow.