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Ching Shih went from being a prostitute who worked in a Canton brothel to a notorious pirate who controlled the Red Flag Fleet. Legend has it that pirate Zhèng Yi, or Cheng I, had married Ching Shih when he raided her brothel, and she had then taken over his fleet.
Chinese pirate and Ming dynasty leader Zheng Zhilong was baptized by the Europeans who had employed him as a boy. He was assigned the duty of safeguarding the borders from the Dutch, and later joined the Qing dynasty. He was assassinated for his son’s refusal to submit to the Qings.
Chinese bandit and warlord Zhang Zuolin initially ruled over Manchuria and then became the military dictator of the Republic of China. Later, the Nationalist Party’s march into China forced him to move his troops out of Beijing. He died when his train became the target of a bomb blast.
Once a successful entrepreneur who was named by Forbes in 2001 as the second richest man in China, Chinese-Dutch businessman Yang Bin fell from grace in 2002 after he was arrested on charges of tax evasion. He was fined for 2.3 million renminbi and sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2003. He was later released from prison in 2016.
