ous and kindly manner."4 Ai-ling was gregarious, but not kindly. She served briefly as a secretary to Sun Yat-sen, but she rejected his courtship because he was too sentimental and idealistic for her taste. Seagrave says that "to Ai-ling, idealism was frosting on the cake; the cake could only be baked with power; and power could only be purchased with money."5 In 1913, she married H. H. Kung who came from an extremely wealthy Shansi family of pawnbrokers. Seagrave says she became "she took over administering the Kung fortune . . . she became notorious in China for using her husband's position to obtain confidential
...