Charles Jones Soong (1866-3 May 1918), American-trained missionary who became a successful businessman and industrialist in Shanghai as well as the patriarch of the influential Soong family. The Wench'ang district of the island of Hainan, off the coast of Kwangtung province, was the native place of Charles Jones Soong. He was the youngest of three sons born to Han Hung-i, who, like many other poor people in Kwangtung, eventually sent his boys abroad to work. About 1875 Charles Jones Soong was sent to the East Indies with one of his brothers. Three years later, a childless maternal uncle adopted him, took him to the United States, and had his name changed from Han Chiaoshun to Soon Chai-jui. After working for a time as an apprentice in his adoptive father's tea and silk shop in Boston, he decided to run away.

For many years it was believed that the young Soong stowed away on the American revenue cutter Colfax in Boston harbor and that the ship's captain, Charles Jones, employed him as a cabin boy, converted him to Christianity, and made arrangements for his higher education. According to this story, the boy adopted the Christian names Charles Jones at the time of his baptism as an expression of gratitude to his benefactor. Through repetition, this story came to be accepted as fact, and it was not disproved until 1949, when Ensign A. Tourtellot, a journalist who had served in the United States Coast Guard during the Second World War, published an article entitled "C. J. Soong and the U.S. Coast Guard" (U.S. Naval Institute, Proceedings, Volume 75). This article established that Soong shipped aboard the American revenue cutter Albert Gallatin at Boston early in 1879. Captain Eric Gabrielson, the commanding officer, enlisted him as a cabin boy. Thus, Soong became a member of the Coast Guard; his name first appeared on the muster list on 8 January 1879. In May 1880 Captain Gabrielson was transferred to the cutter Schuyler Colfax, based at Wilmington, North Carolina. Soong requested a discharge in July and made his way to North Carolina, where he joined Captain Gabrielson and reenlisted on 1 August. Gabrielson, a devout Methodist, talked to him about Christianity and took him to church whenever the cutter was in port. On 7 November 1880 the boy was baptized at the Fifth Street Methodist Church in Wilmington by the Reverend Thomas Page Ricaud. At that time he took the name Charles Jones Soon (the final letter was not added until he returned to China in 1886).

Charles Jones Soong, who had expressed his wish to secure an education and to return to China as a missionary, received the help of General Julian S. Carr, a prosperous Durham manufacturer who decided to finance his education. Captain Gabrielson arranged for Soong's discharge from the Coast Guard, and in April 1881 Soong became "a special and preparatory student" at Trinity College, the forerunner of Duke University. At Trinity, which then had two buildings, six professors, and fewer than 200 students, Soong studied under Dr. Braxton Craven, its president. In the autumn of 1 882 Soong entered the theological seminary of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. During his summer vacations he made and sold hammocks and assisted ministers at revival services in Tennessee and North Carolina. After being graduated in the spring of 1885, he expressed a desire to remain in the United States so that he could study medicine, saying that this knowledge would increase his usefulness as a missionary. General Carr was willing to pay for his medical studies, but Bishop Holland N. McTyeire, then the president of the board of trust of Vanderbilt, opposed this idea on the grounds that Soong might become used to the comfortable life he lived in the United States and might lose all desire to live the more difficult life of a missionary in China. Soong was admitted to the North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South). In response to a special request from Bishop McTyeire, Soong was ordained by the conference and appointed a missionary to China.

After arriving in Shanghai in January 1886, Charles Jones Soong began to study the local customs and dialect. This study was necessary not only because his native dialect was different from that of Shanghai but also because he had become thoroughly Americanized—so thoroughly that he never recovered his taste for Chinese food, and he later sent all six of his children to the United States for their educations. When the China Mission Conference held its inaugural session in November 1886, Charles Jones Soong was appointed to the K'winsan circuit in the Soochow district. The following year, he married Ni Kwei-tseng (1869-23 July 1931), a descendant of Hsu Kuang-ch'i (ECCP, I, 316-19), a prominent official of the early Ch'ing period and one of the first Chinese converts to Christianity. After being transferred to the Ts'ipao circuit in the Shanghai district in 1889, Soong found time to teach English in several schools. Among his students was Hu Shih (q.v.).

Charles Jones Soong continued to serve as a missionary until 1892, when he resigned. Apparently, there were two primary reasons for his resignation: conflict with his superintendent and money. According to Soong, Dr. Young J. Allen, his superintendent and the editor of the Wan-kuo kung-pao ( The Globe Magazine), lacked Christian charity in dealing with his subordinates; for example, he refused Soong permission to visit his parents. Allen also had a low opinion of Soong's education and considered him a "denationalized Chinaman." By 1892 the Soongs had one child and were awaiting the birth of a second; Soong believed and wrote to an American friend that he could not support himself and his family "with about $15.00 of U.S. money per month." Although he resigned from missionary work, Charles Jones Soong continued to be a devout and active Christian. He founded a publishing house, the Mei-hua Shu-kuan [Sino-American press], which published Chinese editions of the Bible. Although some of his highly successful commercial activities were unrelated to religious pursuits—for instance, he became manager of the Fou Foong Flour Mill in Shanghai—they helped him to achieve greater prominence and influence as a Methodist lay leader in Shanghai. A founder of the YMCA in China and a close associate of the American Bible Society in Shanghai, Soong also taught Sunday-school classes and gave generous financial support to the Methodist Church. His wife was noted in Shanghai for her church work, and their home was always open to foreign missionaries. In addition to being a lay leader and a businessman, Charles Jones Soong was credited with being a revolutionary. About 1894 he met Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai and became one of the first Chinese to hear Sun's revolutionary ideas. Although details about the extent of his participation in the revolutionary movement are lacking, he was known to be an ardent supporter and close friend of Sun Yat-sen. After the republic was established in 1912, his eldest daughter, Soong Ai-ling, became Sun's English secretary. Soong, his wife, and Ai-ling accompanied Sun to Japan in 1913. After Ai-ling married H. H. K'ung (q.v.), the second daughter, Soong Ch'ing-ling (q.v.), became Sun's English secretary. She and Sun were married on 25 October 1914.

Although Charles Jones Soong had great affection for the United States, he made only one trip there after 1896. He went to Durham in 1905 to spend a few weeks with his old friends and benefactors and to arrange for his eldest daughter's college education. When General Carr returned the visit in 1916, he was given splendid receptions in Shanghai by Soong's two sons-in-law, Sun Yat-sen and H. H. K'ung. Charles Jones Soong died of stomach cancer on 3 May 1918 in Shanghai. He was survived by his wife and their six children: Ai-ling, Ch'ing-ling, Tzu-wen (T. V. Soong, q.v.), Meiling (Soong Mei-ling, q.v.), Tzu-liang, and Tzuan (for further information about the importance of the Soongs as a family in China, see the article on the Soong family). On 1 November 1942 his contributions to Methodism and to China were recognized in the United States with the dedication of the Charles Jones Soong Memorial Building of the Fifth Avenue Methodist Church in Wilmington, North Carolina.