Bittersweet Infamy - #38 - Zheng Yi Sao

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

Josie tells Taylor about the pirate queen of the South China Sea. Plus: the McBarge, Vancouver's abandoned floating McDonald's restaurant.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden for me. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in in me, shocking the unbelievable and the unforgettable. Truth may be bitter, stories are always sweet. So I have a very bittersweet update for you. Oh, well that seems fitting.

Considering. On the Vancouver barge situation. No! Wait, wait, wait. The barge in Vancouver that got beached after a big storm and there's a picture of you on our Instagram dabbing in front of it? Yes. I'm afraid the time has come.

According to global news, owner Century Marine Toeing will soon start chopping it up and removing it by sea in a process that will last between six weeks and two months. Holy fuck, chopping it up. That's like traumatic. They're murdering the barge. We're hacking the barge to death in front of our very eyes. Wow. Limb by, fucking limb.

Limb by limb. And so just as it barged into our life, so too will it depart on smaller barges. It's the circle of barge. It's beautiful stuff. That is really nice. Yeah. And so as I'm reading this eulogy for this barge and mourning this barge and, you know, a hat for this barge's funeral, I thought to myself like a bolt of lightning out of

the clear blue sky. Wait a minute. This is an even Vancouver's most infamous barge. Josephine, have you ever heard of friendship 500? No, I have not. Let me ask you another question. I'm ready. I'm ready.

It's probably no, but I'm ready. Have you heard of the McBarge? That's ringing a very distant bell. I first heard about this when I was like in the seventh grade. My teacher told me about it and it's quite, it's an object of local infamy. It's our most infamous local barge. And as you know, that's apparently a cluttered field cluttered with barges. A lot of what I'm going to be telling you comes from a pair of YouTube videos by a filmmaker

named Brightson Films. The first one is abandoned season one episode 31 and then he did a follow-up on this story of the McBarge. And this is a follow-up in and of itself. We're following up. Keeping track, following up. So one thing you may have realized from your time living in Vancouver is that every single public amenity in the city was built for either Expo 86 or the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Facts, yes. This story is one of the former. In 1986, Vancouver hosted the World's Fair known as Expo 86. As part of that, buildings were erected, souvenirs were made, public art was plopped across the landscape and government officials snipped the ribbon for a brand new public transportation system, the Skytrain. Where you were born? On the Skytrain, yes, absolutely.

I was conceived and birthed on a Skytrain, a little in fact. Well, not to put my parents on blast, but I did in fact contact my folks because, you know, they were around for Expo 86. And what I had neglected to take into account is that this is when they met. Expo 86 started May 86. They met May 86. They were married by December. Oh, that's right.

They're quick courtship. They were in Expo romance. Taylor's all this time, right? And so I asked some questions. What was Expo like? And so they were like, oh, you know, there was all these twinkling lights and there was these performance artists who looked like they were skate, like they were dressed like hockey skaters, but they'd be going down the asphalt with sparks scraping up off their skates.

They had the world's largest hockey stick, my dad says. The world's largest hockey stick? People came from far and wide. Where was it? Vancouver. So let me explain what Expo is. The actual Expo itself takes place on the waterfront. There's all these different pavilions and all of these different pavilions represent all

of these different... It's like Epcot. It's Epcot. It's fucking Epcot. So it's Expo Epcot. They're at least cousins. So there's all these kind of different amenities and cool things that they've built. And of course you can't have a celebration of local and global culture without McDonald's,

the ubiquitous homogenous American fast food chain. True. Very true. McDonald's had five new restaurants in the 160 acre main hub of Expo along the waterfront, but only one of these restaurants floated. Oh shit. Holy cow. Vat was Friendship 500, so named because it was the 500th McDonald's restaurant in Canada.

There's now about 1400. Oh wow. Designed by Naval architecture firm Robert Allen. It was 187 feet long and two stories high. It seated around 390 diners and allegedly fuzzy sources cost about $8 million to create. In 86 or 85. Yeah. I didn't even think about that, but that's at least $80 million now.

Yeah. I'll try to describe it as best I can, but I will eventually kind of send you a photo because my architectural vocabulary fails me, right? Like I don't know how to describe the design style or anything like this. But to me it looks like what people in the 80s thought the future would look like, slash maybe a hideout for a villain in a Goosebumps book. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. I don't know how to respond. I get that. Yeah. Yeah. Let me send you this picture and you can tell me what you think. Okay. This is Friendship 500.

Friendship 500. It's quite a imposing barge. Yeah. It's a building that happens to be a boat. That's it. How many windows would you say are on this? Just eyeball it. Oh God.

Like 100 windows. Like all of its windows, more or less. Yes, except for the parts that are like curved. Yeah. White. I don't even know what material that is. Barge, I suppose. The barge parts of it.

I think it's actually a really beautiful building. If you took away the McDonald's. I agree. Signs. It's like this wonderfully like curved structure. It still looks like a ferry boat almost. Like the way that the steel is cut out for the windows in that round shape, with that rounded square shape.

It's really pretty. I like it. I agree. I think it's a beautiful piece of architecture. My hat's off Robert Allen. Did your parents ever go? Did they ever get some McNuggies? She happened when she was doing her rundown of Expo.

She's mentioned Love the McDonald's barge. And so without kind of telling her that this is what I'm researching, I asked a couple of questions about Expo. And then I said, did the fries taste better on the barge? And her response was everything was better on the barge. I mean, I could tell. I could tell architecture is a beautiful thing like that. In May 1986 to coincide with the beginning of Expo,

Friendship 500 anchored next to the Malaysia Pavilion. And had opened its doors to massive success. It sold more burgers than any other McDonald's in BC. And this was all well and good until three months later, when Expo ended and there was no definitive plan on what to do with this massive purpose-built floating novelty restaurant. Wait, they had no plan for it? So what I gather is that they've gotten some kind of permit

to operate longer from Vancouver City Council, but it was then revoked. They decided like we don't want a seaborne McDonald's, I guess they decided. So they revoked the permit. So now all of a sudden McDonald's has this gigantic beautifully architected albatross which remained in place, anchored where it stood, frozen in time, meals still on tables for four years. Wait, meals still on tables you're lying.

They didn't clean it out? No, meals still on tables. Why? For what? I don't know, sanitation purposes? I think you're going to find that that is the answer to a lot of the questions that you're going to have for what? Okay.

Okay. To what end? Okay. So it remains there for four years. This is like... Oh my god, damn years. My understanding of it, and I apologize if I'm mistaken, but my understanding of it is that this is more or less near where like Waterfront

and the Canada Pavilion and the Vancouver Convention Center and shit are now. Right, okay. For four years it's just a McDonald's barge there. Cruise ship central. Like that's where the... Yes. Okay, yeah. Yes, that area.

And barge central now. Apparently, yeah. McDonald's tried to find a suitable new location but was constantly thwarted. Finally, in 1991, the Fairground land got sold to developers and they wanted this thing gone. So, Friendship 500 was typed seven miles away into the Burrard Inlet next to an oil refinery where it sat enduring the elements and curious scavengers taking on water, moldering and earning the name, it's best known by the McBarge.

