Oei Hui-lan

Madame Wellington Koo
Madame Wellington Koo with her baby, photographed by Henry Walter Barnett
First Lady of the Republic of China
In role
October 1, 1926 – June 16, 1927
President Wellington Koo
Succeeded by Zhao Chungui
Personal details
Born Oei Hui-lan
(1899-12-21)December 21, 1899
Semarang, Central Java, Dutch East Indies
Died 1992
New York City, United States
Citizenship
Political party Kuomintang
Spouse(s) Count Hoey Stoker (div. before 1920)
Wellington Koo (m. 1921)
Children Yu-chang Wellington Koo Jr. (1922–1975)
Fu-chang Freeman Koo (1923–1977)
Parents Oei Tiong Ham, Majoor der Chinezen (father)
Goei Bing Nio (mother)
Relatives Oei Tjong-lan (sister)
Oei Tjong Hauw (half-brother)
Residence Semarang, London, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, New York City

Oei Hui-lan (Chinese: 黃蕙蘭; pinyin: Huáng Huìlán; Wade–Giles: Huang Hui-lan; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ûiⁿ Hūi-lân; December 2, 1899 – 1992), known as Madame Wellington Koo, was a Chinese-Indonesian international socialite and style icon, and, from late 1926 until 1927, the First Lady of the Republic of China.[1][2][3][4] She was the wife of the pre-communist Chinese statesman Wellington Koo, as well as a daughter and the heiress of the colonial Indonesian tycoon Oei Tiong Ham, Majoor der Chinezen.[5]

Biography

Early life

Colonial Semarang, where Mme Wellington Koo grew up.

She was born on December 2, 1899 into a leading Peranakan Chinese family in Semarang, Central Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.[5] Her father, the tycoon Majoor Oei Tiong Ham, headed Kian Gwan, one of the largest and most prominent multinational corporations in Asia at the start of the twentieth century.[5]

Her mother, Goei Bing-nio, was her father's senior wife and only legal spouse and – unlike the nouveau riche Oei family – came from the Cabang Atas, the traditional Chinese establishment of colonial Indonesia.[6][7][8] Through her mother, Hui-lan was descended from the merchant-mandarin Goei Poen Kong, who served as Boedelmeester, then Luitenant der Chinezen in Semarang in the late eighteenth century.[9][10] The Chinese officership was a civil government position in the Dutch colonial bureaucracy of Indonesia.[11] Oei's maternal Goei family traces its roots and prominence in Semarang back to the 1770s, and had initially resisted her father's social and economic rise.[6]

Hui-lan had an elder sister from the same mother, Oei Tjong-lan.[10] In addition, her father had 18 junior wives and acknowledged concubines, as well as some 42 acknowledged children, including her half-brother Oei Tjong Hauw.[5]

The two legitimate Oei sisters were educated at home by a string of European tutors and governesses in Semarang, and received a thoroughly modern upbringing by contemporary standards.[12] This mirrored the westernization of the Cabang Atas in colonial Indonesia from the late nineteenth century onwards.[13] In addition to her native Malay, Hui-lan acquired fluent English and French, and decent Hokkien, Mandarin and Dutch.[5][14][15]

The progressive outlook and attainments of the Oei sisters received the admiration of R.A. Kartini, a Javanese aristocrat and pioneering women's rights activist.[16][12] Despite their cosmopolitan background, the Oei sisters' contact with Javanese culture seems to be restricted to interactions with servants, and being taken by their mother on courtesy visits and gamelan performances to various Javanese royal courts.[1][2]

Marriages and Europe

In 1918, Hui-lan left her native Indonesia and moved with her mother and sister to London, where the family owned a house on Berkeley Square in Mayfair.[5][14] This was as much for the sisters' upbringing as for their mother's wounded pride: Goei Bing-nio was angered by her husband's decision to take up her niece, Lucy Ho (the sisters' cousin), as a junior wife.[15][10] The Oei sisters came out as debutantes in London and were presented at Court to King George V and Queen Mary.[1][2]

