On July 28, the first day of the open house for the $11.8 million mansion of Soong Mei-ling, the wife of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek.Seven buyers appeared and they were all Chinese, Sinovision reported.
"This is very rare with this multimillion-dollar asking price" Jason Friedman, the agent was quoted as saying .
He also said he received at least 50 phone calls inquiring the property, 48 of them were Chinese.
This shows how appealing this mansion is to Chinese wealthy buyers.
Soong, known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, moved from China to the United States in 1975, and settled in the Lattingtown estate that her family purchased in 1949. In 1998, the estate, known as Hillcrest, was sold to the Stillman Organization, a Manhattan-based development company that later subdivided the property, renovated the original mansion and built two other homes, one of which was also recently listed for sale.
The 12.8-acre property that's for sale is on the part of the estate where Madame Chiang's carriage house and bamboo garden remain.
The nine-bedroom home, built in 2002, features a solid stone turret with a winding staircase to the second floor, topped with a large twisted wooden dome.
Madame Chiang, who was educated in the United States and graduated from Wellesley, became the second woman to address both houses of Congress, rallying support for her husband's army.
In 1998, tens of thousands of people of Chinese descent came to the estate, where an auction of some of her belongings was held.