Moldering? Who? Oh, this thing was big. Wasn't. Yes. Big, moldering. Oh. It got shuffled around to a few owners, but in 1990, the McBarge's most passionate advocate

would take over the reins. I don't know if he's the sole owner, but he's one of the owners at least. Gastown developer, Howard Meakin, who I gather had done some stuff like developing McDonald's is, is, is and thought, McBarge. And here we are. On that time, we start to see a little more activity around the barge, specifically Marvel and New Line rented it to use as a location for their 2004 film Blade Trinity, in which it serves as the Night Stalker's lair.

It sounds perfect for filming, especially how Vancouver is such a hotspot for filming. Yeah. And it's just this big industrial floating monolithic thing, right? And we also start to see the first of many ultimately failed attempts to repurpose this local icon. The first plan in 2009 was to rehab the vessel, dock it in Mission, which is about 40 miles from Vancouver. Yeah.

And make it the floating restaurant centerpiece of a $10 million complex. And so the idea was like, we're building out some docs, little boardwalk, stalls, umbrellas, fish and chips. The McBarge is in the very middle of it. And it would be called Sturgens on the Fraser, after the Fraser River, where it would be located. Yeah. Cute.

I love it. Let's do it. You know, who didn't love it is City Council or Municipal, whatever the fuck. I don't know. I didn't write down the body, but they hated it. They ultimately rejected it over concerns about the noise from float planes. Oh. At that point, the restaurant was renamed Seaborn 2 and listed for sale for $680,000.

No takers. $680,000. Okay. $680,000 for your piece of Expo 86. I mean, knowing Vancouver real estate prices now, it's like, that's a fucking steal. Can I sublet? Like what is, can I sublet the McBarge, please? Meanwhile, vandals continue to tag the place, break windows, strip all the copper fixtures.

I mean, you can end up installing barbed wire fences alongside common access points. It was taken over by Moss and Mildew. It started to slant. Like it just started kind of listing in one direction like a cake, you know, like a bad souffle. It became infamous as an increasingly dilapidated local eyesore with residents fearful it might sink, but also low key hoping that it would. Right.

Yeah. Like collect the insurance money, get out. Let's go. Let's wrap this up. So the McBarge is nothing if not buoyant and in 2015, hope sprung anew. Meakin announced that the ship would be implemented in a new project, very hush hush. On December 22nd, two tugboats took it 52 miles out of the inlet to Maple Ridge. So it's, it's moving now from where it had been moved in 91.

Now it's being moved to Maple Ridge. It got a fresh coat of paint. It looked very pretty, very bright and white and, you know, shiny and sparkly. And it was the first step of what was supposed to be a $4 million Renault. They said it would be ready by 2016. It was not. In 2017, the barge's owners alongside diving pioneer Phil Knighton announced their plans to convert the McBarge into an attraction called the Deep Ocean Discovery Center with

the help of a crowdfunding campaign whose launch was canceled due to bad weather and never rescheduled. Oh, cute idea though. I like the idea of moving away from the restaurant and kind of using it as like a more of a public space, museum space. The concepts looked cool. It reminded me of like the Johnson Space Center, but underwater instead of in the sky, you know, right?

Yeah, but this whole ocean center thing must have fallen through because in 2020, according to Wikipedia, it was reported that there were plans to refit the barge into a seafood restaurant, though a location had not been secured. Here in 2021, it was reported that an undisclosed site had been selected but was awaiting government approval. And so that's just the story of this thing, right? It's like, please, please let my barge be here. And they look over the papers and they're like, ah, no, no, we don't want a barge here.

Oh, wow. And that is where we leave the McBarge 36 years after Expo. It is still floating in the river off the coast of Maple Ridge. If you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't know what it was. It doesn't really look like McDonald's. You'd be like, that's a weird space villain barge, for sure. Yeah. I mentioned that there was a 2021 update on this YouTube channel and it was this guy

behind Bright Sun Films. He got a tour of the McBarge from Howard Meakin, this owner. Oh, wow. And he's in it and he's just this big cavernous space, but Howard Meakin says like, he's being like very optimistic. This thing has had like, yeah, kind of some rough time, some rough weather, it's had somewhere in terror, but it's, it's sturdy. It's really held up.

Yeah. And then Bright Sun Films, whoever it is behind the camera is like, yeah, I mean, there's all this water right here and it hasn't sank. And then he turns and you see the entire dining room is flooded with like, shin deep, presumably ice cold water. Oh my God. And the guy's like, yeah, the good is new. So.

Holy shit. Howard Meakin remains the ship's most public facing owner and he like, he gives YouTubers tours. He grants interviews about his latest plans for the infamous floating money pit. Meakin closed this video, this 2021 update with this vow quote. This is a pet peeve for me. It's going to happen, but it's patience and persistence at the end of the day that will pay off.

But as long as I'm alive, I'm going to see this thing done. Good for you, Meakin. Do it. Wow. I'm going to support Howard in his endeavors and you can't help but root for the little barge that couldn't. In the meantime, I suggest we appreciate Friendship 500, aka Seaborn 2, aka the McBarge, for what it is.

The ultimate liminal space, trapped between the past and an uncertain future, constantly on its way to nowhere, serving no customers, permanently closed but opening soon, forever in limbo. Friendship 500, McBarge. We have this relic, this barge, which of course feels nothing because it's a barge. It doesn't have feelings, but I feel empathy for this barge. I feel like at my worst, I feel similarly rudderless and abandoned. Everything is better on the barge, man.

That's a bummer. That's sad. That's so sad. I want the barge. Yeah, and then the other barge is dead too. The one barge isn't dead. The one barge is still there. Right.

It's doing whatever it does. Why don't they make that one into a restaurant? Nobody wants the first one. Okay. Logic Sally over there, whatever. Hogtown, The Six, or Toronto. Whatever you call it, you can fly nonstop to Toronto on porter airlines. When you fly porter, you'll enjoy free fast wifi and beer, wine, and premium snacks included

with every fare. You'll also love that our planes have no middle seats. Discover why porter has been Eastern Canada's favorite airline for the last 16 years. Visit flyporter.com. Taylor, actually enjoy economy. Taylor, welcome to this loosely historical recounting of the worlds. Not a specific region, not a specific time, the history of the world. The most successful pirate.

Okay. Mm-hmm. How do you measure, like to me, success is not measured in money, but happiness. Therefore, how do you measure? That's what I'm saying. You can get buried with all the booty you want, but if there's no friend there at the funeral, was it worth it? We'll see through the story, but I think on a lot of different metrics, this person was

the most successful. Happiness check, money, power, influence, check, check, check, check, check. I'm happy because I'm rich, powerful, and an influential pirate. Yeah, that's scant. Are we floating on the clear green waters of the Caribbean right now, hung over on rum? No. No. I bet we're probably surfing the worldwide web.

Oh, oh. No. What? I was so sure. I was so sure. God, this is a roller coaster ride already, this episode. I suppose maybe I should caveat this, then pirate, meaning like a very traditional, sea-worthy boat-living.

Yar. Pirate. Okay. Yes. Huh. Could we be following the unwashed misogyny of some gross, mustachioed dude? No. No.

