Her name is not known. She was born around 1775 near Xinhui, in Guangdong, and the history that survives calls her only Zheng Yi Sao, “the wife of Zheng Yi”. Within a few years of her husband’s death she commanded a pirate confederation that Qing officials could not break, and she then did something almost no pirate commander managed. She negotiated her way out, and kept her life.
The Horror
Zheng Yi led a confederation of pirate fleets along the Guangdong coast. By 1805 it was organised in six coloured-banner fleets, with roughly 400 junks and somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 pirates, though the sources differ on the numbers and on how fast it grew. She married him in 1801. The popular version says she had worked in a Canton brothel, and that she accepted him only for an equal share of his takings. That version appears in popular retellings, but it is a tradition. The most careful source says the brothel story lacks evidence, and the second source states the Canton prostitution as fact without citing anything. Treat both the origin and the bargain as unproven.
Zheng Yi died in November 1807. Wikipedia gives the date as November 16 and says he fell overboard in a gale. The World History Encyclopedia says only that he was killed “either in action or in a typhoon”. What followed is better attested. Within the confederation she held command of the whole, helped by Zhang Bao, who became official commander of the Red Flag Fleet, the largest of the six. A Qing official’s report of 1810, as cited in Wikipedia, says Zhang Bao consulted her on everything before he acted. The relationship between the two is the subject of speculation. They later married, and the claim that they were close before Zheng Yi’s death is only a guess.
She ran the fleet as an administration. Villages paid for protection, merchants bought passes, and ships that failed to pay were plundered. The fleet’s rules are the best-known part of the legend, and also where the retellings go wrong. The three famous codes, against desertion, plunder and the treatment of captive women, are credited in the Chinese source to Zhang Bao, not to her. The mistake appears to start with Philip Gosse’s 1932 History of Piracy, which later writers repeated. The popular punishments, beheading for stealing from the common fund and cutting off the ears of a repeat offender, are a separate matter. No source confirms the ear-cropping detail, so it remains a rumour.
Between 1808 and 1809 her commanders destroyed several Qing squadrons. Wikipedia lists defeats of the provincial fleets under Lin Guoliang, Lin Fa and Sun Quanmou, and large raids on the Pearl River region in 1809. A story that a defeated Qing commander killed himself is told in popular accounts, but it is unconfirmed and is left out here. Pirates also fought the Portuguese out of Macau. The Portuguese attacked in December 1809 and January 1810 and the pirates were forced to withdraw. Another pirate leader defected. Whether she surrendered from weakness or strength is argued. One view says Guangdong was desperate and she had the upper hand. Another says the tide had turned against her.
The Surrender
Talks began in February 1810 with the viceroy’s envoy Bai Ling, mediated by the Macau magistrate Miguel José de Arriaga, and broke down over her demand to keep 5,000 men and 80 ships. She is said to have gone to meet Qing officials in person on April 17. The surrender followed on April 20, 1810, near Furongsha. Wikipedia’s figures are 17,318 pirates, 226 ships and 1,315 cannons. The World History Encyclopedia gives a different account, about 260 junks sailing into Canton harbour two days earlier. The two sources do not agree on the date or the count, and the full figures should be read as approximate.
The terms were generous to her and brutal to many of her followers. She and her crew were pardoned. Zhang Bao was made an officer and allowed a small squadron, 20 to 30 ships in the sources. She was permitted to marry him formally. For rank-and-file pirates the pardon was not universal. Wikipedia counts 14 beheaded, 126 executed, 151 banished for life and 60 exiled for two years.
She settled in Canton, where, by both sources, she ran a gambling house, and the World History Encyclopedia says it covered a smuggling business. They had a son, Zhang Yulin, in 1813, according to Wikipedia. Zhang Bao died in 1822 aged 39. She returned to Guangdong in 1824, and in 1840 she is said to have brought charges against an official for embezzlement, a case dismissed by Lin Zexu. She died in 1844, aged 68 or 69. The more romantic ending of a grandchild-surrounded bedside is not in any source.
The Modern Relic
Nothing survives that was hers, and no tomb is known. The nearest place to stand is on Cheung Chau, the Hong Kong island where a sea cave bears the name of her lieutenant, Cheung Po Tsai, the Cantonese form of Zhang Bao. The cave is about 10 metres deep, with a passage of around 90, entered by ladder. Legend says he hid treasure there during the Battle of the Tiger’s Mouth. Wikipedia notes that no treasure has been found, and nothing ties the cave to her in person. It is a legend about Zhang Bao, and the visit is for atmosphere.
Her name has spread through fiction instead. The pirate lord Mistress Ching in the 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is loosely based on her, not copied from her. She also turns up in novels, television and games. The real woman, according to World History Encyclopedia, left “no reliable descriptions” of her character or appearance. All that survives are lists of ships, a bargain struck in April 1810, and a pardon.
