Zheng Yi Saothe BridgeENTJ

In the spring of 1810, at about 35, the woman who commanded the largest pirate fleet on the South China coast told her captains she would go into Canton herself.

History knows her by a title. Zheng Yi Sao means “the wife of Zheng Yi”, and her other famous name, Ching Shih, means “the widow Zheng”.

She married the pirate chief Zheng Yi in 1801. When he died in a gale on 16 November 1807, she took command of his fleet, at about 32. Bridges come into their own when the person in charge is gone and somebody has to decide.

What she took over was a business, and the business was extortion. The fleets raided river villages, held captives for ransom and sold protection, and the people of the delta paid for it.

She ran it extremely well, and on paper. A writer on the government side said she was “very strict in every transaction; nothing could be done without a written application.” By one account even her feared second-in-command, Zhang Bao, asked her before acting. Among thousands of armed men, paper showed who decided.

By 1810 she could see the end coming. A rival commander, Guo Podai, had gone over to the government, and foreign ships were joining the hunt. She was ten times stronger than Guo Podai, she said, so she could ask for more, as long as she sold while her fleet still frightened the buyer.

A doctor from Macao came to argue for surrender, and she brought Zhang Bao round without an order. “The Doctor Chow is certainly right in all that he says,” she told him. She let Zhang Bao walk into a decision already made, and let the doctor keep the credit.

The governor-general, Bai Ling, came out to the fleet in person. Then foreign sails appeared, the pirates scattered, and he went back upriver. The deal looked dead. In council, she proposed going to him.

Her captains pushed back. They would rather wait than send her alone to be killed. She kept the part that mattered and changed the part they could not accept: “I will go myself to Canton with some other ladies.” Zhang Bao laughed that they would send their wives to settle the affair.

In April 1810 she walked into the governor-general's offices in Canton with a party of women and children and no fleet behind her. The pardon followed. On 20 April, near Furongsha, the confederation handed over 226 ships, 1,315 cannon and 17,318 people.

The pirates' demand to keep eighty ships was refused. She got what she came for: a way out for herself and her people, on terms she settled face to face.

She married Zhang Bao that year and lived on in Canton, by one account running a gambling house, until 1844. Stopping is the hardest thing Bridges do, and she did it at the top. Her command had lasted two and a half years. The life she chose after it lasted thirty-four.