That doesn't sound like you. I don't love a sausage party. You know this about me. No. Yes. We're not going to do that. Okay. Instead, we are climbing aboard the story of a badass pirate, Qing Yi Sao, queen of

the South China Sea, my dude. Oh, she sounds cool and interesting. I'm very excited for this. We haven't done a pirate before. I know. Old school Halloween pirate. This is very Halloween-y pirate. Yes, yes.

Interesting. All that kind of stuff. Yeah. Interesting. I'm excited. But that's like a modern shift and still in a traditional way, but we're talking like early 1800s, late 1700s. Oh, good.

Oh, good. It's been a while since we've had a good old timey one. The time machine was getting dusty. Very dusty. I don't oil this thing for no reason and we should decommission it if we're not going to use it. Just haul it up into the barrage and then. Chop it, fucking hydraulic fluid leaking it.

And then, yeah, just set it a drift next to Maple Ridge and somebody will do something with it. Someone will hop in there, spray paint it. They'll love it. It's fine. Yeah. Okay, cool. So another great sea yarn for us to enjoy today.

Yes, exactly. It's a sea-yarny day. Love it. So take yourself 200 years back, a little over. Done. We are in probably like the latter half of the Qing dynasty in China. I confess that I'm not well-versed in Chinese dynasties. It's like a historical gap that I keep meaning to address but I've never gotten around to.

If it's one of those things where it's like, well, I know a little bit about North American history and I know a little bit about European history and then like Chinese history, like quadruple and then like 10 times that quadrupling and that's how much history you're dealing with. At this point, we're talking like 1770s where, you know, we're well within the framework of a modern recorded history. Thomas Jefferson to plant her next to another historical figure. The Qing dynasty is the fourth largest dynasty in recorded history.

So that's including modern times. The population of China at this time, 1770s about Qing dynasty, was larger than it is now. What? The population of China under the Qing dynasty in the 1700s is larger than the population of China now. So large is what we're saying. Huge.

Gigormous. Yes. Okay. Yes. I mean, I think as North Americans, we're so used to like population being very small at the beginning of our country's births and like blah, blah, blah. But we're not on that scale. We've hopped over.

Right? Yes. Yes. This is also a time of rapid population growth. That's why it's so big is that it's just they're taking over and incorporating new lands all the time and the growth of the population itself is just going off. What's happening is because of this population growth and because of this massive expansion, there's a dangerous socioeconomic inequality that's going on.

So the rich are extremely rich and the poor are very poor, which is the volatile situation. And to add fuel to the fire, the cost of living across the board is going up. So those very, very poor people are having issues keeping up with just basic human necessities. So we find ourselves in Guangdong on the coastal province. So if you think about China, it's like just north of Vietnam, Macau is in this area, Hong Kong is in this area, we're south of the island of Taiwan. We're kind of like in a little hug under there. You know, little bumpy guy.

We're just right there. Yes. Got you. Yes. The year is 1775. We're really in and amongst Thomas Jefferson. Oh yeah. No, no.

Tommy Jay is, yeah. He's around. We know that a young girl named Xiyang is born. Do we know much about her childhood? No. No. No. That face didn't look like you were going to say yes.

No. It said no. We didn't know much about her because she was born into poverty. She may have been and most likely was a member of the Tonka ethnicity group, which is a group that usually lived in this coastal region of China during the Ming dynasty. So a few hundred years before this ethnicity was actually not allowed to live on land. They were run off land and forced to live in boats. Jesus.

I know. That's awful. At this point in time, there's no longer that decree, but that hereditary, that cultural understanding of the ocean and living on boats is still there. They're also still very much persecuted and there's not a lot of opportunities for them besides what they can kind of pull together from these coastal and cultural heritages. Guangdong in this area, there's probably about 21 million people just in this like provincial area.

Canada has 30 million people in 2022. Yes, they're about so more than that now. Let's say 35. Yeah. And we're big and that does not seem like that large of problems. No. This area of China holds about 25% of China's seaports. So what they are doing here is just a huge shipping trade that's happening.

Our young girl, Shiyang, she's growing up most likely on boats with a very keen awareness of what it means to be in the shipping trade, to be a fisher person. We don't really know much about her until we learn that she is a young woman, so late teens, early 20s, working as a sex worker on a floating brothel. These brothels were called flower boats. They were boats. They were barges, if you will, like kind of big flat buildings built on top of them. It sounds cool outside of the weird injustices baked into the concept, but you know what

I mean? I mean, a floating building, I wouldn't have brought the McBarge story if I wasn't into floating buildings. No, exactly. Exactly. And I think some of these, like, of course, the photos don't come until the late 1800s, so we're like almost a hundred years prior, but the photos of the buildings a hundred years later, they were beautiful, like ornately carved and what was happening in the buildings.

Maybe not super great. Not beautiful, yeah. A lot of injustices happening. Apparently, she young could charm anyone, though. She was known for gathering secrets from people, kind of using a pillow talk situation to build an arsenal. Oh, wow. I love saucy minks.

Very saucy minks. It's true. It's true. I said minks, just so you know. It's minks, yeah. I know. I got you. But a minks is a tail-less cat, and that's cute.

We had two minks, is Sage and Zeke. Oh, that's cute. So she's a saucy minks, and she's wheeling and dealing even within this power dynamic in which she is pretty much at the lowest run, right? Yes. She meets a pirate named Chen Yi, who comes from a long line, a familial line of pirates who were well-known in the South China Sea. Fun.

Pirate succession. Totally. He was like the first born son. He was like the height of the height, and his grandpa, and then that grandpa's grandpa. They were pirating up a fucking storm. All of this family drama about the right way to pirate, and this one wants to be a more modern pirate, but that one's an old school pirate, and this one wants to, again, move sort of into like cyber fraud or whatever it is.

Exactly. Yeah. I want to wear turtlenecks and commit cyber fraud, and they're like, no, you need to quarter people and shoot cannons. So. It's hard. These old school versus new school splits. Chen Yi offers to marry Xi Yong.

So the circumstances of that marriage proposal are somewhat unclear because it's either that she persuaded him to marry her, she had some like trade secrets, and she was like, you're getting me off this flower boat, I'm done here, you're my ticket out, or he knew about her in terms of her like wheeling and dealing. Her prowess. Her prowess and was like, I want her, she's mine. Yes. Either way, it shakes out.

It is pretty impressive that she gets a marriage offer off of a flower boat because that doesn't typically happen, especially by someone who holds so much power. And she's somebody who's like a member of a persecuted ethnic group and all of these things. But in spite of that, because she's so emotionally intelligent and socially capable, she's kind of able to, you know, kind of roll her elbows up and give this thing a go. Oh, she was also a total fox. Like she was a total babe.

So that probably didn't, that didn't hurt in anything either. They get married, 1801, and they immediately are a power couple. Wow. There's kind of varying reports, the historical record isn't confirmed, but it's pretty clear that she knows a lot of what's going on and it'll become clear how, how we know that. So this is kind of guesstimation at this point of why and how she's privy to so much information. Something that's interesting politically at this time is in northern Vietnam, the Tay Son Rebellion is coming to an end.

The Tay Son Rebellion, without getting too deep into Vietnamese history that I don't know fully, not to say that I know anything about Chinese history, but. But I researched that a bit and I did not research this other thing because there was a lot on my plate. Yes. A busy woman. The Tay Son Rebellion was essentially a civil war that took place in Vietnam for about 30 to 40 years up until this point.

