Meanwhile back in New York, on today’s Diary, Jeanne Lawrence covers an opening exhibition in the new Museum of Chinese Art (MOCA) in Chinatown. I haven’t been there yet but I was introduced to it by Patty Tang. We ran a picture of Patty and her daughter and her mother who was celebrating her 101st birthday at Sistina. They had taken over the restaurant for a birthday lunch.
![]() | ![]() | | Madame Aileen Chiang Pei, with her granddaughter Penelope Tang August, and her daughter Patty Tang, at her 101st birthday celebration this past Friday at Sistina. | ![]() |
I met Patty and her husband at a dinner party a couple of years ago at the downtown house of Corice Arman, wife of the late French-born American artist. The Tangs are Chinese but have lived all or almost all of their lives here in New York, so they’re as American as this kid. Except they are more worldly and more sophisticated culturally.
I had lunch with Patty at Michael’s one day about a month ago. She told me about her family’s past. These are the Chinese that abandoned China with the coming of Mao. Obviously they were upper class Chinese and their properties were being confiscated, as well as their assets. This generation has lived long enough to see that world change and then change again. And if we give them a little more time, God knows what the changes will be.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek lived in the neighborhood also, at 10 Gracie Square, until she died 10 years ago. Evidently she’d lived there for years among a host of famous New York names like Jock Whitney, Mrs. Mellon Hitchock, Brooke Astor, Gloria Vanderbilt et al.
I was living there at the time, staying with a friend when I first came back to New York. One afternoon in winter I was leaving the building when a group of Asian men in black wool overcoats suddenly emerged from the building into the motor passage (that runs through the block from 83rd to 84th, inside the building). I noticed they seemed to secret a tiny, really tiny lady with black hair into a waiting limousine. Once in the car, she was in the middle between two of these men, and so small, the back of her head was barely visible through the rear window. Then, followed by another limousine with Asian men in black overcoats, the cortege left the building.
“Who was that?” this curious writer asked Frank the doorman. “That was Madame Chiang Kai-shek.” Every Thursday at five she went out for her ride. She liked to go up to Grant’s Tomb at 123rd and Riverside. Often. She was about 98 then. She five or six years later. May-ling Soong, one of the fabled Soong Sisters.
![]() | ![]() | | Madame Chiang Kai-shek in 1965. | ![]() |
Patty Tang’s mother and her friends all knew Madame Chiang quite well. It must have been something like a court in exile because she and her family and her. Hannah Pakula has written a thoroughly engrossing biography of the women, once one of the (few) most powerful women in the world. She lived in exile like a queen, just down the block from where I live now, which no doubt was all she knew. Some of the dresses/ costumes from that era made for and owned by Madame Chiang and her friends are on display at MOCA now through September 29. They were smart and chic, even now.
Also in today’s NYSD is piece on food and traveling by Delia von Neuschatz who, with her husband, recently visited the Basque City of San Sebastian on the northern coast of Spain. I am not much of a traveler (although I’m always glad when I’m there) and not really a foodie, but this visit / diary of Delia’s is extraordinary. She’s written in two parts – which is good because I can hardly wait to read about what else she’s seen (and eaten). San Sebastian, which I’d heard of but knew nothing about, sounds like a place I’d love to visit, maybe even for a lifetime. No matter the level of your enthusiasm about the subjects, I dare you not to think: hmmm, I could like that. Delicious is a word that rescued her often on this culinary journey.
So let it warm and grow more humid in Manhattan, I don’t care. We can all dream of faraway places and other times and wait for the rains to wash and cool our streets and wake us up. This is New York. |