In the late 1910s, Hui-lan was married for a short time to a Count Hoey Stoker, about whom very little is known.[5][14] Together with her sister, she partied with London high society.[15] "The opening party of my first London social season," recalls Hui-lan, "was an evening reception given by Lord and Lady Astor in honor of the Crown Prince of Japan, who is now emperor. The occasion was especially exciting to me, because I wore my new tiara which Papa had bought at Cartier's."[17]

By 1919, The Sketch noted that "[sic] Countess Hoey Stoker is one of the best-known figures in London Society. She is the daughter of...the 'Rockefeller of China'."[18] The society magazineTatler described her as having "a fondness for aviation and [being] among the first ladies to indulge in civilian flying", while The Times noted that "no dance or other function was complete without [her]...a famous beauty who drove her own motor car about London…a little grey two-seater Rolls Royce that could often be seen threading rapidly through traffic."[15] Margaret Macdonald observed Hui-lan, dressed as a Chinese ("which in reality she is"), at a costume party at The Ritz, also attended by Lady Diana Manners, the Duchess of Sutherland and Margot Asquith.[19]

Hui-lan revelled in the dancing and fashion opportunities provided by London high society.[15][14] She showed a precocious taste in avant-garde fashion[20]: "I was allowed to wear my favorite dinner dress, an amazing creation with full Turkish trousers made of green chiffon, a gold lame bodice and a brief yellow jacket. I tucked gold and green flowers in my hair and wore a triple strand of pearls"[21]. It was, she later remarked, "the brink of the flapper era and I fitted in like a charm. I had the figure for it, tiny and small bosomed, and the vitality. If you can imagine a Chinese flapper, it was I."[22]

Beyond the social whirl, Hui-lan's ambitious mother arranged for her daughter to marry the promising, Columbia-educated Chinese diplomat and politician V. K. Wellington Koo, himself a divorcé and widower.[23][5][3][4] The couple met in Paris at a dinner party, and were married in Brussels, Belgium in 1921.[1] The bride wore an antique veil and a Paris couture ivory gown by Callot Soeurs.[15] Later that year, for a State Ball at Buckingham Palace, the new Madame Wellington Koo wore a dress by Charles Frederick Worth and a Cartier diamond tiara.[15]

Life in China

Oei Hui-lan's husband, the Chinese statesman V. K. Wellington Koo in court uniform.

The couple began their married life in Geneva, where Wellington Koo had been involved in the formation of the League of Nations.[23][3][4] Hui-lan followed her husband in 1923 to Beijing, where she supported him in his role as Foreign Minister and Finance Minister of the Republic of China.[20][5][3][4] Her father, Majoor Oei Tiong Ham, acquired a 4.6 hectare-palace compound for the Koos that had once belonged to a Qing Dynasty prince.[20][24] In 1924, Madame Koo returned to her native Semarang for the funeral of her father, who had recently died in Singapore; she acted as mourner-in-chief, representing her absent mother as senior wife.[1][2] In 1925, the Koos hosted the Chinese elder statesman Sun Yat-sen and his wife, Soong Ching-ling, for a long stay at their Beijing residence, where Sun later died.[24][20]

During Hui-lan's time in China, the country was undergoing a very turbulent period in its political history – the so-called warlord era, in which different military and political factions sought supremacy in the new, republican Chinese state.[25] Wellington Koo served twice as Acting Premier, first in 1924, then again from October 1, 1926 until June 16, 1927.[23][3][4] During his second term, Koo also acted as President of the Republic of China, which made Hui-lan – for a very brief period – First Lady of China.[23][3][4]

With Koo out of office in 1927, the couple settled down to a jet-set existence in Shanghai, then the fourth-largest port city in the world.[14] Hui-lan's social circle in Shanghai included the businessman Sir Victor Sassoon and Wallis Warfield Simpson, later Duchess of Windsor.[26][14] Hui-lan recalls in her memoirs that Wallis's only phrase in Mandarin was "boy, pass me the champagne".[2][14]

