They were both ferocious female warriors, fighting alongside and even leading men into battle. And while one was on the side of the empire, and the other an outlaw, both of these women broke with expected gender roles of passivity and took their agency into their hands. Yet one of these women is always tied to the role of a prostitute, while the other is seen as a chaste, virtuous figure to emulate. Why? 

These two women are the pirate Zheng Yi Sao (sometimes Cheng I Sao or variations thereof) and the mythical warrior Mulan. While Zheng Yi Sao lived in early 19th century, during the Qing dynasty and Mulan’s story comes from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century AD), these two women share a strength of character and agency. And while Zheng Yi Sao has become more popular in recent times, with podcast episodes and history articles featuring her, I can’t help but feel that she’s been talked about so differently from Mulan. 

Today, I want to take some time to look at both of their stories and what they tell us about unruly Chinese women and the way we think about them.

Who was Zheng Yi Sao?

Born in 1775 to a Tanka (疍家) family, Zheng Yi Sao was originally named Shi Yang. She received the name “Zheng Yi Sao” after she married the pirate Zheng Yi in 1801 (Sao (嫂) being the word “wife”). Zheng Yi was from a pirate family and he fought for the Vietnamese Tây Sơn dynasty against Qing China before becoming a pirate and commanding the Red Flag, the biggest pirate fleet in a federation of six fleets. According to Robert Antony, Zheng Yi was the most formidable pirate leader from 1802 till his death in 1807. 

After his death, you might expect his widow, Zheng Yi Sao, to leave the trade. However, Zheng Yi Sao made an alliance with her adopted son-turned-lover, Zhang Bao, and soon took over. Diana Murray has written that Zheng Yi Sao used a combination of diplomacy, intimidation and strategy to consolidate power and lead the pirate fleet for herself. 

Apart from being the commander of the Red Flag Fleet, Zheng Yi Sao was also the leader of the Pirate Federation. The pirates had to obey a set of rules, such as being forbidden from giving commands on their own or stealing from villagers who supplied goods to the pirates, and the share of loot that each pirate could get was clearly stated – 20% of booty would belong to the original captor. Although there are disputes over which rules were by Zheng Yi Sao and which codes were by Zhang Bao, it is significant that among the rules of how the pirates should behave (basically, do not disobey your superior), there were rules on how they should behave with regards to women. While pirates could force women captives into marriage, extra-marital activity was punishable by death. 

In 1809, Zheng Yi Sao commanded both the Red and White Flag Fleets in a battle that defeated Provincial Commander Sun Quanmou, who had 100 ships under his command. The pirate federation suffered a defeat after that, with Liang Bao and his White Flag Fleet being destroyed and that triggered a revenge campaign, with Zheng Yi Sao planning a massive raid using the Red Flag Fleet, Black Flag Fleet, and her personal fleet. This was a devastating campaign and we can’t pretend that the pirates were heroes because the Black Flag Fleet killed about 10,000 people in 6 weeks, and the Red Flag Fleet managed to destroy a large town and kill 2000 inhabitants. 

However, good times don’t last and in April 1810, Zheng Yi Sao led a delegation to negotiate a surrender with the Qing authorities. She was successful and together with Zhang Bao, they handed over 17,318 pirates and 226 ships. Zheng Yi Sao and her men were pardoned, she was allowed to officially marry Zhang Bao (who was given the rank of lieutenant in the navy) and she retired to become the proprietor of an infamous gambling house in Guangdong. 

Was Zheng Yi Sao a prostitute?

While writing about Zheng Yi Sao in 2022 for a hanfugirl book project, I mentioned that Zheng Yi Sao worked in a Tanka brothel and that is how she may have met Zheng Yi. This is a very “common” fact and was repeated in a variety of online sources I looked at, in books that talk about the history of piracy in China, and even on podcasts from the BBC. 

However, when a friend of mine (hi Hanfugirl!) decided to delve into the original sources, she quickly found that there were almost no contemporary sources that called her a prostitute. The only mention, which was in passing, is from a Qing government document called the Nanhai Xianzhi (南海縣志), which mentions the word prostitutes in reference to Zheng Yi Sao twice.

