The friends of Stephen Soong

Roland Soong. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Roland says the book is meant to correct misinformation about his father and his friends.

Nearly all the information about Chang in the book will be new to readers, he says.

The book describes in detail how the Soongs met Chang in Hong Kong, how they developed a close friendship and how Chang wrote and translated literary works after she emigrated to the US.

Roland believes correspondence disclosed in the book will also help readers and critics to understand the background and motivation behind Chang's literary works.

The book also looks at the works Chang planned to write but never did.

As for Qian, Fu and Wu, the book reveals their intelligence and respectable personalities through letters and personal stories.

It is a pity that Wu's talent and life was wasted in social turbulence, and his achievement is undervalued, Roland notes.

As for Stephen Soong, Roland says: "My father did not just spend all his time befriending famous writers and scholars."

His father's first priority was to feed his family. He also was an accomplished writer, literary critic and translator, and contributed to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.

Stephen Soong was born in Shanghai in 1919 to a wealthy family from Wuxing, Zhejiang province. His father Song Chunfang (1892-1938) was a famous playwright, one of China's first scholars of modern plays and had a large collection of foreign books.

Stephen Soong received the best education a young man could get in China at that time. He went to college in Yenching University at age 16, studying comparative literature.