Hui-lan, however, found Shanghai in the 1920s wanting[20], and thought it "filled with...British shipping people...nobodies at home...[who] put on upper-class airs in China...they were so insular, so middle-class...and looked down their noses at everything really beautiful and indigenous to...[Chinese] culture: jade, porcelain, antiques. And the poor foolish Shanghai Chinese were so impressed with these upstarts that they copied their manners and filled their houses with 'Western' furniture (the so-called smart Shanghai furniture all came from Grand Rapids and was heavy and ugly)."[27] In contrast, she was enamoured of pre-communist Beijing, whose classical order and ancient beauty she thought was comparable only to Paris.[20] In later life, she exclaimed: "Peking is my city, where I once belonged and where I hope someday, if things ever change in my lifetime, to return." [28]

Ambassadress and WW II

The Koo couple subsequently relocated to Paris in 1932, where Wellington Koo had been appointed Chinese Ambassador to France, a post he kept until 1940.[23][4][3] Following the fall of France to Germany during the Second World War, Koo served as Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom in London until 1946.[23][3][4] Koo represented the Republic of China in 1945 as one of the founding members of the United Nations.[23][4][3]

All through this time, Madame Wellington Koo was a celebrated society hostess in Paris and London.[14][15] The great inheritance from Hui-lan's father ensured that the couple could afford to entertain the beau monde of Paris and London on a scale that was beyond the means of most diplomats.[14] In the summer of 1939, she attended Elsie de Wolfe's party for the Maharani of Kapurthala at Villa Trianon in Versailles with a guest list that included Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli; some considered it Europe's last swan song before the Second World War.[15]

She also oversaw the education of her two sons, Yu-chang Wellington Koo Jr. (1922–1975) and Fu-chang Freeman Koo (1923–1977), who attended MacJannet School in Paris, where they were contemporaries of Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later husband of Queen Elizabeth II.[29]

Later life

In 1941, Madame Wellington Koo moved to New York City, where her sons, Wellington Koo Jr. and Freeman Koo, were being educated at their father's alma mater, Columbia University.[30][5] Her aim was to use her international connections to persuade the United States to join the war on the Allied side to help China's war effort in Asia.[14] Although the Koos were later reunited in New York, the war years and separation had taken their toll; and the couple later divorced.[5][14] Madame Wellington Koo spent the remainder of her life in New York City.[5][14]

She authored two autobiographies in collaboration, first in 1943 with the society columnist for The Washington Post Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, then in 1975 with the journalist Isabella Taves.[24][5][14][15] In the 1980s, she was involved in a series of unsuccessful business ventures in her native Indonesia, including in shipping, tobacco and bicycles.[24]

By the time she died in 1992, she had survived her former husband and both her sons.[5] The business empire her grandfather and father built had been broken up by Sukarno following the Indonesian Revolution; and the Republic of China which she and her husband served for many decades had lost the Chinese mainland to the Communist Party.[5][4]

Style, art and legacy

A portrait of Mme Koo in court dress by Charles Tharp at the Peranakan Museum, Singapore.

Madame Koo was much admired for her adaptations of traditional Chinese dress, which she wore with lace trousers and jade necklaces.[20][31][14] She is widely acknowledged for reinventing the Chinese cheongsam in a way that accentuates and flatters the female figure.[20][31] Cheongsam dresses at the time were decorously slit a few inches up the sides, but Hui-lan slashed hers to the knee – in the heady 1920s – "with lace pantelettes just visible to the ankle".[31][14] She thereby helped modernize, glamorize and popularize what soon became the Chinese female national dress.[31][14] Unlike other Asian socialites, Madame Wellington Koo insisted on using local silks and materials, which she thought were of superior quality.[14]

She was featured several times by Vogue Magazine on its list of best-dressed women in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.[31][14][32] Vogue indeed saluted Madame Koo as a "citizen of the world" for her enlightened approach to promoting goodwill between East and West.[33]

