A Chinese Woman of the World

Madame Wellington Koo (née Oei Hui-lan).

Oei Hui-lan sat under the waringin tree in Semarang, as she absent-mindedly listened to her English governess Miss Jones teach about the decline of the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China. Miss Jones’ attempts to make Oei Hui-lan understand that she was part of something greater, a world of global changes which affected all of them, was rather unsuccessful at her young age. Growing up as a Peranakan Chinese into one of the wealthiest and most elite families in the Dutch East Indies of Java in the late nineteenth century, Oei Hui-lan failed to see the effects of such changes which existed right in front of her. She was preoccupied with dreams of a life in the spotlight, which ultimately came true when she married the prominent Chinese Diplomat V. K. Wellington Koo.

Oei Hui-lan yearned for a life of glitz and glamour. She wanted to be like the romantic debutante girls she had read about in the social pages of the “London dailies” and the illustrated magazines. Her curiosity for the world beyond Semarang would eventually set her out on a path in which she created different personas befitting for such foreign stories. Changing her identity and persona not only changed how she saw herself, but also how the world was supposed to see her. Yet it was not a path without obstacles.

Despite her father’s wealth and status, money alone could not grant Oei Hui-lan access to certain social circles in Java. She was well aware of her racial disadvantage in society, a part of her identity which she tried to camouflage but inevitably could not escape. However, it was her dual identity which became fundamental in her success as a diplomat’s wife. Her fluency in several languages, foreign education, as well as her family’s substantial wealth, set her apart from other Chinese diplomat’s wives of her time.

Oei Hui-lan’s marriage to V. K. Wellington Koo required her to learn more about the world and assimilate into elite social circles. Thus every time her husband was reassigned, became perhaps unknowingly, an incentive for Oei Hui-lan to reinvent herself for various audiences. The social gatherings invite us to the behind-the-scenes work of the diplomat’s wives, as they established and maintained relationships with other dignitaries. She learned to properly arrange social events and entertain in the correct manner, renovated the Chinese legations and utilised Chinese fashion to put China back on the world map.

Portrait painting of Oei Hui-lan by Charles Julian Theodore Tharp, 1921.

Oei Hui-lan intentionally set out to shape a career for herself, for she had come to the realisation that she had to be somebody in her own right. After the success of returning Shantung from the Japanese during the Washington Naval Conference, Oei Hui-lan recollects that while Wellington took off for Peking in grandeur and glory in a nice looking private car, she had to stay behind.

If Oei Hui-lan’s story tells us anything, it is that the contribution and influence of the diplomat’s wives are not to be overlooked. Diplomacy in itself is a masquerade, and diplomats are all attending the same charade, watching each other perform and outperform each other on the world stage. It was here that Oei Hui-lan and her husband V. K. Wellington Koo enacted and personified the aspirations of their country. Luckily for her, she had rehearsed her performance since a young age. Yet, the world stage was also plagued by war, conflict and destruction. When the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II broke out, the world stage as they knew it greatly changed. Long gone was the glamour and the ballrooms, and Oei Hui-lan was no longer blind to the changes in front of her as she had been when she was younger.

Yours Truly,

The Lady of the Moon

Further Reading

Clements, Jonathan. Wellington Koo, China. London: Haus Publishing, 2008.

Craft, Stephen G. V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. London: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Finnane, Antonia. Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation. London: Hurst & Company, 2007.

Koo, Hui-lan and Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer. Hui-Lan Koo [Madame Wellington Koo]: An Autobiography as Told to Mary van Rensselaer Thayer. New York: Dial Press, 1943.

Koo, Hui-lan, Wellington Koo, and Isabella Taves. No Feast Lasts Forever. New York: Quadrangle-The New York Times Book Co, 1975.

Koo, V. K. Wellington. The Status of Aliens in China. PhD Diss., Columbia University, 1912. 

Kirby, William C. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations At Home and Abroad in the Republican Era.” The China Quarterly 150 (1997): 433–58. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000052541.

Liu, Xiaoyuan. Recast All under Heaven: Revolution, War, Diplomacy, and Frontier China in the 20th Century. New York: Continuum, 2010.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. London: John Murray, 2001.

Shi, Xia. “‘Madame Wellington Koo’: A Diplomatic Wife and a Peranakan Representing and Socializing for Republican China.” International Journal of Asian Studies 21, no. 1 (2024):109–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147959142300027X.

Shi, Xia. The Gendered Politics of Socializing and the Emergence of the “Public Wife” in Late Qing Diplomacy. Research on Women in Modern Chinese History 37 (2021): 139–194.

Xu, Guoqi. China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.