Word: chiangs
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After breakfast and a careful scanning of Formosa papers and others flown in from Hong Kong, Chiang dons his khaki cape, enters his 1949 Cadillac, and makes the 25-minute drive to his office in the Ministry of National Defense in downtown Taipei (pop. 500,000). Soldiers of the security force appear as if by magic along the route, then as magically melt away after he has passed. Past a dark bronze bust of himself on the stair landing, he walks quickly and alone to his third-floor office, where the blue velvet curtains are always drawn for security...
...Chiang returns home for lunch alone with his wife. Quite often, Fanina, the Russian wife of his son Chiang Ching-kuo, is there with his two younger grandchildren, with whom he romps delightedly. He naps briefly in the afternoon, works on papers, then summons favorite ministers in the late afternoon. After dinner Chiang often watches a movie or reads Chinese philosophers and poetry. A favorite is Confucian Wang Yang-ming, who taught that "to know and yet not to do is in fact not to know...
...Chiang has no taste for the recreations, hobbies or frivolous interests that make for intimate friends, and he has none. He lives the life of an ascetic. He drinks only water (boiled and lukewarm) and sometimes tea. He never smokes. He eats sparingly. On the mainland his regime was always a coalition of old enemies, jealous friends and potential defectors, and Chiang always rated personal loyalty to himself above efficiency. With an armed opposition party in the land, he had to. He still does...
...confidence, and often summoned to his official residence at Shihlin, is Vice President Chen Cheng, 57, whom he has designated as his successor. A small man whose delicacy of talk and manner conceals a capacity for decisive, even ruthless action, Chen is a smaller, less commanding version of Chiang himself in appearance-a circumstance that led to a historic blunder when General MacArthur flew to Formosa in 1950, stepped from his airplane, seized then-Premier Chen and kissed him on both cheeks, exclaiming: "I have been waiting all my life for this moment." Generalissimo Chiang, standing near...
Closest of all Chiang's advisers is still Wellesley-educated Madame Chiang. She is not as influential as she once was, and her patronage is no longer regarded as the sure road to preference. She repairs every day to her office of her "Chinese Women's Anti-Aggression League," to which she can and does summon ministers at will. "My role is very simple," she explains. "I assist my husband...