Shanghai Daily news

The house at 383 Yongjia Road was once the home of H.H. Kung, the husband of Soong Ai Ling, the eldest of the Soong sisters.

The outside of the house and the roof are typical of English country style.

An inside look of the house. 

H.H. Kung was the richest man in China before World War II but he was more famous for marrying the eldest of the three celebrated Soong sisters, writes Michelle Qiao.
The tatty but still lovely villa at 383 Yongjia Road was home in the 1930s to the wealthiest man in China -- Hsiang-hsi Kung. He lived there with his wife, Soong Ai Ling, the first of the famous Soong sisters.
The two-storey English country-style house is capped with scarlet tiles and has a garden with a few green trees. The memory of yesteryear is everywhere from the teak-wood floors and old black-and-white ceramic tiles to the unique copper stick locks that seal the white glass door to the garden.
``It was one of Kung's pieces of real estate in Shanghai,'' says Qian Zonghao, associate research professor at the Shanghai Museum of History. ``He had several other houses in Hongkou District and on Hongqiao Road. A British resident named L. Andersen built the house in 1926 and he sold it to Kung in 1935.
``Kung invited famous Chinese architect Fan Wenzhao to renovate the house to make it more accommodating to Chinese living habits before he and his wife moved in. The exposed wood on the outer wall reveals the typical character of an English house in the country. Kung quit the house in 1939.''
Born in North China's Shanxi Province in 1881, Kung was educated at Oberlin College and Yale University in the United States. He shared the same surname as Confucius and claimed to be a 75th generation descendant of the sage. Kung was an early supporter of Dr Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China in 1911, and later of Chiang Kai-shek.
``Kung's family owned exchange shops in Shanxi which are regarded as being part of China's early modern banking system,'' says Qian. ``Both the Kung and Soong families sponsored Dr Sun's revolutionary work.''
Kung was named minister of industry and commerce in 1928, then minister of finance and governor of the Central Bank of China. He joined the central executive committee of the Kuomintang in 1931.
But the most important fact of his life was his marriage to Soong Ai Ling.
Born in Shanghai, Soong was educated at Wesleyan College in the United States. After graduation she returned to China in 1909 and worked as Dr Sun's secretary. She met Kung in 1913 and married him the following year in Yokohama, Japan.
Soong was a strict and demanding wife. Perhaps that's why Kung lived a regular life and their marriage was free of scandal.
The couple had two sons and two daughters.
In movies or articles about the Soong sisters, Soong Ai Ling is always shown as having only a supporting role to her two younger sisters, Soong Ching Ling (who married Dr Sun) and Soong Mei Ling (who married Chiang). But she ended up being the wealthiest of them all and it was she who arranged the marriage of Soong Mei Ling and Chiang.
After her marriage to Kung, Soong Ai Ling handed her job as secretary to Dr Sun to Soong Ching Ling who fell in love with Dr Sun and later married. Soong Ching Ling was widowed a few years later and after liberation in 1949 she became the honorary chairwoman of the People's Republic of China.
Soong Ai Ling had to overcome the strong opposition of Soong Ching Ling and one of her brothers, T.V. Soong, in her efforts to arrange the marriage of Soong Mei Ling and Chiang. She set up a 10-day trip to Zhenjiang in Jiangsu Province for Chiang and Soong Mei Ling in 1927 and they finally married in Shanghai. Kung's house in Yongjia Road today is the residence of the government department responsible for supervising and inspecting cultural products. Before that, the Shanghai Dubbing Film Studio had been in the building since 1976. The studio moved to Hongqiao Road in 2001.
In its time in the house the studio dubbed hundreds of foreign films which, for the first time since the liberation, introduced the West to Chinese audiences.
However, due to a lack of funds, the studio was forced to convert the basement of the house into a cheap hotel.
The nearby three-storey house was the living quarters of Kung's servants and drivers.
Kung and Soong Ai Ling went to the United States in the 1940s where he died in 1967 and she followed in 1973.
A teahouse close to the villa has black-and-white pictures of the couple and members of their celebrity family. They help visitors imagine the loves, tears, fears and hopes of the once all-powerful Kung family who lived in the nearby country-style villa.