1. Huang Bamei, known as Huang P'ei-mei or Huang P'emei, was a Chinese pirate leader who served as a naval commander in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, aligned with the Republic of China but at times of dubious allegiance.
Huang Bamei earned the nickname "Two Guns" owing to her use of two guns in battle.
Huang Bamei began her piracy career in 1931, raiding along the coasts of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
Pardoned, Huang Bamei was later recruited by the military again in 1948 to fight against the communists in the Chinese Civil War.
Huang Bamei aided in the defense of the Dachen Islands and Taiwan but largely shifted away from military operations after turning down an offer from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951.
Huang Bamei later became an influential member of a women's organization founded by Soong Mei-ling, wife of the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, and worked to take care of refugees in Taiwan.
Huang Bamei was born in 1906 to a poor peasant family in Jinshan County, Jiangsu, near Shanghai.
Huang Bamei's name was actually Cuiyun, but she was more widely known as Bamei, which meant "eight" or "eighth sister".
Huang Bamei's family were businesspeople; Huang's mother owned a dram shop at which her father operated a gambling table.
Huang Bamei had started practicing with guns as early as at the age of twelve and had mastered using two guns simultaneously at the age of fifteen.
Almost a year later in 1932, Huang Bamei emerged again as a pirate.
Huang Bamei is recorded to have plundered, kidnapped and murdered traders and ordinary people and in one notable incident boarded a steamer and robbed the eight wealthy families onboard.
Huang Bamei was active along the coasts of the Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
Huang Bamei was captured by the local Jiangsu authorities at the Shanghai International Settlement in July 1933.
Huang Bamei had invented a fake persona as "Woman He-Zhang", claiming that she had a six-year-old child with her husband "Zhang Jinsheng" and was taking care of her old mother at her home, and that she had never known Lianyuan.
Huang Bamei, owing to her criminal past, did not formally join the army but organised a group of followers and allied herself with local military forces in the Shanghai area.
Huang Bamei was captured by Japanese forces in Pudong in August 1938 and was the subject of a propaganda campaign to paint her as a traitor solely aligned with Japan.
Huang Bamei earnt the nickname "Two Guns" during this time due to jumping onto enemy ships while carrying two guns.
In 1940, Huang Bamei joined the army of Mao Sen, a major Chinese intelligence leader and commander who had recently escaped Japanese imprisonment.
In Sen's writings, Huang Bamei is described as "a common woman who was kind and gentle and had Buddhist beliefs", once more downplaying her career as a pirate.
Huang Bamei was assigned a growing number of troops, becoming a guerrilla commander despite objections from some that a woman should not be a wartime leader.
The forces under Huang Bamei, who enjoyed being called "Commander Huang Bamei", grew considerably in number.
At the height of her power and influence, Huang Bamei commanded 50,000 people, had a fleet of 70 ships and was considered the most famous pirate in China.
Huang Bamei led her forces in several battles, particularly in western Zhejiang.
Huang Bamei captured some towns in the region and expanded her control to encompass a relatively large local area.
Huang Bamei aided Chinese forces through escorting agents and covert operatives into Japanese-occupied Shanghai.
Huang Bamei was briefly captured by the communist New Fourth Army in 1942 but released after being given a "brief education".
Huang Bamei was assisted by the United States military and was at one point given four new pistols and eight new submachine guns by the Americans.
Huang Bamei was sometimes promoted and publicised in Chinese propaganda.
Huang Bamei returned to her hometown, where she was appointed as the leader of a minor military unit called the Pinghu Community Defense Corps.
Only a few months into this role, Huang Bamei revolted against the government, bringing many of the Pinghu Community Defense Corps and a large number of weapons with her into Lake Tai and resuming her career as a pirate.
Huang Bamei raided local communities and sent her followers out on missions to assess the movements of government forces sent to suppress her.
Huang Bamei was eventually defeated by government forces but was not punished for her crimes.
Huang Bamei's hotel became a popular resort, visited by reporters, writers, diplomats and government officials.
Huang Bamei invested in real estate, opened several shops, gave talks about her battles against the Japanese during the war, and was elected as a representative to the council of Pinghu County.
Huang Bamei was once more recruited by the Chinese military in 1948, invited to join a bandit-suppression committee to help make battle preparations against Ding Xishan, a bandit-turned-commander for the communist forces.
Huang Bamei was tasked to collect intelligence information and mobilise guerrilla forces in Pinghu, Haiyang and Jinshan.
Huang Bamei was among the last to leave, staying for a few weeks before leading the last remaining defenders to the Dachen Islands.
Huang Bamei was reported by the United Press to have stated that she considered Taiwan itself to be "unconquerable".
In between military missions, Huang Bamei served the government in other ways.
When Soong Mei-ling, wife of the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, created the Chinese Women's Anticommunist and Anti-Soviet-Union Association in 1950, she invited Huang Bamei to serve on the organization's committee.
Huang Bamei was one of the first approached, being contacted in 1951, but she was advised by her friends and by some government officials not to join, perhaps out of suspicion of the CIA and due to preferring to work directly with the nationalist forces.
Huang Bamei spent most of her time on the Dachen Islands.
Huang Bamei founded a nursing home, a kindergarten and a middle school.
Huang Bamei was sometimes depicted in Taiwanese propaganda films as a national heroine.
Huang Bamei was portrayed in the film by the Japanese actress Miyuki Takakura.
The film caused outrage in Taiwan and Huang Bamei hired a lawyer to sue the production company behind the film, Shaw Brothers Studio, for "slandering a national heroine".
Huang Bamei's body was moved to the Chinese mainland on 2 April 1990 and buried together with her husband Xie Yousheng.
Huang Bamei has garnered a positive remembrance in both China and Taiwan, though her role and actions are cast differently.
In China, Huang Bamei is remembered as an anti-Japanese heroine, ignoring her later allegiance to Taiwan and her later fights against the communists.
Since the last western historical records of Huang Bamei coincided with the ascendancy of the People's Republic of China, some researchers believed that Huang Bamei had been defeated and killed by communist forces in the 1950s.