One is from this passage: 

“郑一者，蔡牵余党。牵殲于浙，一收合余燼，往攻安南，位巨焦，轰击死。妻曰郑一嫂，粤妓也。遂與其党张宝返粤洋为盗。复有鳥石二、东海伯、郭婆带等，相约连檣数百…”

The three bolded and italicised words in refer to Zheng Yi Sao and call her a Cantonese prostitute, before going on to talk about piracy. 

The other reference is this passage: 

日郑里辔妓

Which most accurately translates to Zheng Yi Sao bringing prostitutes around on a leash, rather than her being one. 

Other contemporary sources, including English and Spanish ones, do not make any mention of her being a prostitute, which you would think would be mentioned as a salacious detail. So overall, the only reference we have for her being a prostitute comes from two brief mentions, none of it backed up by evidence or details (the name of her brothel, how long she worked, etc) and the source itself is problematic as it was one that already wanted to cast her in an unfavourable light. 

I would also be cautious when inferring that she was a prostitute just because she came from a Tanka family and that Tanka brothels existed in her time. Tanka people have been discriminated against in China and are traditionally poorer than even the Han Chinese. It’s no surprise that some women might resort to prostitution, but this is not a cultural thing and could be said of any woman who is living in poverty with very little means of getting out.  

Checks with modern professors who have discussed Zheng Yi Sao also show that there are no definitive contemporary sources that say she was a prostitute, so it’s also unlikely there is a smoking gun reference from Zheng Yi Sao’s time that we missed. Instead, this popularly repeated fact seems to be built on one reference, one accusation that might be a slur, and has since been expanded to interpretations of this being how she met her husband, what type of brothel she “worked” at, or in the case of a popular history article, that Zheng Yi Sao “quickly became famous in the area due to her beauty, poise, wit and hospitality. This attracted several high-profile customers such as royal courtiers, military commanders and rich merchants.”

Who was Mulan?

As much as I love the story of Mulan, most scholars don’t think Hua Mulan (Chinese: 花木蘭) actually existed. Her story, however, is very old. Hua Mulan is a legendary Chinese folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century AD) of Chinese history.

In the original ballad, we can see that Mulan was portrayed as a traditionally feminine woman through her act of weaving, but also seems to have some knowledge of horses. She’s also fairly independent, as she makes the decision to leave for war and preparations for it on her own. 

Over the years, her story has changed, from an increased focus on the filial piety theme and a reduction in the emphasis on her cross-dressing in Tang dynasty versions, an addition of family name and birthplace, as well as an unhappy ending in the Yuan dynasty version, to an increased interest in fleshing out her story in the Ming to Qing dynasties. For example, in Xu Wei’s 16th century play, new elements such as footbinding are introduced and a unidirectional filial piety is portrayed. We also see changes to old elements, as one Qing version of Mulan’s tale has Mulan threatening suicide to get her reluctant parents to assent to her plan. 

Interesting, the late Ming-dynasty play, The Female Mulan Joins the Army in Place of Her Father, has Mulan explicitly tell her parents that she has returned “a little box of dogwood bud in spring winds”, that is, she has returned to them a virgin. It seems that the default is to think of Mulan as extremely chaste, even though (as we can see from this line), most people would have assumed that a prolonged period as the only women among men might lead to immoral behaviour. Instead, we see that Mulan has been imbued with all the virtues in her various depictions, including chastity in this play. 

While not dramatic, the different tellings of Mulan’s story portray different messages. I couldn’t give an in-depth overview, but essentially the Bei/Wei versions emphasise survival, the Tang versions talked about loyalty and filial piety, Song and Yuan versions turned her into an idolised heroine, while Ming and Qing versions saw her story as an opportunity to explore women’s self-actualisation and more as a human-interest story. 

Both women’s stories were transgressive, why is one more acceptable than the other?

If we look at both women’s stories, we quickly see a difference in how they are treated. Personally, with such scant evidence, I would not expect this detail about Zheng Yi Sao possibly being a prostitute to be repeated so many times and with such conviction. By contrast, even though Mulan had a much longer history and also spent a lot of time in the company of men (alone), I’ve not heard of a version of Mulan that portrays her as sexually free. So why the different portrayals given that both women transgressed social norms? While I can’t speak to everyone who thinks this way, especially since not everyone mentioned was raised in Chinese culture, I think the way women and transgressive activities have been viewed in China may shed some light on this. 