So like in the latter half of the 1700s. Yes. There were a group of brothers, the Tay Son brothers, who claimed to be in power of the south of Vietnam. Vietnam's like a long skinny country, right? So north and south is a pretty easy distinction. So they claimed to be in power of the south from the same Tay Son family. Drama.

Familiar drama. Totally. Dude. The geopolitical affairs that affect generations and generations of people are so often built on the whims and grudges and neuroses of individual humans. And it's wild how it like comes to us and you're like, no, no, that's cemented history. And then you're like, no, no, no, that's just an older brother being a dick or whatever it is.

You know? I don't want to talk out a line on this if the older brother wasn't being a dick. I don't know this story. And so you tell me. That's true. Okay. One brother claims to be the emperor of all of Vietnam and that sparks the civil war situation that's happening.

The Qing dynasty is aligned with the older order. And then the Chinese dissidents who are kind of what we're talking about in terms of Xi Yang and her now husband Chen Yi, this pirate culture more or less, the dissidents of China are aligned with the new order. And part of why they are aligned with the new order is the trade relations between China and Vietnam have all these heavy regulations that haven't been changed in years. And so the Vietnamese really want the Chinese iron and China really wants the Vietnamese rice, but all these regulations make it all contraband.

There's just absolutely no way to do kind of the business at hand in a legitimate way. And so all of these pirates are popping up because it's all contraband. So whatever, we're just going to do it. Black market is suddenly gigantic. Yes. Yes. So all of these pirates are in this area. They're aligning with the new order and they're also getting sucked in to the Tessan Rebellion

as trained soldiers. So the new order of the Tessan Rebellion has found a Chinese fisherman who has turned into a lieutenant in the rebellion faction and he's in charge of training all of these Chinese pirates. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. The distinction of Chinese and Vietnamese nationality is not as strong as the ethnic

ties that are happening. And so when these Chinese dissidents are being pulled into the rebellion, they're being led by people who look like them, who are them. Yes. So it's all kind of gelling and jiving together. But what's happening is when we think of pirates, we think kind of unorganized, just in it for crime, da, da, da. Lone wolves.

Lone wolves, lone rangers. Yeah. Now they're being trained heavily for warfare. They're weaponized pirates. Weaponized and legitimized. Right. So they're also getting, they're getting paid. So it's like money, training, titles, boom.

Am I really a pirate? I don't care. Whatever. I'm a soldier. This is a government job. I'm an employee. I'm a privateer. Like that's what's kind of happening, right?

Exactly. So they're given all of this organization and then on top of the trade organization that's fallen apart between Vietnam and China, they're kind of coming up that way. And then also, remember I talked about the Qing dynasty having all this problems with inequality. They've pretty much turned their backs on the coast because that's not where they can make their money. They want to go further west, right?

Try to expand there. So the Qing dynasty is collecting taxes, but they're not giving anything back. So they're also fueling this whole system of pirates in the South China Sea, just gaining momentum, gaining organization. And then the rebel effort in the Taishan Civil War and the Vietnamese Civil War fails. So the old order takes place. But that leaves all of these pirates with all of this organization, all of these weapons, all these funds, all this legitimacy, kind of start up, start up, start up, start up.

Exactly. None of it's start up. I love it. They were like, there's an app in this. So instead of abandoning the start up, they just move north. They all leave the Vietnamese northern coast and head back to kind of the Guangdong area. And they could just all kind of go their separate ways and be like, peace. Have a great summer.

Love you all. But our guy, Cheng Yi, has done a lot of work to bring all of these factions together and create more or less a confederacy of pirates. He's kind of a mover and shaker. He has all this history behind him, all the genealogy of the piracy behind him. So there's a lot of trust in him. His life was building to this, heir apparent to some sort of pirate enterprise. Exactly.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist. It takes a pirate. The amount of people and ships and just like weaponry that's involved is insane. There is about 70,000 men who are part of this pirate confederacy. Jesus. That's huge. 400 junks. A junk is a, is the type of ship that's being used.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like. I just did boat shape with hand. Yes. Boat shape with hand. It's like, I don't know, if you look at any Orientalist rendering of Shanghai or the South Tennessee, it's those boats that have the sails with like, they're called battens.

So they're like rectangular rods that move horizontally through the sails. So this is a Chinese, Vietnamese, maybe even Egyptian, like calling from the Egyptian style. And it's actually supposed to be pretty dope. They can go on rivers. They can go on the open ocean. They're extremely versatile. But they're called junks because that's like kind of an amalgamation of a Chinese word and maybe even a Portuguese word.

Huh. Yeah. So our guy, Cheng Yi, has put together this confederacy and he's divided it into six squadrons because there's so many men, there's so many junks that they have to be organized in a different way. God have squadrons. And so of course you, you, you give them colors because, oh my God. It's total sports day.

They've got the red team, the white team, the black team, the green team, blue team, and the yellow team. So when I was in elementary school sports day, I've got two elementary school stories. One of them is quite infamous when I was in the second grade, I was on red team and we were the red devils, but some parents got upset and it had to be changed to red rebels. So that's one. That's quite an infamous and MJ Norris at the time. And then number two is when I was like sixth grade and I was like, you know, we were like

the, the leaders of the teams, right? And so we got to make all the banners. Yeah, you were top of the heap. I was orange team, which I loved orange is my favorite color. And we were the angry oranges. So, well, it happened again, you got to be real PC in total line on these sports day things. Cause our cheer was we're oranges, we're angry and we're full of juice, mess with us and we'll kick your caboose, but they made us change.

Kick your caboose. We had to change it to we'll make you vermouth, which is not as good. No, it's so cute though, but it was a very toothless sports experience. Sadly, there's no orange team within the sixth squadron. That's okay. Can't have everything, but they got the red rebels in there. It sounds like. Yeah. No, they do.

And that's like the top of the heap. That's like the best team you're on. Like, yeah, all stars. Yeah, I want to be on red team. Oh, I know. I read somewhere that there was a purple team, but I don't, I think someone made that up. I think it just, the translation was bad. I see.

It was an indigo. Yeah, exactly. Cheng Yi, pirate extraordinaire. He's leading these six squadrons. He's marrying the young, beautiful. What's that? I muttered, I want squadrons under my breath to myself. That's all.

Okay. All right, just manifest. I like that. Listen, I want squadrons. No, I'm tired. I'm tired of hiding that I want squadrons. Okay. Don't never hide it again.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take applications via the Instagram account. Buttersweet Squadrons. Cheng Yi, he has married our young, she young. And at this point, when she marries him, she adopts the name that she will be known as throughout history, which is Cheng Yi. So which translates to Cheng Yi's wife, which isn't super great.

And that's not super fun. And she also like remarries, but she's still called that. So I don't know. Cheng Yi style. It is what it is. It is what it is. If there's any sort of issue inherent to that, we're not going to be able to solve it on this podcast.

No, I promise. If I can promise you one thing, we never really get to the bottom of anything. That bar is just still floating there. Both, both of them are. Yeah, true, true. Hmm. So 1807, Cheng Yi, pirate extraordinaire, leader of the squadrons, sports day hero, he drowns.

