She achieved recognition during the 1930s and 1940s for her patriotic activities on behalf of China and the United States. As part of her efforts to support the allied forces, she "adopted" over one thousand "sons," most of whom were white American military men. Known as "Mom Chung," she entertained, corresponded with, and inspired her sons to fight against the Japanese invasion of China.
Newspaper articles consistently noted two seemingly contradictory aspects of her character: First, Chung, then in her forties and fifties, was a successful doctor who never married or bore children. Second, she was a devoted mother to her adopted sons, who called themselves "Fair-Haired Bastards," because of their racial background and her status as an unmarried woman.
A pioneer in both professional and political realms, Chung led an unconventional personal life. As a female medical student in an otherwise all-male school, she adopted masculine dress and called herself "Mike," but after having established a professional practice she reverted to conventional dress and her female name. She had close and apparently intense relationships with at least two other women, the writer Elsa Gidlow and entertainer Sophie Tucker, that some writers have speculated were romantic. Although she was briefly engaged, she never did marry. An advocate of strong Sino-American relations, Chung was a friend, and confidante, of travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), who attempted (and died in the attempt) to sail a junk the Sea Dragon, as a symbol of the bond of East and West, from Hong Kong to the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Chung
Further Readings:
Paperback: 241 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226731561
ISBN-13: 978-0226731568
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