Kang Tongbi

Kang Tongbi, courtesy name Wenpei and literary name Huaman, was a native of Nanhai, Guangdong, and the second daughter of Kang Youwei; the biographical register of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History records her birth in February 1883.⁠[1]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that she was born into a scholar-official family with a history of more than seven hundred years.⁠[2]

Zhang Cangjiang sums up her early life: after the failure of the Hundred Days’ ReformHundred Days’ ReformThe Hundred Days’ Reform (also called the Wuxu Reform, after wuxu, the cyclical name of the year 1898) was a reform of the state and society attempted from the top by the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing dynasty in 1898 under the influence of reformers led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. It lasted about a hundred days and ended when Empress Dowager Cixi staged a coup and the reformers were executed or driven into exile.Open the full entry she fled into exile, travelled thousands of miles to attend her father, went round the world, and spoke publicly for saving the nation, protecting the emperor and constitutional government.⁠[2]

In 1903 she came to Hartford, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, to finish her English education as the guest of Yung WingYung WingYung Wing (1828–1912) was a Chinese educator and diplomat of the late Qing period who graduated from Yale University in 1854 and is described as the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university. He proposed and led the Chinese Educational Mission, which brought 120 Chinese boys to study in the United States from 1872 to 1881, served as the Qing associate minister to the United States, Spain and Peru, and wrote the memoir My Life in China and America (1909).Open the full entry, who had remained in Hartford after the Chinese Educational Mission ended in 1881. Nancy Finlay writes that, like her father, she was a staunch advocate of reform, and also of Chinese women’s rights.⁠[3]

While in Hartford she attended Hartford Public High School, and she hosted at least one dinner at the King Far Low restaurant for Yung Wing and her American friends; the restaurant had opened in 1901, moved in the following year to the second floor of 21 Central Row and remained a gathering place for the local Chinese community until 1910.⁠[3]

Nancy Finlay writes that after Hartford Public High School she studied at Radcliffe, Trinity and Barnard Colleges, returning to China in 1911. The Barnard College Archives’ inventory of alumnae biographical files lists a file for her under the years 1907–1909, which includes a letter of recommendation for admission and a transcript.⁠[3][4]

The biographical register of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History states that she went to the United States to study in her early years, entered Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry and a university it calls Jialinfu, and returned to China after graduating. Wu Yu notes that of the first members of the institute appointed in 1951 who had studied abroad, all except Kang Tongbi, who studied in the United States, and Tang Jin, who later studied in France, had studied in Japan, all of them in law or commerce.⁠[1][5]

On July 11, 1903, the Australian Chinese-language newspaper Tung Wah printed on page 2 her letter to the branches of the Chinese Empire Reform Association around the world; the Tung Wah Newspaper Index records Canada as the origin of the item.⁠[6]

On October 17, 1903, Tung Wah printed on page 3 a report from America that Kang Tongbi had arrived in St. Louis together with Ye Huibo and Liang Qixun, a brother of Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

On April 2, 1904, a supplement of Tung Wah carried a report on a meeting between Kang Tongbi and the President of the United States, Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry.⁠[8]

Zhang Renfeng, a member of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History, dates to 1922 a letter from Kang Youwei to Khoo Seok Wan signed on the first day of the sixth lunar month, in which Kang’s mention of being bereaved of his wife refers to the death that year of his first wife, Zhang Yunzhu; the letter calls Kang Tongbi “daughter Bi” and Luo Chang “son-in-law Chang”. Kang writes that Kang Tongbi had come with Khoo’s good wishes and that, having received the poetry collection, he would write a preface again for printing; he asks Khoo to distribute thirty obituary notices on his behalf (twenty had already been sent to Luo Chang), to consult Luo Chang about them, and says that people Kang Tongbi knew could also be sent them.⁠[9]

After Kang Youwei’s death his coffin, because of the frequent fighting, was laid temporarily on the slope of Xiang’er Hill at Licun in Qingdao. Zhang Cangjiang writes that Kang Tongbi initiated a public burial in the name of the Moral Society and brought together prominent figures and scholars from across the country in a preparatory committee.⁠[2]