Oh, like, why would you make me laugh before he drowns? I don't know. That was on you. That was an ad-lib. Psycho. Oh, no. Okay. So he drowns.

Okay. So he's either, he either is drowned in a typhoon or he takes a cannonball to the gut. The historical record is unsure. I don't, I don't laugh because the idea of this person dying is funny. I laugh because if you gave me like a pad of paper and asked me to jot down ways a pirate could die, I'd be like typhoon, cannonball. I know, right?

It's, it's a, it's a hazard of the trade. It is the hazard of the trade. I mean, scurvy. It could have been scurvy. Wasn't scurvy. It could have been scurvy. He is out of the picture. Do we have any idea of how old he might have been when he died?

He was 42. Okay. And she's, and she's how old at this point. At this point, she is 25 plus seven. 32. 32. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not going to try to figure out the ages that they were when she married, but I assume that's probably not great. So they were married in 1801. So she was 26. Oh, for fuck's sake. Okay. That's my mom got me.

Expo 86, man. Expo 86. Okay. So that's fine. I was surprised to learn that she was like of an ample age. Yeah. You just assume when these, these stories where someone married someone out of a floating brothel, you just assume the worst.

Please forgive me. Yeah. No, but she was, yeah, she was a straight and narrow 26, which is good for her. She's in a position now where, from what we can guess, her and Ching Yi have been this power couple. They've been wheeling and dealing and putting together these squadrons and kind of like bringing the organization from the Taishan rebellion up to the Guangdong coast and kind of pirating away in this way.

But how we know that she was part of that power is because after Ching Yi dies, she immediately makes a bid for power. Good. Good. And she does this in some wonderfully and beautifully strategic ways. Okay. Here we go. The first is that the two most powerful leaders of the other squadrons who would

most likely be up in line for, for this position of Ching Yi's, she convinces them of her expertise. She also convinces them that they're going to live the life they want, leading the squadrons that they're already leading, that they don't, they don't want the bureaucratic position. Oh my God. Who wants to be where the, where the buck stops? No.

Stress. Never. More stress than you want. Purple team? Mitten? Question mark? Right. That's yellow team, white team, whatever teams it was.

That's the life for you. You're living. Yeah. You're getting to do what you want to do. You're on the high. Wow. Oh God. It's been a rough day today.

I wish I was captaining yellow team. Exactly. I wish I wasn't dealing with these receipts and this officials. Fuck this. I hate this. Right. Yes. I've been behind the abacus all day.

Fuck. Exactly. This is not what I signed up for when I decided to become a pirate. Desk job, hook, you hate it. You don't want this job. Exactly. So the other potential obstacle that would stand in her way is at this time, it was common practice for pirates to, to adopt an apprentice. And so before he had died, Cheng Yi had kidnapped a fisherman's young son as you do this boy named Chang Bao.

And it's Bao or Pao, but I'm sure if you said it correctly with the right intonations, it would be kind of the same, but I'm going to say Chang Pao. So Chang Pao, he is a warrior through and through. He got recruited to be a pirate. And he's like, fuck. Yeah. Pirates life for me, bitches. I'm into this. Recruited, kidnapped.

But he got kidnapped slash recruited by like the king of pirates, right? So, right. So if you're going to get kidnapped, kidnapped by some bum pirate, I understand that. Yes. Though apparently at this time there was part of this adoption process was not totally like a paternal thing. There was also an element of like a sexual relationship that would happen between the two men. This, I don't know. There's probably something very like culturally deep that's happening here that I don't know all the extent of.

That's a complicated relationship. Very complicated. Yes. All consensual stuff. There's quite the power dynamic there. So I'm not going to lean on consensual. That's the thing is, I don't know if it's possible to have a non-coercive dynamic with the man who kidnapped you, but it's all right. So yes.

Cheng Pao, as the adopted apprentice lover, however, of Cheng Yi, he would have been next in line to take on his role. Right. That's kind of why this adoption process was in the works at all. But Cheng Yi Cao came to him with a similar argument, you're a pirate, you're a warrior, you don't want to sit behind that because all day. Listen. Yes. I've got this for you. Yes.

But the other part of it too is that she enters a sexual relationship with him. Get it? That's so hot. I mean, but like in a V.C. Andrews kind of way, I mean, before you judge me too harshly, it's hot in a V.C. Andrews forbidden love kind of way. Don't do this to people, but like it's kind of hot. Well, there's the historical record isn't quite sure if they had this affair before Cheng Yi had died or if it was like a totally political strategic move after he died. And who knows that might be kind of the romanticization bodice ripper element of like they were always in love. The pirate romance.

The pirate romance. The pirate romance. Oh, I love a pirate romance. Anyway, that it shakes out, she convinces the two most powerful squadron leaders and this potential takeover in the adopted son, Cheng Hao, and she says, no, you all don't want to do it. You want me to do it. And they're like, you know, we do want you to do it. I didn't, I didn't think about that, but you're right. I would love it if you had all the power.

Thank you for this talk. It'd be nice. It'd be so nice. So in within like the traditional Chinese culture of this time, women are not really in seats of power. Like this is the Qing dynasty is kind of at the height of foot binding. We are in a very strict Confucian understanding of the role of women in the family. They can't inherit property. They are considered property and they are costly to families because they need a dowry in order to move on in their lives.

However, she and this culture, Cheng Yi Xiao and this culture were not from the Qing dynasty and they were not from this traditional understanding of the role of women within the Tonka tradition. When men died, their widows would inherit their property. So it wasn't totally off the mark that she would gather some sense of power from Cheng Yi's death. The extent of the power is pretty intense, but that I think that speaks to the fact that she was so dialed into what was going on. She knew exactly what was happening. That's the kind of stuff that I like and admire that kind of like, I don't know, social guile or whatever. I think it's like a cool talent.

I don't necessarily like having it practiced on me. Oh, no, but I like, but I like watching it happen to characters and stories that happened 300 years ago. Yeah, cool. No, it's really, it's really lovely. One of the first things that Cheng Yi Xiao does is she sets up a law code for the entire squadron. So we're talking like 70,000 men. It's a lot of people. Yes.

She comes in with a few hard and fast rules. And when I say hard and fast, I mean, there's not a judging jury. It like, you broke the rule, you are decapitated. That is. That's hard and fast. That is hard. That is fast. So one of the first things that she does is she creates this 80 20 rule, which means that any junk or any squadron that attacks and

pillages or steals, whatever, all of the booty that comes through 20% will go to the agents who pirated it. And then 80% of it needs to go into a collective fund. That is for the entire pirate Confederacy. And if you break that rule off with your head, you're done. That's a pile. Yo, ho, ho. I know totally with that. So this 80 20 situation, very strict, but it does like 20% is not a bad cut.

If you're the lowly pirate who's, you know, committing this heinous crime, 80% though is also enough to have you invested in the Confederacy, because that means, wait, you're owed something. I'm coming back. We're not done here. Kind of vibe. Do you know what I mean? Sure. No.

No, okay. No, I don't get it. This is too high level. But, but like the thing about me too is that like, I'm not fantastic at strategy games in the way that you like, not to toot my own horn. I've got a good vocabulary and I sound smart when I talk. Oh, you're a fucking genius. If you put me next to a chessboard, I might as well be like, I don't know, a French bulldog.

