FEMALE FIRSTS

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

ZHENG YI SAO

Zheng Yi Sao (born Shi Yang, a.k.a. Shi Xianggu), also known as Ching Shih, meaning wife of Ching (Zheng), was a Chinese pirate leader who terrorized the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810. Zheng Yi Sao was a honorific bestowed upon her by the people of Guangdong, meaning wife of Zheng Yi. She was the unofficial commander of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, which was composed of 400 junks and between 40,000 to 60,000 pirates in 1805. Her ships entered into conflict with several major powers, such as the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and Qing China.

Zheng Yi Sao and her crew have been featured in numerous books, novels, video games, and films about pirates and their way of life in China as well as in a global context. Based on her influence and achievements as a pirate, which included commanding a vast fleet of around 1,500-1,800 ships crewed by 80,000 sailors during her peak, she is hailed by many as being the most successful pirate in history

After surrendering, Zhang Bao would further distinguish himself by defeating the Blue Flag Fleet under Wu Shi'er (烏石二) near the Leizhou Peninsula. Zhang Bao, with Zheng Yi Sao accompanying him, would later be transferred to Min'an, Fujian, where Zheng Yi Sao would give birth to a son, Zhang Yulin, in 1813 (張玉麟).

In 1822, Zhang Bao, aged 36, died near Penghu while serving as a colonel (副將) in charge of the Penghu garrison. In 1824, Zheng Yi Sao returned to Guangdong with Zhang Yulin.[54] In 1840, while living at Nanhai, Zheng Yi Sao filled charges against a government official, Wu Yaonan (伍耀南), for having embezzled 28,000 taels of silver that Zhang Bao had handed over to him in 1810 for the purchase of an estate. The Viceroy of Liangguang at the time, Lin Zexu, petitioned the emperor to dismiss the case, which he did.

In 1844, Zheng Yi Sao died at the age of 68-69, having led a relatively peaceful life after the death of her second husband, as the proprietor of an infamous gambling house somewhere around Guangdong.

Zhang Bao's three codes for the pirates of the Red Flag Fleet are often misattributed to Zheng Yi Sao. The codes are:

1. If any pirate goes privately on shore, he shall be taken, his ears mutilated, he will be paraded around the fleet and executed.
2. Not the least thing shall be taken privately from the stolen and plundered goods, all shall be registered. The pirate receives for himself, out of ten parts, only two; eight parts belong to the storehouse, called the general fund; those who steal anything out of this general fund, shall be executed.
3. Women captured from villages shall not be harmed or harassed. All women captives shall be registered, their place of origin recorded, and be given separate quarters. Those who raped or committed adultery with the women captives shall be executed.

The three codes and the fact that Zhang Bao was the author of the codes were recorded in Jing hai fen ji (靖海氛記), an account of the Pirate Confederation by Qing official Yuan Yonglun (袁永綸) based on first-hand testimonies. The misattribution of the codes to Zheng Yi Sao most likely originated from Philip Gosse's The History of Piracy, first published in 1932, in which he claimed Zheng Yi Sao to have drawn up "a code of rules for her crews which somewhat resembled those subscribed to by earlier European pirates."

Gosse claimed to have based the story of Zheng Yi Sao on a translation of Jing hai fen ji by Charles F. Neumann in History of the Pirates Who Infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810 published in 1831, which in itself contains numerous translation errors.

Regardless, it seems like Gosse was primarily interested in a sensationalized account of Zheng Yi Sao, as he claimed in The History of Piracy that "the original (Jing hai fen ji), published in Canton in 1830, is chiefly devoted to the exploits of one pirate, and that a woman,"while Jin hai fen ji contains significantly more mentions of Zhang Bao (88) than Zheng Yi Sao (25).

A semi-fictionalized account of Zheng Yi Sao, based on Philip Gosse's The History of Piracy, appeared in Jorge Luis Borges' short story The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate (part of A Universal History of Infamy (1935)), where she is described as "a lady pirate who operated in Asian waters, all the way from the Yellow Sea to the rivers of the Annam coast", and who, after surrendering to the imperial forces, is pardoned and allowed to live the rest of her life as an opium smuggler. In the story, Borges repeated the false claim that the pirate codes were issued by Zheng Yi Sao.

and as always have a chilled day from the Viking