Editing Soong Mei-ling (section)

==Alleged tryst with Wendell Willkie==
There were allegations that Mei-ling had a tryst with [[Wendell Willkie]], who had been the Republican candidate for president in 1940 and came to Chongqing on a world tour in 1942. The two are said to have left an official reception and gone to one of her private apartments. When Chiang Kai-shek noticed their absence, he gathered his bodyguards, who were armed with machine-guns, marched through the streets, and ransacked her apartment without finding the couple. She is said to have passionately kissed Willkie at the airport the next day and offered to come with him to the United States.<ref>Tyson Li 2006, pp. 184–86</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Pakula, Hannah |title=[[The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China]] |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-4391-4893-8 |pages=410–11}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last = Pantsov |first = Alexander |translator = Steven I. Levine|year = 2023 |title = Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-Shek, China, 1887-1975 |publisher = Yale University Press| location = New Haven |isbn = 978-0300260205}}, pp. 351-353, 361</ref>

Scholars dismiss the allegations as weakly sourced, implausible, and even impossible. Jay Taylor's biography of Chiang points out that this infidelity was uncharacteristic of Mei-ling, and that it would have been unlikely for such a major commotion to go unnoticed.<ref>{{cite book |author=Taylor, Jay |title=The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2009 |pages=217–18 |isbn=9780674060494 |url=http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674060494}}</ref>  In a 2016 review of the evidence Perry Johansson dismisses the allegation entirely, as it was based on the later memory of one person, and he further cites the work of China historian Yang Tianshi. Yang reviewed the official schedules and newspaper accounts of Willkie's visit and found that there was no time or place where the alleged events could have taken place. He also found no mention of it in Chiang's detailed private diaries.<ref>{{cite journal |last =Johansson|first =Perry |authorlink = |title =Fantasy Memories and the Lost Honor of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek |journal =Journal of American-East Asian Relations |volume =23 |issue = 2 |pages =109–120 |date =2016 |language = |url = http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18765610-02302001 |jstor = |issn = |doi = 10.1163/18765610-02302001 |accessdate = }}</ref>