One of her younger brothers sent two telegrams from Shanghai, one to the International Moral Society in Beiping and one to Wang Kemin of the collaborationist regime, demanding that the reburial she was leading be stopped; she did not make their contents public, insisted on holding the public burial as planned and declared herself willing to bear all responsibility within the family. At 5 p.m. on October 20, 1943, the coffin was formally buried on Xiang’er Hill; the public memorial ceremony was presided over by Jiang Kanghu and attended by more than three thousand people.⁠[2]

The Central Research Institute of Culture and History was founded on July 29, 1951, and the list of its first members, some twenty elderly figures including such well-known men as Liu Yazi and Zhang Shizhao, was announced at the end of July 1951. Kang Tongbi was appointed a member in July 1951.⁠[5][1]

In 1953 she was elected a deputy to the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress.⁠[2][1]

At the end of 1954 she received a letter from the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference stating that its Standing Committee had approved inviting her to become a member; she served on its second, third and fourth National Committees.⁠[2][1]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that at the Lunar New Year of 1956 the family received word from Hong Kong that Kang Tongbi’s elder sister’s husband, Mai Zhonghua, had died there. On the evening of the eighth day of the first lunar month Luo Chang suddenly became short of breath, cold all over and pale; a doctor called to the house diagnosed heart disease and arteriosclerosis, and he was taken to the Daoji Hospital (now the Sixth Hospital) for emergency treatment but, as no bed was available, went home to rest. Zhang gives the date of Luo Chang’s death as February 6 of that year: at about 8 p.m., as he was getting ready for bed, he suddenly could not stop gasping for breath and gradually lost consciousness, and his heart stopped at exactly 11 p.m. After a public memorial ceremony on February 13 he was buried in the Anglican cemetery beside the Baiyun Temple.⁠[2]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that while she received one appointment after another from 1951 on, Luo Chang remained gloomy. Her own explanation was that in those years the government had given her work but had not invited him, and that, retired and without work, he regretted being unable to earn money for the family and drank every day to drown his sorrows. She also said that in more than forty years of marriage they had treated each other with respect and stood by each other in hardship.⁠[2]

At the turn of spring and summer in 1956 Zhang Cangjiang was introduced into Kang Tongbi’s home by Chen Fuquan, an older schoolmate from Fu Jen Catholic University, to put Kang Youwei’s unpublished manuscripts in order; he writes that he then attended her for more than ten years. She gave him the name “Ah Donald”, by which he was known in the Kang household from then on until her death in 1969.⁠[2]

In mid-September 1956 she proposed holding a commemoration of the centenary of Kang Youwei’s birth the following year. Li Jishen thought that a commemoration on the scale of those for Sun Yat-sen would be hard to arrange and suggested a family memorial rite for a hundred or so people, combined with a commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Hundred Days’ Reform and a small exhibition of related documents, publications and calligraphy; the commemorative meeting was finally held in 1958, with an exhibition of documents and historical objects.⁠[2]

Word came from a visitor from Qingdao that Kang Youwei’s grave had been damaged and that many people had buried their dead on the site without permission, so that it urgently needed attention. In mid-April 1957 she went to Qingdao with her daughter, Luo Yifeng, and Zhang Cangjiang, arriving on April 19; the next day she went with Ma Gongchen, former president of the International Moral Society, to visit the grave at Licun, and she informed the Qingdao authorities of its condition. Zhang writes that the new graves were afterwards said to have all been moved away.⁠[2]

She was somewhat comforted to find that the grave of her ninth sister, Kang Tongyan, was still there, but was nonetheless heavy-hearted as she laid flowers.⁠[2]

An article by Lu Hai and Xu Hong in the Qingdao Morning Post in 2019 places Kang Tongbi’s visit to the grave in Qingdao in 1956, with Zhang Jingfu of the Qingdao Municipal Cultural Relics Management Committee accompanying her throughout; on the way there and back she recounted many stories of the past, among them that in 1927 Kang Youwei drank a glass of orange juice at a well-known Cantonese restaurant in Qingdao, had stomach pains after returning home and died on the third day.⁠[10]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that on an afternoon at the turn of autumn and winter in the late 1950s, Kang Tongbi and Zaitao, a younger brother of the Guangxu Emperor, formally became sworn sister and brother.⁠[2]

