Shanghai to publish English archives of Soong Ching Ling

Shanghai announced on Thursday that it will translate and publish English archives of Soong Ching Ling to celebrate the centenary of the Communist Party of China this year.

The archives comprise nearly 400,000 words. They focus on Soong's experiences in Yan'an and reveal her contributions to the Party in medical and health care, childcare, industrial cooperation, and refugee relief.

The archives are extractions from a series of English archives of the China Welfare Institute, an organization founded by Soong for welfare promotion. They were created between 1938 and 1964 and consist of 203 volumes, all recording the work of Soong and the institute at different times.

The archives had never been systematically compiled and translated before and were rarely known to the public. Shanghai took up sorting the archives in 2018, and the public was given access to them in September last year.

Experts said that they are of great historical and practical value.

Soong was a former honorary president of China and wife of Chinese revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Born in Shanghai in 1893, Soong died in Beijing on May 29, 1981.