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Chiang Fang-liang

former First Lady of Taiwan (1916-2004)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ274363 ↗
Source-derived summary

Faina Chiang Fang-liang, born Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva (15 May 1916 – 15 December 2004), was the First Lady of the Republic of China on Taiwan from 1978 to 1988 as the wife of President Chiang Ching-kuo.

Early life

Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva was born on 15 May 1916 in Gavrilov-Yam, situated near Yaroslavl in Russia. Her father, Ipaty, was an ethnic Belarusian who had moved to central Russia from Orsha in present-day Belarus, according to several sources. After moving, he changed his surname to make it sound Russian. Faina's father and mother worked in a linen spinning mill.

Faina was orphaned at a young age and raised by her older sister, Anna. As Faina's sister was 17 years older than her, Anna became known as her "sister-mother".

Career

At age 16, as a member of the Soviet Union's Communist Youth League, Faina worked at the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant in Sverdlovsk, Russia, where she met Chiang Ching-kuo, her supervisor. On 15 March 1935, aged 18, Faina married him.

Move to China

In December 1936, Joseph Stalin granted Chiang's return to China.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chiang Fang-liang” is former First Lady of Taiwan (1916-2004). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chiang, Fang-liang and former, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1916, 2004, 1978, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1916-05-15. For this dossier, Chiang, Fang-liang and former is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “former First Lady of Taiwan (1916-2004)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q274363. VIAF identifies the subject as 31104419. The Library of Congress control number is n88267482. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 2004, 1978 and 1988.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Chiang Fang-liang”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Chiang Fang-liang primary sources, Chiang Fang-liang archive and Chiang research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Chiang Fang-liang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.