In the Lienu Zhuan (列女傳; biographies of exemplary women), an influential text from the Han dynasty (i.e. same dynasty as Mulan’s ballad) we see many accounts of women who transgress norms, speak up to emperors, and so on. So why are some hailed as exemplary? 

Anne Behnke Kinney’s comments on her translation are illuminating. She writes that with very few exceptions, the Lienu Zhuan “seeks to demonstrate how the actions of women either support or weaken the health and reputation of a family or dynasty. The unifying theme of the collection as a whole can thus be best understood with reference to “dynastics,” by which I mean an ideology for reinforcing habits of deference to a family-based hierarchy for the sake of its ongoing continuity and prestige.”

In other words, if an action was taken to help keep the family and dynasty going (which, in many stories of Lienu Zhuan, are made to rebuke people who are taking destructive actions), then the action was good. That is already a big difference between Mulan and Zheng Yi Sao’s stories. We can see that Mulan’s story, from the start, focused on preserving the family (in her case, her father) and through the dynasties, it has been used to promote narratives on filial piety. 

On the other hand, Zheng Yi Sao’s actions, while occasionally beneficial to other women (see: her rules on extra-marital sex), were actions that overall served to weaken the dynasty. Her transgressions could not be justified and with China’s legacy of regulating sexual behaviour that goes as far back as the Han dynasty (e.g. the Trung sisters who came from the Matrilocal Lac society in Vietnam and their rebellion in AD40), it’s no wonder that people find it easy to add another transgressive charge to Zheng Yi Sao. 

Additionally, Zheng Yi Sao was a pirate who lived in the Qing dynasty, in a time where views of pirates had been coloured by popular Ming fiction. In general, pirates are seen as literally “foreign” people, and even Chinese pirates can become physically different after becoming a pirate, such as in Menglong’s short story “Old Eight Yang’s Strange Encounter in the Country of Yue”. As the main character, Old Eight Yang observes of himself: 

“This entire body is an image of a wonu [note: wo 倭 = Japanese]. Even when he looks at himself in the mirror, he will be surprised. How can other people recognize him” 此身全是倭奴形象，便是自家照著鏡子，也吃一惊，他人如何認得?

Essentially, Zheng Yi Sao had two things working against her: negative images of pirates, which were almost always seen as foreign, and the fact that her actions could not be justified through traditional ways of Chinese thinking, which allowed for women to step out of their natural place if it was in service to a greater cause (the cause being the preservation of the family/dynasty). With this, it’s perhaps less surprising that this myth of her being a prostitute, which perhaps arose from a mistranslation, is so pervasive and long lasting, persisting even in modern Chinese articles. 

In conclusion, we see that stories of rebel women are not always created alike. Fact or fiction, the stories we tell of them can be altered to promote various causes, and long traditions may exert their influence on how we see them, even if we are not conscious of it. 

For Further Reading:

• Mulan – Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend, with Related Texts by Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema – For an understanding of the variations of the Mulan legend
• Writing Pirates by Yuanfei Wang – To understand how pirates were viewed in fiction and how that might impact our notion of Zheng Yi Sao
• The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810 by Robert J. Antony – For historical context on piracy during that time 
• Cheng I Sao in fact and fiction, in: Stanley, Jo (ed.): Bold in her Breeches, London 1995., article by Diane Murray
• Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang translated by Anne Behnke Kinney (Translator) – For general context on how women are judged in China, from the perspective of an old and influential text
• Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang – This book ends 70 years before Zheng Yi Sao was born, but I highly recommend as background reading on how piracy in this area of China has a history that spans several countries, and also how traumatic the preceding years were on the population in Fujian that engaged in piracy and other maritime work (reading about the rape, killing, and cannibalism during the Ming-Qing transition was genuinely disturbing and shows how much trauma the Fujian region as a whole has undergone)

P.s. Hanfugirl has now published a very informative video on Zheng Yi Sao and why casually calling her a prostitute turned pirate queen is problematic. I highly recommend watching it (link to youtube but it’s also on her IG page).