Zheng Yi Sao: The Pirate Leader Who Walked Into Guangzhou to Negotiate

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Zheng Yi Sao was born Shi Yang around 1775 in Guangdong, likely among the Tanka boat people, a marginalized group barred from living on land and from the civil service exams. In 1801 she married Zheng Yi, a pirate from a lineage reaching back to the Ming dynasty who had fought as a privateer in Vietnam's civil wars. By 1805 the couple had united the coast's warring gangs into a confederation of six color-coded fleets with about 400 ships and 40,000 to 70,000 pirates. When Zheng Yi fell overboard in a gale in November 1807, she held power through his relatives and through Zhang Bao, his adopted son, who became her partner and the public face of the Red Flag Fleet.

In 1808 the fleet destroyed about half of the provincial Qing navy, and in 1809 raids along the Pearl River Delta killed thousands while pirate offices sold stamped safe-passage documents to merchants. A joint Qing and Portuguese force trapped the fleet in Tung Chung Bay, but a wind shift wrecked its fire ships and the pirates broke out. After Guo Podai of the Black Flag Fleet defected, she walked into the Guangzhou headquarters in April 1810 with 17 women and children and negotiated a surrender that kept 24 ships, ranks for Zhang Bao and pardons for most crews. She later ran a gambling house and died in 1844.

• Guo Podai's six-week rampage through the Shunde region is estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths.
• The Qing commander at Tung Chung Bay sent 43 fire ships, which the pirates towed aside and chopped up for firewood.
• The surrender covered more than 17,000 pirates and 200 ships, with pork, wine and cash to help crews return to civilian life.
• In 1840 she sued a government official for embezzling money Zhang Bao had entrusted to him.
• The pirate code often credited to her was written by Zhang Bao, an error spread by Philip Gosse's 1930s book.