Cheng Shih, Chinese pirate queen

Cheng Shih is a rather interesting character. She is compared to Mamselle Claudelle at one point. What do you think of this?

I thought that the best scene with her is when she allows Jacky to go back to the Lorelei Lee. It completes the characterization of her. Over all, she is one of my favorite characters because she changed so much in her small amount of time present in the book.

:agree: I liked that part too. But ugh..for some reason when she came into the picture I was like WHAT?! :o Nooooo! Things were going so well until then...but hey, what else can I expect? She seemed scary though, like do one thing wrong and your dead.

I wonder if she'll be in the next book at all?

I liked Cheng Shih. I thought she added a lot to the story, and I think she really showed Jacky a lot about life.

My favorite part with her in it is probably when she doesn't believe Jacky's story, so Jacky dives in and tricks them. Very clever.

But my favorite thing that Cheng Shih does is when she lets Jacky go.

Cheng Shih is an awesome character. Anf this is a bit OT but I did a research paper on her for social studies (before she was even introduced in the books) and she's really interesting. In this time, she was like one of the very few female pirates and she ran FLEETS of ships and contolled thousands of men.

And I like the way Mr. Meyer portrayed her in the books and I like that Jacky got her hair like her's but I'm not too happy about the new tattoo. Next thing you know.... Jacky'll be covered in them. -_-

Really? I like the tattoo, it's the hair I'm not a fan of.

What I'm wondering, even though I know PoTC isn't very historically accurate, but would Cheng Shih be compared to the female Asian pirate from the third movie? That women was the first I thought of when this new character was introduced.

I also like the tattoo. I just don't see the hair working well on Jacky.

Cheng Shih was called "Mistress Ching" in PotC. Cheng Shih is sometimes called Ching Shih. I remember her being portrayed as an older blind woman in PotC, but how old was she supposed to be in WotLL?

Shae, that's really cool how you wrote a research paper on her. I checked the public library and I couldn't find any books on Cheng Shih.

I found this short, but interesting wikipedia article about her. It even mentions Mr.Meyer! Although he changed it to Cheng, with an E instead of an I.
I never noticed her in pirates of the carribean though, i'll have to watch the movie again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih

So I was reading something for school about Chinese foot binding, and I was thinking ... surely Cheng Shih doesn't have bound feet if she can do swordfighting and stuff. But then I wondered how she managed to avoid having that done to her when she was a little girl.

?

Okay don't hate me for this, but I wasn't a huge fan of Cheng Shih.

I'll admit that she was a cool character, because she was a pirate and everything. And she had control over so many men. (I kind of saw similarities with Jacky at that point.)
And I understand that she was so controlling because of the way she was brought up, it's her culture, etc. But mostly she made me angry because Jacky was pretty much her prisoner. She treated her like a pet, which was kind of weird, and I was super pissed off when she whipped her.
(mamselle treated Jacky in a similar way, but it wasn't controlling at all.)

I'm not sure if we'll see her again, but I wouldn't be too torn up if we didn't.

Apparently, some groups in China that were not ethnic Chinese (such as the Mongols and the Manchus) did not practice footbinding. Perhaps Cheng Shih is a Manchu? Also, apparently, footbinding was less common in South China than in North China. Hmmm.

I respected Cheng Shih a lot...she did what she had to do to keep her fleet and her reputation...and at the end, she showed her nice side

Funny, when I read about Cheng Shih in WotLL, I immediately thought of the woman Chinese pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean. But I figured, naw, it can't be.

After reading the Wikipedia article...I guess it can be. Neat!

Cheng Shih is a really interesting character. She is actually based of from Madame Ching in POTC. I have a few books about her and other famous women at home. She commanded 400 ships with both men and women when her husband died. She didn't care what others thought about her. She actually lived a good life and grew old in Singapore and died there. I think she ran a brothel or something like that.

I didn't like the hair shaving thing either. Tattoo is cool though.

I think she's not one of the best characters in WotLL, I mean that I would have preferred Jacky to stay on the Lorelei Lee instead of her staying with Cheng Shih, but Cheng Shih is interesting and the tattoo is cool.

I wish they had a tatoo for that as well.
I thought that Jacky had no choice but to go with Cheng Shih when the Lorelei Lee was captured, if that's what you mean.