A Family on the Edge of Power
I did not know Gao Lingwei, but I knew someone who had known him closely: my great-grandmother.
I lived with her from the day I was born until I left for Canada at the age of thirteen. We shared a home, a rhythm, and a trust built over quiet years together. She was not just a relative — she was part of my daily life, and I was part of hers.
That intimacy gave her stories a special kind of truth for me. She never raised her voice or demanded to be believed. She simply remembered — carefully, quietly, and with a sense of duty that felt stronger than time.
She rarely shared stories about her husband’s brother, but when she did, her words were careful. She also told us something more personal — something that revealed his quiet sense of decency. When they first met, she was just a young woman, decades younger than her husband.
“He couldn’t bear to meet me at first,” she said. “He remarked [to Gao Lingwen (his elder brother)] that it was too cruel (太殘了) [to marry someone fifty years younger].”
It was a sentiment few men in his era would have voiced aloud. But he did — not to impress, but to express what seemed to be a genuine discomfort with the world as it was. Even within the rigid codes of seniority and family structure, he remained a man with a conscience — one who noticed the people others overlooked.
He also showed his care in quiet, practical ways. My great-grandmother and grandfather remembered that he would sometimes bring the outgrown clothes and old outfits of his own children and give them to my grandfather, who was still a child at the time.
“He didn’t like to waste things,” my mother later said to me. “It shows that Gao Lingwei, and possibly many other officials of his era, were so remarkably frugal, well-disciplined and honest.”
These were not grand gestures. They were small acts of thoughtfulness, but they endured in memory, because they revealed who he was when no one else was watching.
The Gao family was not among the nobility, but they had something more enduring: roots that stretched back to 1404, during the reign of the Yung-le Emperor in the Ming Dynasty. At one time, the family served in the imperial court, most notably as head of the emperor’s security, placing them close to power and responsibility.
In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, when Emperor Kuang-hsu [1] and Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi [2] fled the Forbidden City, they passed through Wenhsi County in Shanhsi Province. There, Gao Linghsiao, another elder brother of Gao Lingwei aside from my great-grandfather, received them. He even helped the emperor tidy his hair at the request of the emperor — a small, intimate moment in a time of imperial collapse.
By the early 1900s, the Gao family had become part of the Beiyang Government as Gao Lingwei rose quickly through its ranks. He would become a minister, an administrator, and eventually, the Acting President of the Republic.
My mother once told me that the Gao family was well-disciplined and inwardly focused. They were not title-chasers. They did not flaunt power. In fact, she said, no one in her household seemed to know that Gao Lingwei had been Acting President of China, not because it wasn’t true, but because he never told them.
He did not speak of his public duties at home. He wore his office lightly, and bore its burdens alone.
To my mother, this restraint was a rare virtue — the sign of a family that valued substance over ceremony.
Later in life, my great-grandmother told us that Gao Lingwei had once saved Tientsin from being bombed by Japanese planes — negotiating a deal that may have spared thousands, but at the cost of being misunderstood.
“For him, it was like being pointed at by a gun by the Japanese.”
[1] In Chinese: 光緒皇帝
[2] In Chinese: 慈禧皇太后