I don't get it. Adorable, but heavy breathing. So to, to ask me to wrap my head around the machinations of a notoriously good strategist from Chinese history, mind you, is it's the people who invented strategy because it's, it's tough. She's maybe at a higher level than me. I mean, I think she's working at a higher level than all of us. I will say that.

So as long as you take that away, I think, I think you've taken all that you need away. The 80, 20 thing is the thing. Yeah. So that's, that's one of the first rules she puts in place. She also sets up a rule in which you are, if you were to, to abandon or, you know, go AWOL on your squadron or your ship or your superior. I'm going to assume this is death to deserters. Actually, no, they, they aren't killed, but their ears are cut off and they're

paraded through the ranks. That's tough. Yeah. It's real tough, real, real tough. This is pretty violent shit. No, don't forget, please. Don't forget, these are pirates. Like when they are, when they are collecting booty, it's not like they're

like knocking and being like, hello, if I had their digging it up on a sandy beach with a shovel and you know what I mean? And then it's like a big clam shell. Like that's, that's the vibe. Well, that's why it's buried because they raided, pillaged, raped a whole bunch of people in order to get it. So then I had to bury it. Oh, I had such an animal crossing idea of what this was and it isn't that at all.

It's probably like we're disemboweling happening. A lot more, a lot more, yeah, severed ears, disemboweling, that kind of thing. Yes. Generally, these two rules in particular are kind of shaping the whole law code system so that each and every pirate is making a pledge of loyalty to the overall system, to the overall pirate confederacy, rather. It's a cult. It's always a cult.

But no, well, okay, I'll counter that because it's to the overall pirate confederacy and not to an individual that you have, it's not to your captain that saved your life for blah, blah, blah. So it's, so it's Lululemon. It's a Lululemon. Okay, I got you. Sorry, you proceed. All these pirates are wearing Lululemon leggings, but it shifts the dynamic away

from the typical idea of a pirate that's like disorganized and unlawful. I'm just going to kill people and take, there's like a very regimented system. That is what pirates say. I know. You felt like you were there. One dope thing that Ching-Yee Sau includes in these law codes is pirates who commit sexual assault against women are immediately decapitated. That is not going to happen on her watch.

If a pirate has consensual sex with a woman, then they need to be wed. And he needs to remain faithful to her. Wow. Wow. She's, she left that floating brothel and she was like, that's not happening again. Even if the consenting couple has sex and it's like found out within the pirate confederacy, if they refuse to get married, if they're like, no, we're not going to do it, then both of them will be punished.

I'm going to assume that's a decapitation. That seems to, that seems to be a favorite. That is, uh, that's, that's a highlight. Yes. Oh my God. Yeah. Or they can get married. Do you want to be decapitated or we should rather just get married.

How many people do you think this woman or people acting on her behalf killed? Just ballpark it. Oh gosh. We're talking some pretty high population numbers here. So a million. Jeez. Okay. Yeah.

No, I, it's, it's got to be quite a bit. She's coming in hot with all of these law codes, right? Yes. Yes. But she has Ching Bao at her side. Okay. So Ching Bao to, to remind you he was the adopted son and now she's in a relationship with him.

He's the leader of the red squadron. He's, he's her little fire in the attic. Exactly. And he is very closely tied to the law codes, meaning that he presents them to the crews, he's this trusted male figure. So if he is saying these things, then people are going to, you know, it's not just her kind of cooking these up and bringing them. He is also very much connected to it.

So there's a lot of stability in the law codes when he comes through with him. And so he's almost working like a pressure valve for her. Any dissension can kind of be like, well, Ching Bao's on board. So shut your face, right? He's also entering this phase where he much prefer being loved than feared. Oh, me too. I want to be loved too, Ching Bao. So he's out there.

He starts wearing these like very elaborate, gorgeous purple robes and like black turbans. Oh my, that's his route to being loved. He's like, this situation needs an ornate turban. I'm going to look for life. A fashion look is what the situation means. I saw some silk armadis in my closet, call my name. Exactly.

He also constructs a huge floating temple that is always accompanying his squadron. Sick. Exactly. So before every endeavor that these pirates go on, it is preyed upon. There's incense being burned. There are priests finding out if this is the best route for the Confederacy to take. And so in this way, Ching Bao is bringing religion to the pirates with this huge, beautiful floating pagoda.

Fuck yes. However, he's also before any of those augurations occur, he has a little, a little private meeting with the priests being like, okay, so this is what's going to happen. We're going to do this and then we're going to go into this area. We're going to raid this area. We're going to set up this tax office. So all of that bingo.

We want that the raping of women or dissenting against your superiors. No, it's no good. Make sure that comes across with that. That's a big negative Tivo, right? All right. Thank you. So he has complete control over the religious fascinations of the pirate Confederacy. It's a cult.

It's a total cult. Yeah. No, you're right. It is that floating cult. It's a cult on water. I mean, yeah, it's beautiful. Do a beautiful thing. Not enough stories where everything's floating.

I say that's what's good about this episode. I agree. Everything is floating. I feel like I'm floating. I'm so happy. Or maybe I'm just on a boat. I don't know. According to historian Diane Murray, when Cheng Yi Cao spoke, the pirates listened.

She had control over this entire Confederacy. Everything was funneling to her. No, exactly. Exactly. She got to the point where she started to diversify their business. Let's get into crypto. NFTs, NFTs. No, well, I mean, in the early 1800s, I could definitely see NFTs crypto analogous to salt.

Of course. Yeah, the salt is the NFT of the pantry. They should put that on the containers now. Probably shouldn't. But that's okay. I'd buy that salt, though. That's a hip salt. It's almost too hip a salt would be.

I don't need my salt to be that hip. It's trying a little hard. This area of the coast has 22 salt turns, which is what these processing plants are called. And they're all shipping salt to Hong Kong. It's super easy for all these pirates to intercept because the Qing dynasty doesn't have much control over what's happening. And also there's just so goddamn many pirates. It's a lot of pirates, a Confederacy of pirates. So all the pirates roll through and they're like, yeah, you're not going to be shipping any of that salt unless you get permission from me.

And in order to do that, you need to pay a fee. Cheng Yi Sao specializing in the salt, but it expands to all different types of trade. She sets up a passport system. It's a lot of infrastructure. So much paperwork. It is insane. I do not understand how she does it. So you need to purchase a passport from her, from the pirate Confederacy in order to have any safe passage within this trading route, which is a huge trading route.

It's the Pearl River Delta. Like it feeds all of Eastern Southern China and these huge trading centers of Hong Kong and Macau and Taiwan, all of it. She's doing that. She builds such a huge operation that she starts to build tax offices on land. She's diversifying. Let's keep them on the water. Put them on the water. I always say keep a simple stupid, but she's smart.

So she knows something I don't. Maybe you don't want those tax papers getting wet. I understand that. Exactly. And all of these onshore tax centers too, they are requiring quote unquote taxes from everybody who's living on that coastal land as well. So we're not just talking about ship trading at this point. We're talking about the sheep farmers who are just coastal, right? They're paying taxes in order to be protected from the pirates.

