{"id":70113,"date":"2026-07-20T08:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T00:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=70113"},"modified":"2026-07-20T08:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T00:15:09","slug":"how-chinese-pirate-queen-ching-shih-ruled-the-south-china-sea-then-sailed-into-the-sunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=70113","title":{"rendered":"How Chinese pirate queen Ching Shih ruled the South China Sea, then sailed into the sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Pirates such as Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow are well known in Western pop culture. But Ching Shih, a woman seafarer from China\u2019s Guangdong province, was just as mighty, if not as famous.<\/p>\n

By the late 18th century, the South China Sea had become a haven for pirates. Colonial merchant vessels frequently traversed these waters carrying valuable cargo.<\/p>\n

Ching Shih, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, roamed the waters around Tung Chung Bay off what is today Hong Kong\u2019s Lantau Island. She was a pirate queen who fought against the British, the Portuguese and the Qing<\/span> navy while ruling her own empire at sea.<\/div>\n
She was born in 1775 near Xinhui in Guangdong province as Shi Yang. Little is known about her early years, but it is said she worked in the sex trade on a floating Tanka<\/span> brothel.<\/div>\n

According to American historian Dian Murray, author of the 1981 article \u201cOne Woman\u2019s Rise to Power: Cheng I\u2019s Wife and the Pirates\u201d, Ching married Zheng Yi, from a well-known family of pirates, in 1801. She accordingly adopted the name \u201cZheng Yi Sao\u201d, literally meaning \u201cthe wife of Zheng Yi\u201d.<\/p>\n

Guangdong pirates of the early 19th century were paralysed by infighting, but Zheng Yi consolidated them, offering a viable escape from poverty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Pirates such as Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow are well known in Western pop culture. But Ching Shih, a woman seafarer from China\u2019s Guangdong province, was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[832,107,7007,10841,3671,8673,26825,4483,26824,5246,10728],"class_list":["post-70113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-ching","tag-pirate","tag-queen","tag-ruled","tag-sailed","tag-sea","tag-shih","tag-south","tag-sunset","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}