An astute and avant-garde art connoisseur, Madame Wellington Koo sat for portraits by Federico Beltrán Masses, Edmund Dulac, Leon Underwood and Charles Tharp, and had her photographs taken by the fashion and society photographers Henry Walter Barnett, E. O. Hoppé and George Hoyningen-Huene.[33][32][14][34] Horst P. Horst, who photographed her for American Vogue in 1942, described her as "a Chinese citizen of the world, an international beauty".[35][15]

Her portraits, photographs and dresses are today part of the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Peranakan Museum in Singapore.[33][36]

In contemporary culture

Madame Koo's fashion legacy continues to attract attention internationally. She was featured as a "woman of style" at China: Through the Looking Glass, an art exhibition curated by Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda, and held to great acclaim in 2015 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[37] In 2018, the Indonesian designer Toton Januar created a video campaign for his Fall Winter collection, based on a reimagining of one of Madame Koo's portraits.[38]

In her native Indonesia, Madame Koo has been the subject of a string of recent publications. Under the pen name Agnes Davonar, popular writers Agnes Li and Teddy Li authored a sentimental and sensationalist biography of Madame Koo, Kisah tragis Oei Hui Lan, putri orang terkaya di Indonesia (The Tragic Story of Oei Hui Lan, Daughter of Indonesia's Richest Man), published in 2009 by AD Publisher.[39] Oei Hui Lan: anak orang terkaya dari Semarang (Oei Hui lan: Daughter of Semarang's Richest Man), another popular biography, was published by Eidelweis Mahameru in 2011.[40] That same year, Mahameru published a popular biography of Madame Koo's father, Oei Tiong Ham: Raja Gula, Orang Terkaya dari Semarang (Oei Tiong Ham: Sugar King, Semarang's Richest Man).[41]

