Who Was Ken Wang  (王赓)?

Ken was born in the late Qing dynasty at the tail end of the 19th century.  Having been born to a gentry family, he became one of the lucky handful who won scholarships to study in the US. Through this program, he spent 7 years in the US, studying at Michigan, Columbia, Princeton and graduating as a military cadet from West Point. When he returned to China at age 23 in 1918, the Manchu dynasty had been overthrown and the first republic in Asia--Republic of China--was declared. Soon afterwards, he departed again as a member of the official Chinese delegation for the Peace Conference in Versailles, where the major powers announced the intent of transferring Germany’s territorial possession of Kiautschou Bay to Japan. This proposal triggered wide-scale student protests and worker strikes in what became known as the May Fourth Movement, a watershed moment that galvanized the public to demand western-style democracy and individual rights as well national self-determination.   

Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing society, Ken's story from there onward was defined by three major affairs.  First, being viewed as a rising star in Peking, he won the hand of Lu Xiaoman (陆小曼), a famous socialite in the capital’s literary circle. The marriage, however, ran into trouble when Lu fell in love with Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), a celebrity poet who pioneered the use of a new form of modern Chinese that is closer to spoken speech.  The ensuing divorce delighted burgeoning tabloid papers and shocked high society, as it was extremely rare for a woman to leave her husband for a lover.

In 1932 Ken made international headlines by being arrested by the Japanese on his way to consult a firearms expert at the American embassy in Shanghai.  Immediately afterwards, reports of him being shot by the Japanese surfaced, soon followed by rumors of his execution on account of the allegation that he handed over military maps to the Japanese.  The incident and its aftermath took place against the backdrop of increasing Japanese military ambition in China, which eventually erupted into full scale war a few years later.  In the end, Ken was imprisoned for 2 years under the charge that he neglected to report his whereabouts that evening, but in reality, his trial played into the hands of intraparty rivalry as well as public sentiment inflamed by speculative information.  This conviction abruptly cut his military career short and after being released from prison, he fled to Berlin to recuperate, right before Germany’s turn to fascism became complete. 

When the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, he was reinstituted and appointed to head the department of war-time supplies and logistics.  While no longer able to serve in the front line due to the earlier “scandal,” he assisted the war effort from behind the scene and was pivotal in the construction of the Burma Road, which delivered much needed goods inland from China’s southeast neighbors. 

It was also in the period when he got remarried, and with the birth of a son and a daughter, a sense of proper family life materialized for him only in his 40s.  But fate soon struck again, and this time there was no comeback.  As concerned allies to China, the Americans planned a high-level military meeting in Washington and asked for my grandfather to join out of the regard for his West Point credentials.  By then, he had been suffering debilitating long-term illnesses, a consequence of his imprisonment, but he was determined to go and seize this precious opportunity to vindicate himself and to serve his country.  Unfortunately he got terribly sick en route and eventually died ahead of the conference, leaving behind a young widow, two infants and a country devastated by war.