An Intro To The Historical Zheng Yi Sao

An intro to the historical Zheng Yi Sao

Ruibo Qian's character in Our Flag Means Death is based on a real person, though like all its real pirates, she is a loose interpretation. In particular, the real Zheng Yi Sao wasn't born until 57 years after the real Blackbeard died!

In real life, she lived from 1775 to 1844. She was known by a variety of names; her birth name is usually given as Shi Yang. Zheng Yi Sao is the name most often used, which literally means "the wife of Zheng Yi" (more on him later), and you may also see variations like Ching Shih or Madam Cheng, depending on transliteration. Calling her Zheng, as Oluwande does, is good, or ZYS in fandom chat, but if fic writers crave a more personal connotation for a scene, Yang is a good choice for a given name consistent with the real woman. It's like the difference between Mr. Buttons and Nathaniel.

She was born in the Guangdong province, and many bios of her claim she worked on one of the boat brothels there, but this is speculation only.

When she married Zheng Yi, he was a successful member of a pirating dynasty, working as a privateer for emperors of Vietnam. The couple collaborated to unite six different pirate fleets operating off the Guangdong coast into a confederation, sealed with an agreement signed by the captains of each. Zheng Yi was informally recognized as the overall leader of the confederation until his death in a storm two years after the signing.

Zheng Yi Sao had the respect of other key figures in the alliance, and her smooth assumption of leadership was followed by a period of huge success and expansion for the pirate confederation, driving the Chinese government to desperation. This is where her reputation as a pirate "queen" comes from in real life, though I'm excited to see where the show goes with her fictional conquest of China!

In 1810, Zheng Yi Sao recognized that the confederation faced internal fractures and additional opposition, as Portuguese and British military forces allied with Chinese ships, so she led the confederation to bow out on a high, and use their immense power to bargain for a peaceful retirement, surrendering ships and weapons for pardons, supplies, and money. Although it's fictional that her crew was predominantly women, when Zheng Yi Sao surrendered, she did so accompanied by a delegation wholly composed of women and children who belonged to the confederation. At that time, the confederation consisted of 226 ships, 24 of which personally reported to Zheng Yi Sao.

If you're doing the math, she was only in her mid-thirties, and was far from done with life. She remarried, to one of her former captains, Zhang Bao, and accompanied him to the Penghu Islands, where he commanded a garrison. After his death, she returned to Guangdong and had another career of twenty-odd years, becoming the owner of a casino until her death at age 68 or 69 (nice).

She was one of the most successful pirates in history, both because of her power and her ability to survive it. I think she's neat as hell, and so have a lot of fiction writers! You might have encountered versions of her, or characters inspired by her, before, in things like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Bloody Jack novels, Assassin's Creed, and Doctor Who. It's fun to see a form of her in this! We can expect her arc to progress differently, but I hope having some context will help.

The most helpful things to note for the rest of the season for ofmd fans will be that Zheng is her surname, she wasn't really a contemporary of the other historical figures, and that her connection to sex work should not be treated as a fact, whether you want to include it in this fictional interpretation or not.