List of works

  • Hui-lan Koo (Madame Wellington Koo): An Autobiography as Told to Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer New York: Dial Press (1943)[1]
  • No Feast Lasts Forever New York: Times Books (1975)[2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Koo (née Oei), Hui-lan; Van Rensselaer Thayer, Mary (1943). Hui-lan Koo (Madame Wellington Koo): An Autobiography as Told to Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer. New York: Dial Press. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Koo, Mme Wellington; Taves, Isabella (1975). No Feast Lasts Forever. New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Company. ISBN 9780812905731.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "V.K. Wellington Koo". Columbia University. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "V. K. Wellington Koo (Gu Weijun)". Australian Centre on China in the World. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Suryadinata, Leo (2015). Prominent Indonesian Chinese: Biographical Sketches (4th edition). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ISBN 9789814620505.
  6. 1 2 Salmon, Claudine (1991). "A Critical View of the Opium Farmers as Reflected in a Syair by Boen Sing Hoo (Semarang, 1889)". Indonesia: 25–51. doi:10.2307/3351253. JSTOR 3351253.
  7. ↑ Ong, Hok Ham (2003). Power, Politics, and Culture in Colonial Java. Jakarta: Metafor Pub. ISBN 9789793019116.
  8. ↑ Lee, Khoon Choy (2013). Golden Dragon and Purple Phoenix: The Chinese and Their Multi-ethnic Descendants in Southeast Asia. World Scientific. ISBN 9789814383448. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  9. ↑ Liem, Thian Joe (2004). Riwayat Semarang (in Indonesian). Hasta Wahana. ISBN 9789799695215. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  10. 1 2 3 Haryono, Steve (2017). Perkawinan Strategis: Hubungan Keluarga Antara Opsir-opsir Tionghoa Dan 'Cabang Atas' Di Jawa Pada Abad Ke-19 Dan 20. Jakarta: Steve Haryono. ISBN 9789090302492. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  11. ↑ Blussé, Leonard; Chen, Menghong (2003). The Archives of the Kong Koan of Batavia. Amsterdam: BRILL. ISBN 9004131574. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  12. 1 2 Kwartanada, Didi (2017). "Bangsawan prampoewan. Enlightened Peranakan Chinese women from early twentieth century Java". Wacana. 18 (2): 422–454.
  13. ↑ Govaars-Tjia, Ming Tien Nio (2005). Dutch colonial education: the Chinese experience in Indonesia, 1900-1942. Leiden: Chinese Heritage Centre. ISBN 9789810548605.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 "Madame Wellington-Koo – Voted best dressed Chinese Woman of 1920s by Vogue". Nee Hao Magazine. January 28, 2016. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Aubry, Alex (January 30, 2016). "Transcontinental Chic: The Extraordinary Life of Madame Wellington Koo". dnachic.com. DNA. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  16. ↑ R. A. Kartini (1923). Door duisternis tot licht. Gedachten over en voor het Javaansche volk ... Bijeengegaard en uitgegeven door Mr. J.H. Abendanon. Vierde druk. Electr. Drukkerij "Luctor et Emergo". Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  17. ↑ Koo & Taves, 1975.
  18. ↑ The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality. London: Ingram brothers. 1919. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  19. ↑ Mann, Susan (2005). Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 9780773529991. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Finnane, Antonia (2008). Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation. Columbia: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231512732. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  21. ↑ Koo & Taves, 1975
  22. ↑ Koo & Taves, 1975
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Craft, Stephen G. (2015). V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813157566. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  24. 1 2 3 4 Setyautama, Sam (2008). Tokoh-tokoh etnis Tionghoa di Indonesia (in Indonesian). Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia. ISBN 9789799101259. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  25. ↑ Chan, Anthony B. (2010). Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-28, Second Edition. UBC Press. ISBN 9780774819923. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  26. ↑ "Jadeite As Status Symbol". Sotheby's. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  27. ↑ Koo & Taves, 1975.
  28. ↑ Koo & Taves, 1975.
  29. ↑ "MacJannet Foundation | Building a Community of Global Citizens". macjannet.org. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  30. ↑ Cooke, Charles; Kahn, Jr., E. J.; Ross, Harold (October 22, 1938). "Two Koos". The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 "From Chanel to Valentino, a First Look at the Dresses in the Met's "China: Through the Looking Glass"". Vogue. Vogue. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
  32. 1 2 "Hoyningen-Huene - Vogue 1929". Getty Images. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  33. ↑ "Madame Wellington Koo sitting for her portrait by Mr Edmund Dulac at his studio , 117 Ladbroke Road 19 August 1921 Hui-lan Oei was the daughter of Chinese businessman Oei Tiong Ham. Her marriage to Chinese diplomat and politician Vi Kyuin Wellington Koo, was announced in November 1920 whilst Wellington Koo was Chinese Minister to the United States. In early 1921, Vi Kyuin Wellington Koo was appointed the Chinese Minister to Great Britain and they lived in London until June 1946, though they divorced shortly after the Second World War". Europeana Collections. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  34. ↑ "Horst P. Horst. Oei Huilan (the former Madame Wellington Koo) (1943) Artsy". www.artsy.net. Artsy. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
  35. ↑ "VCM". masterpieces.asemus.museum (in Korean). Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  36. ↑ "China: Through the Looking Glass. The Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
  37. ↑ Dirgapradja, Stanley (15 February 2018). "Video Koleksi Fall Winter 2018 TOTON Adalah Film Pendek Horor yang Stylish". fimela.com. Fimela.com. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  38. ↑ Davonar, Agnes (2009). Kisah Tragis Oei Hui Lan, Putri Orang Terkaya di Indonesia (in Indonesian). Jakarta: AD Publisher. ISBN 9786029575200.
  39. ↑ Mahameru, Eidelweis (2011). Oei Hui Lan: Anak Orang Terkaya dari Semarang (in Indonesian). Jakarta: Hi-Fest Pub. ISBN 9786028814188. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  40. ↑ Mahameru, Eidelweis (2011). Oei Tiong Ham: raja gula, orang terkaya dari Semarang (in Indonesian). Jakarta: Hi-Fest Pub. ISBN 9786028814164. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.