The Outrageous Life of Ching Shih; or, How You Can Achieve Anything through the Power of Negotiation (and Beheading People with a Battle-Axe and Dumping their Lifeless Bodies in the Sea)
Right kiddos, sit yourselves the fuck down because do I have a story for you.
In China in the early 1800s, there was this fierce fucking badass called Ching Shih, who was quite literally the most successful and awesome pirate captain in history. At the height of her powers, she was said to have commanded a fleet of 2,000 ships and 80,000 men (full disclosure: these figures came from some bro called Richard who was captured and held by them for a year, and Richard was clearly a bit of a fucking drama queen, so there’s every chance this was all an exaggeration). BUT NONETHELESS.
This is the only known picture of Ching Shih, from which we can gather than she had a hat and at least one eye.
Ching Shih started out life as a prostitute on a floating brothel, which is a brothel on a boat as far as I can work out (I mean, I guess she technically started out life as a baby, but let’s not get bogged down in being pedantic little shits now shall we). She was a really great prostitute, and in her mid 20s she was proposed to by Cheng I, a successful and sexy pirate captain who led a pirate army called the Red Flag Fleet. Ching Shih was not only an excellent prostitute, she was an excellent negotiator, so she was like “look, I’m not saying a life of sexy piracy isn’t appealing, but the institution of marriage is inherently patriarchal and I’m frankly earning a decent living as a prostitute, which has a far lower risk of scurvy and murder, so I’m going to need something more out of this” and managed to negotiate her way to fifty percent of his piracy business and loot, and set out being an incredibly active and badass pirate lady.
Now, when you’re a pirate captain, your chances of reaching old age are very slim, which means that trying to make a pirate dynasty is tricky. Even if you manage to spawn yourself a wee pirate baby, the chances of it managing to get to adulthood after your death in order to take over as captain without being killed or overthrown by a dozen adult pirates who are, by definition, larger and stronger than a baby, and famously quite murdery, are very slim. So instead, in order to secure his legacy, Cheng I adopted a sexy young fisherman called Cheung Po to be his son and heir.
Are you still with me?
This adult adoption was apparently a perfectly normal thing to do, and Cheung Po had a great adult-childhood on the ship training to be a pirate captain and also, for some reason, shagging his adoptive pirate-dad. This, as far as I can tell, was less normal for the time, but you know what? They were both consenting adults and besides, who’s going to question the sexual choices of a murderous pirate captain? Personally, I like to follow a very simple rule for survival: don’t kinkshame pirates.
Look, there aren't any other pictures of Ching Shih. Here's a picture of a deflated pufferfish at the dentist. Get off my dick, ok?
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT. Let’s get back to Ching Shih.
As I mentioned, pirates on average don’t have very long lifespans, and Cheng I was killed a few years later. The sources on how he died vary – some say he got on the wrong side of a tsunami, and other say he was killed in battle in Vietnam. Regardless of cause of death, the outcome was the same. He dead.
So this left the Red Flag Fleet without a captain. The obvious choices were Cheung Po, son/boyfriend of the late captain, and some guy whose name I forget who was Cheng I’s second in command. But our girl Ching Shih was having NONE of this. “Excuse you very fucking much,” she said, “I got 50% of this pirate business when I married that dead dude, and I will be running it now thanks”.
She then cemented her new leadership by a) shagging Cheung Po, her stepson who was also her dead husband’s boyfriend (again, perfectly normal behaviour, nothing to see here), and b) implementing a strict series of rules.
You’ve all seen Pirates of the Caribbean, yeah? Remember the Pirate Code? That was Ching Shih’s shit right there.
Remember 2003, before Johnny Depp was a coke-bloated domestic abuser? Simpler times.
The code stated, among other things, that you weren’t to rob villages that provided aid, and that you could keep 20% of your booty (heh) but the rest was to be put into the central pirate horde, because pirates are, apparently, socialists. There were also some pretty strict rules about female captives – if she was pretty, a pirate was allowed to marry her on the condition that he was faithful and nice to her. If she was ugly, she was returned to shore, unharmed, or ransomed if she was worth ransoming. If you raped a female captive, Ching Shih chopped your head off with a battle-axe and threw your lifeless body overboard. If you were abusive or unfaithful to your wife what you stole, Ching Shih chopped your head off with a battle-axe and threw your lifeless body overboard. If you kept more than your allowed share of booty (heh), Ching Shih chopped your head off with a battle-axe and threw your lifeless body overboard. If you tried to resist Ching Shih’s leadership, your feet would be nailed to the deck and you would be beaten to death with clubs. If you deserted the fleet, Ching Shih would hunt you the fuck down, cut off your ears, and pass them round the other pirates as a warning.
In other words, step out of line and Ching Shih will fuck you up.
As you may expect, there were not many mutineers in Ching Shih’s fleet. And she was an out-fucking-standing captain. Under her leadership, they raided and pillaged hundreds of towns around the coast, and stole hundreds of thousands of (whatever the Chinese currency was at the time, I am not googling this) in money and loot.
Now the Chinese government were, understandably, not thrilled by this badass pirate babe raiding and pillaging all over the shop, and sent out a naval fleet to take her the fuck out.
She was outgunned and wildly outmanned.
Hamilton reference.
She defeated them brutally, plundered the naval ships, stole all their shit, and conscripted their crew to her pirate fleet.
After that, the government played it a little safer. They sent British and Portuguese bounty hunters after Ching Shih, and she systematically recruited or murdered them (probably more of that head-lopping-off business she loved so much).
Eventually, the government sat her down and were like “Ching Shih. Brah. You need to stop with the raiding and the pillaging. What do you say you just pack it all in, give the treasure back, and we’ll stop trying to kill you?”
But our girl, our hero, Ching Shih was having absolutely none of that. She, as we know, was a proud socialist who had earned that treasure (what she stole) and distributed it fairly amongst the People (other pirates), and she wasn’t packing it all in and submitting to THE MAN who kept trying to kill her and her pals for some RIDICULOUS reason such as the relentless stealing and murder she had been doing. So she told them to go fuck themselves. But, like, in Cantonese.
So then they were like, “ok fine. Let’s talk this out”. And Ching Shih, who had negotiated her way from prostitute to revered pirate queen, and into the pants of her dead husband’s sexy ex, was like “JESUS do I have to do everything myself” and strolled into the governor’s office, completely unarmed, and sat down to handle these negotiations like a GODDAMNED PROFESSIONAL.
She managed to negotiate her way to a nice cushy retirement where the government stopped trying to kill her, pardoned almost her entire crew (which was about 17,000 people at that point), and let her keep all the shit she’d stolen, as well as paying her a very comfortable pension in return for her parking her ship and stopping with all the piracy. She took them up on the offer and opened a nice casino as a post-retirement side gig. The casino was also a brothel because old habits die hard.
AND ALSO she managed to get the government to annul the adoption of Cheung Po so that she was no longer officially his mother and could marry him. Which makes the whole situation… less weird? I think? Jesus Ching Shih, you do you I guess.
Anyway she had a nice comfortable retirement swindling sailors at the gambling tables and banging her new husband, who used to be her son, who used to be her late husband’s lover, until she died in her bed, surrounded by loved ones, at the age of 69, like a true badass.
150 years later she was played by Takayo Fischer in the third Pirates of the Caribbean film, which did entirely NO credit to how GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING EXCELLENT she was.