Chiang Fang-liang

When Chiang Ching-kuo became President, Fang-liang rarely performed the traditional roles of First Lady. That is partly due to her lack of formal education; her husband also encouraged her not to get into politics.[6] She largely stayed out of the public spotlight[1][3] and little was ever known of her in an anti-communist atmosphere in the government. She never returned to Russia, and traveled abroad only three times in the last 50 years of her life, all to visit her children and their families. In 1992, she received a visit from a delegation including the mayor of Minsk (the capital of Belarus).[4][5]

On 14 December 1935, their first son Chiang Hsiao-wen was born in the Soviet Union.[3] Each of her three younger children were born in different parts of China, reflecting turbulent years as an official of China.[4] Faina had four children:

• Chiang Hsiao-wen (b. 1935, Sverdlovsk)[3]
• Chiang Hsiao-chang (b. 1938 in Nanchang)
• Chiang Hsiao-wu (b. 1945 in Chekiang)
• Chiang Hsiao-yung (b. 1948 in Shanghai)

All her children were sent to study in foreign universities[4] – Hsiao-wen to West Point and Park College, MO, Hsiao-wu to Munich, West Germany and the remaining children to the United States. All three sons died shortly after Ching-kuo's death in 1988: Hsiao-wen in April 1989, Hsiao-wu in July 1991, and Hsiao-yung in December 1996.[3] Fang-liang then lived in the suburbs of Taipei. She received occasional visitors, such as some prominent politicians who went to pay their respects every few years. In the Taiwanese media, if she ever received coverage, she was depicted as a virtuous wife who never complained and endured her loneliness with dignity.[1][2][7]

Chiang died of respiratory and cardiac failure stemming from lung cancer in Taipei Veterans General Hospital at the age of 88 (or 89 according to East Asian age reckoning).[1][7][8][9]

Chiang's funeral was held on 27 December 2004, with President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu in attendance.[10] Kuomintang politicians Wang Jin-pyng, Lin Cheng-chih, P. K. Chiang, and Ma Ying-jeou draped her casket with the Kuomintang party flag, and Kuomintang party elders Lee Huan, Hau Pei-tsun, Chiu Chuang-huan, and Shih Chi-yang draped her casket with the ROC national flag.[11][12] Chiang was cremated and her ashes taken to her husband's temporary mausoleum in Touliao, Taoyuan County (now Taoyuan City). They were buried together in the Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery.[1]

• 周玉蔻 [Zhou, Yu-kou] (1993). 蔣方良與蔣經國 [Chiang Fang-liang and Chiang Ching-kuo]. 台北市: 麥田出版有限公司. ISBN 9789577081070.
• O'Neill, Mark (2020). China's Russian Princess: The silent wife of Chiang Ching-kuo. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company. ISBN 978-9620446153.