They're being extorted by pirates. Yes, yes, but in a very sophisticated system. The Qing Navy, so the Imperial Navy is being ordered to fucking do something about this because this is getting a little out of hand, don't you think? Business is booming. We should do something about this. Yes, but the Imperial Navy is outnumbered three to one. So for every one naval ship under the Qing Dynasty, there are three pirate ships with highly trained, highly organized and like paperworked, heavy pirates. So all the Qing naval officers are just kind of like, you know, the winds aren't super great.

I think I'm just going to stay here. There's historical reports of these naval officers sabotaging their own vessels, so they do not have to go out on the water. Better operation. They'd be decapitated for that. This is my input. This place is looking pretty slack. I think we need a few more decapitations around here till morale improves. And even though this pirate Confederacy is so tightly run, and we talked about this a little earlier, they are excessively brutal.

There is no lying about that. When they attack somebody at sea, first the pirates apparently would drink a concoction of palm wine, like a bucket wine, mixed with gunpowder. Okay. So it's just like the monster and dirty G-drink of the early 1800s of China Sea. They were just getting amped. It was their pre-workout. They were just getting fucking buck wild. Go in there with a fucking barrel, like Donkey Kong, and just smush.

Yes, Mentos in fucking Coke. A favorite weapon of the pirate Confederacy was something called a Jing-Gao, which was an eight-foot musket-like device that had to be held by three men. It was so extra. So fucking extra. These guys would have these like huge machete-type swords. They would dive into the water and like climb the vessel that they were going to overtake and hop on board and, I don't know, amped up on gunpowder and wine and just like fucking wreck havoc. They had handmade grenades that were ceramic devices filled with gunpowder. Ooh, ceramic.

That's classy. Yeah, they had their moments. They had a tactic of using fire ships, which were like old out-of-commission boats that they'd fill with straw and light on fire and send over to the boats so that those boats would catch on fire. I'm thinking about the McBarge. Right, it's the McBarge, but on fire. Yes. If you were attacked and you were a merchant just doing your shoobs and you did not have your paperwork in order, most likely it would be very traumatic and aggressive and you would pay up and that would be it. Your life would be spared.

If you were part of the Imperial Navy, however, and you were boarded by the pirate Confederacy, you would be nailed by your feet to the ship deck, chopped into pieces. And thrown overboard. Maybe your feet would stay on the deck. I don't know. Yeah, because they had been nailed there. Yes. That's a tough way to go. So you can imagine why the Imperial Navy is like, no, the wins.

No, yeah, the boilers. Why got a hole? Oh, it's, you know, Tuesday, right? Like, yeah. Listen, man, just watch Inception. So the pirate Confederacy is so feared and so overwhelming of this trading area that at a certain point, Chiang Pao comes through the city of Canton, he tax up a few posters that are like, in the next week or so, we're going to come through and we're going to attack you. Apparently the city fucking clears out. There's no one there.

Everybody just gives up. White flags it. They can take over Canton like that. Not a problem. Wow. The Qing Navy tries to set up something when they come through, when the pirate Confederacy comes through and tries to take over Macau, but it's a total flop for the Qing Dynasty Navy. The pirate Confederacy is able to capture five U.S. ships.

U.S. ships. U.S. ships. Yes. I forgot. Jefferson. Yes.

Yeah. Benny Fran, Glen. I should not be American. So they take over five U.S. ships as well as a brig owned by a Portuguese governor. So like some big honk show. This is no international incident. This is now an international incident.

They're also able to blockade this whole mission trip that's come up from Thailand that the Qing Navy has requested as well. So it's getting it's getting international. They are not only able to overrun the shipping channels, but the land area and the Qing Navy and all of its external allies. My thought is that perhaps once having been so disempowered in her previous life, Cheng Yi Cao just looks at the situation and goes, fuck it, let's see how much power I can get. This is how many fucks I gave. Yeah. On the one hand, I want to like caution her about flying too close to the sun here because like if you get real annoying to too many people,

eventually something might happen to you. But then also I'm like, girl boss, yes, decapitate him, queen, like, you know what I mean? So get yours, dude, you're there, do it. No, it's totally true. Your note about like, this is getting international, that's important because this is like 1809 and the Qing dynasty. So the Chinese official government is starting to change their tactics. They're no longer viewing the pirate Confederacy as bandits, so, you know, individual pirating entities, right? No, this is an organization.

These are rebels of the state. These are rebels. Oh, yeah, that'll do it. So and now they're entering, yeah, so it's almost like entering this phase of civil war that's happening. Goodness. Yes, which we saw in the Taishan rebellion that was happening. So it's like, oh, shit, history repeating. The Qing dynasty gets so desperate that even though they had a long history of not having anything to do with foreigners,

closing that door and throwing away the key, now they're like, fuck, where's the key? Maybe we should get some, some U.S., some British, some Portuguese in to help us to defeat this pirate Confederacy. Because Qing Yisau is fucking handing our butts to us. Yeah, I was gonna say, it sounds like I can't remember any instance of the Qing dynasty getting a win in this story so far. It sounds like. No, and they get double-fucked because the East India Company is like, oh, sure, well, we'll come in. We'll help you. And then immediately they start trading and they start building a revenue stream out of China, exporting all of that and importing what they ever they want.

But they're doing nothing to defeat Qing Yisau because she is untouchable. We love a road. We love an untouchable road. It's great. I love it. Qing Yisau, at this point, well, I should say, we know she is not a dummy whatsoever. And your cautionary instincts to advise her to like, don't piss too many people off. Dial it down to a nine.

Go open more tax, get into crypto, get into, I've been saying it. Just get into crypto. It's so obvious to me. I mean, the time machine must have been working, Taylor, because she listens to you. She takes your advice. She doesn't. I don't know if she buys crypto. They shouldn't have been some crypto with her little things on it because it would be hot.

No, but what she starts to realize is that this thing is getting so, so big and the Qing dynasty by calling in outsiders, they're opening a new door to this whole relationship. And they have started to reach out to individual leaders of the squadrons. So sports day team leaders. And they're saying, Hey, hey, hey, if you abandon the Confederacy, then we will give you clemency. We, you can keep everything you have. We'll give you a title in the Navy, whatever, whatever you want. Just say no.

And Qing Yisau will hang your nuts from a ceiling fan. Like no, totally. Yeah. So Qing Yisau is very aware of the writing on the wall. She's like, you know what? I don't need to keep doing this. There's no reason. Obviously I'm the baddest bitch the world has ever seen.

So I don't need to prove, I don't need to prove myself to any motherfucker. So she literally walks into a government office. She gets to Canton, gets off a boat, and she's just like, hello, welcome. And I'm ready. I'm ready to begin negotiations. This is what I want. I want, I want 80 junks of my own, me and Qing Pao. We're going to have 80, 80 of our own ships and keep 5,000 of our own men.

Qing Pao, you're going to let him into the military and he's going to be a lieutenant. He's going to start at a lieutenant's. It sounds like they could use him. Obviously they're Navy fucking socks. Yes. She's also like, my men, they get to keep all their loot, all the booty, every last cent, and they'll be able to enter the, enter the military as well. You don't have to start them off so high.