The biographical register of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History records that she died of illness on August 17, 1969, at the age of 86. Zhang Cangjiang writes that, nearly ninety, she died of nothing more than a cold one night in 1969 in the corridor of a small hospital, unnoticed and alone; Zhang was then imprisoned in Yongji county, Shanxi.⁠[1][2]

The biographical register of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History records that she served as vice president of the International Women’s Association, president of the Shandong Moral Society and president of the Chinese Women’s Association. Zhang Cangjiang writes that she represented China at a world women’s congress, promoted women’s rights, organized women’s associations in China, founded a Confucian Society and a Moral Society, and ran charitable work for the orphaned, the poor and victims of disaster.⁠[1][2]

The biographical register of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History records that she was chosen as a delegate at the council of seven North China provinces convened by Fu Zuoyi and negotiated with the People’s Liberation Army on the peaceful liberation of Beiping; Zhang Cangjiang sums up this part of her life as working for peace talks and protecting the ancient city.⁠[1][2]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that in the 1950s and 1960s she corresponded regularly with her eldest sister, Kang Tongwei, and that among her other relatives she remained in contact only with her sixth sister, Kang Tongfu, and Tongfu’s husband, Pan Qixuan; her ninth sister, Kang Tongyan, was buried in Qingdao.⁠[2]

She once remarked to Zhang Cangjiang that her mother’s family was named Zhang, and that whenever she met promising young men of the Zhang family she was genuinely fond of them, because they were descendants of her mother’s family and so her kin.⁠[2]

Zhang Renfeng, a member of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History, writes that Kang Tongwei and Kang Tongbi were the most outstanding of Kang Youwei’s children and were well educated, and that during his many years in exile Kang did not even tell his elderly mother or his wife about important matters but discussed them with these two daughters.⁠[9]

Luo Chang was her husband; Zhang Renfeng calls him Kang Youwei’s second son-in-law. Zhang Cangjiang sums up this part of her life as following her husband into official service after her studies in America. In a 2015 interview with The Paper, Zhang Ronghua said that Luo Chang was one of the sons of trusted followers whom Kang Youwei had chosen in advance to study abroad with the support of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, and that he was then courting Kang’s daughter, who was older than he was; he also said that after returning to China Kang’s son-in-law Luo Chang was as well known in the English department of Peking University as Xu ZhimoXu ZhimoXu Zhimo (1897–1931) was a modern Chinese poet, essayist and translator, the principal founder of the Crescent Moon Society and the author of “Second Farewell to Cambridge”. After studying in the United States and England he taught at several universities and edited literary journals; he was killed in a plane crash in 1931.Open the full entry and Wen Yuanning.⁠[9][2][11]

Her daughter, Luo Yifeng, lived with her. Her son lived in the United States; she once remarked to Zhang Cangjiang that with her son in America and not at her side, having Zhang and the others around was just the same, and that this too was fate. In a letter to Lu Hai dated May 29, 1982, Kang Youwei’s daughter-in-law Pang Lian wrote that Luo Rongbang was Kang Tongbi’s son, had always lived in the United States and had died there; the letter also mentions Luo Rongbang’s book on Kang Youwei.⁠[2][10]

Luo Yifeng studied at Yenching University, where Guo Wanying was a classmate and roommate and close friend; most of the roses in the Luo household were carefully grown and chosen as gifts by Jiang Endian. Zhang Cangjiang writes that Luo Yifeng had a romance with Luo Longji and that he helped write some of her letters to him. Luo Yifeng died in 1975, having lived only a little over sixty years.⁠[2]

Zhang Cangjiang writes that every year, when the mock orange was in bloom, she invited twenty or thirty friends to a tea party at her home from four to seven on a weekend afternoon, enjoying poetry and wine together. She wrote an autobiography, in which she recorded that her favourite cat, Jiji, was born on July 2, 1953.⁠[2]