They can be, they can enter the bottom, work their way up if they want. I'm a reasonable woman. Okay. But persuasive. She's a very persuasive woman. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

The governor general is like, what? Are you for real? Like, no. You'll have to be punished in some way. That's ridiculous. And she's like, oh, is that ridiculous? Okay. Bye-bye.

And so she leaves and then of course more skirmishes are happening. The Confederacy is like, nothing has stopped. All the plans that were planned months ago because she's very on top of it are still going and the Navy is still sabotaging their own ships because they're like, they're shitting in their pants, sitting in a cafe being like, I don't want to leave. It's fine. Fear and jealousy. Yes.

She goes back to Canton to the official headquarters of the Qing Navy. This time she comes with a group of women and children, the families from the pirates that she lives with. Which kind of side note here is kind of a distinction of this pirate culture from maybe like a European or like the Caribbean New World one where like men were off on their own. Like this tradition actually, no men, women, children all lived on the same boats. They all did it together.

Kind of dope. Hence how one could kind of come from a pirate dynasty. So she walks in with all of these unarmed women and children. I'm sure they're like wearing white flowers in their hair. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, we are the world. And she's like, so I want 80 junks, 5,000 men. I want Cheng Bao to be a lieutenant in the Navy and I want all my men to retain

their booty and have the chance to enter the military. And they're like, we haven't changed anything. Like there's this not a negotiation. And she's like, correct. And they're like, fuck it. Okay, we'll do it. Ha ha, get it. Good for her, good for her.

She is 35 years old and she retires. The startup really paid off. Just like, let that sink in right now. Let that sink in. Yeah, that crushed me a little. But also I'm not willing to kill like roughly a million people either. So I say let her have it. She's going to go places I'm not, clearly.

There was one other aspect of the negotiation that she wanted, which was she had the Qing dynasty evaporate the adoption process that brought Cheng Bao to be her son. So by evaporating that, they were able to marry. Interesting. So she marries him. Yes. She makes it legal. It's cute.

It's really adorable. Put a ring on it. Exactly. And Cheng Bao is able to enter as a lieutenant into the Navy. She stays by his side the entire time. There is pretty, I mean, it's not like, of course, it's not official historical record, but it would be no surprise if she was instrumental in his astronomical rise through the Navy and through the ranks.

He goes on and becomes, you know, fancy food, this, that. I don't know all the military rankings. So, you know, he gets up there. Four stars, five stars. Five, 10. He gets a peacock feather, which apparently within the Qing Navy is like a very high reward of like honor and, I don't know, being, being dope. I'm not sure.

Not dying and serving your country and living. Most likely she has more than one, but the record I think is confirmed for one son with Cheng Bao. And sadly though, Cheng Bao is killed in the line of duty after his death. She returns to where she grew up. She comes on home. The historical record kind of loses track of her a little bit because there's not much to kind of place her there.

Yeah. She's not aligned with a man. So that's a fact. Yeah. It's most likely that she was an advisor to the Chinese military in the first opium war because she was such a strategic badass bitch. Right. There is official records of her entering a lawsuit or filing a lawsuit against

a man who owed money to Cheng Bao, but, and kind of the larger story, it really means nothing. It's just like the one little like drip of official record that we get. No, I like you emphasize that because like she hasn't really been one to settle things via lawsuits prior to this. No. Yeah. Maybe, maybe she's chained.

Who knows if that lawsuit was like straight down the middle of what she was doing because it is confirmed that at a later age, she opened an infamous gambling den and they highly likely ran opium out of it. So you never really leave the biz do you? No, no, she retires at 35. Great. Her husband died. She has no one to mastermind the rise of to power.

And she probably got bored and she was like, fuck it, opium. I bet she made some bank. I bet she had a lot of fun. I'm sure her outfits were fantastic. I just like, absolutely, I probably had like some gorgeous sequined thing and like, like a fancy like martini like drinking just like smoking chain smoking constantly, mahjong everywhere. It was probably dope.

She probably looked great the whole time. I'm content that she would run a fabulous stand of inequity. Hmm. Cheng Yi Cao dies at the ripe old age of 69. I'm just going to bad ass. One last mic drop on the way out. You'll have to see it right in Macau too. She's just like, okay, like it.

Yeah. I mean, she has this gambling, you know, situation happening, but she is, she's not in prison. She is with a beautiful big family surrounding her in all the metrics of successfulness equals happiness. Like she's ticked that one off. She has shit ton of money, a lot of prestige. This, yeah, this huge, huge fleet and confederacy that was behind her.

You're still talking about her 300 years later. And she hit this podcast. Yeah, exactly. This is how you know you made it. Yeah, exactly. When we talk about you, whoo, whoo. And that is the story of the most successful pirate in history. That is a very successful pirate.

There's a very successful pirate. I think what I particularly love about this story though is that. Yes. Pirates in my, in my brain, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Morgan on the bottle of rum, black beards, black beard, blue beard, red beard, you know, sports day, but beards, right? That's, you know, in this strange kind of North American way. Those are kind of like fun stories and da, da, da.

But I always think of like cruel, misogynistic, unwashed, pretty gross, all kinds of dick diseases. Oh, so many. It's really sad if it weren't so gross. But then the greatest pirate, like on, on a few different metrics, on, on some metrics that are like kind of hard to nitpick, right? The greatest pirate is this badass woman who led a confederacy that was larger than any of those dickholes could ever dream of.

So I want to end with something, but I've been thinking about the whole time you've been telling this story is just like, what's the absolute worst way that we could bring this to an end? And I decided that I would ask you to do your best Captain Jack Sparrow impersonation. Please. Oh, fuck. Please and thank you. It was like a Keith Richards, like,

oh, uh, boats. Thank you. Yeah, that'll do. Wait, what about you? That's, that's Ozzy Osbourne. It's a decent Ozzy Osbourne in my defense. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you

find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode were historian Diane Murray's article, One Woman's Rise to Power, Cheng Yi's Wife and the Pirates, published in the journal Historical Reflections, volume eight, number three, Women in China,

Current Directions in Historical Scholarship, published in the fall of 1981. I listened to Dig, a history podcast, and the episode title was Dragon Lady of the South China Sea, Chen Yi Sao, Woman Commander of Chinese Pirate Confederation, aired December 6th, 2021. I listened to another podcast, You're Dead to Me, on BBC Radio 4. The episode was called Chen Yi Sao, and it aired November 26th, 2021. I looked over the Wikipedia articles, Chen Yi Sao, Tay Song Rebellion, and Qing Dynasty.

The interstitial music you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins, and the song that you are listening to now is Tea Street by Brian Steele. End note here for y'all. Those law codes that I mentioned earlier, the rules about 80-20 with Booty, and marrying a woman if you sleep with her, and very strict decapitation rules if you don't follow these law codes. I attributed those law codes to Chen Yi Sao and described how Cheng Bao was instrumental in implementing those laws.

Well, there is other research that attributes those laws, not to Chen Yi Sao, but Cheng Bao, the son, turn lever, turn husband of Chen Yi Sao. The error is attributed to a sensationalist translation of a primary count into English, just so that we're all clear. And in the know, those rules might not be completely Chen Yi Sao's. Obviously, I went with the sensationalist count. Okay, thanks. Bye.