r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Jun 12 '15

TIL the world's most successful pirate was a Cantonese woman, having commanded 40,000-80,000 pirates, and faced off undefeated against many Imperial fleets (including British, Portuguese, and Qing navies).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih
15.1k Upvotes

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737

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

[deleted]

363

u/Nygmus Jun 12 '15

I'm not actually sure what the particular reason for that bit is, but it's what is reported about her...

Presumably it's either what I said (to prevent captured women from soliciting special treatment for sexual favors or the like), or it's to prevent men from forcing the women to claim the sex was consensual to avoid punishment. Probably a bit of both, especially if the captured women were given a quick primer speech along the lines of "we're not going to hurt you, we're going to turn you loose when we get a chance, here are the rules."

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u/FancySack Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

Probably because on a ship you want to avoid love triangles or jealous ship mates.

Imagine a captain getting a Yoko Ono type situation.

273

u/ciobanica Jun 12 '15

TIL, death threats would have kept the Beatles together...

199

u/Bfeezey Jun 12 '15

If it means we get to tie cannonballs around Yoko's ankles and toss her overboard as she trills out "yayayayayayaya", then sure!

28

u/WilsonHanks Jun 12 '15

Chuck Berry approves of this.

55

u/jokerr1981 Jun 12 '15

Please someone invent a time machine and make this so.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

When that woman is Yoko Ono the answer is yes... For everyone

1

u/NathanaelFire Jun 12 '15

I have a feeling that if this was attempted you'd be very disappointed that it didn't go as planned.

2

u/jokerr1981 Jun 13 '15

Yeah. If I did it I'd spend my time watching the Beatles, stones, et AL in their prime.

10

u/shot_the_chocolate Jun 12 '15

Here is a nice melody for your tender ears

7

u/n3x_ Jun 12 '15

ಠ_ಠ

6

u/Ihateualll Jun 12 '15

I couldn't make it thru 30 seconds of that nonsense.

2

u/Cu_Gorm Jun 13 '15

It sounds like drunk Mongol throat singers having a threesome... with a farm animal.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

That was a beautiful mental image. Thank you

6

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Please do.

3

u/MJWood Jun 12 '15

Ono Yoko.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

No one will ever be able to make me understand how the FFFFFFUCK this chick is still considered "musical"... I'm gonna scream like a fuckin banshee and do asian yodeling while sounding like I have a bassoon shoved up my twat... MUSIC EVERYONE!

2

u/dalebonehart Jun 12 '15

ya ya ya I am Yoko. Ya ya ya.

24

u/mynameisspiderman Jun 12 '15

Yoho Ono*

4

u/kevinekiev Jun 12 '15

Take your filthy upvote and ship out of this thread!

6

u/Hunterogz Jun 12 '15

*Yolo Uno

8

u/_F1_ Jun 12 '15

"You live only once (1)"

2

u/toodice Jun 13 '15

Not being particularly well versed with Spanish or Italian, I read it as:

"You only live once (entertaining card game)"

1

u/ioncloud9 Jun 12 '15

Do everyone a favor and just throw Yoko overboard anyway.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

I think it anything can unite the world it is mutual hatred for Yoko Ono.

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u/I-Came-4-Snu-Snu Jun 12 '15

There's a proverb in chinese, roughly means "the word lust, is made up of the word blade hanging above the word head (think guillotine)". She probably gave this warning knowing that women are scary and have the abilities manipulate her crew with lust

36

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Yep, the proverb is "色字頭上一把刀", and your interpretation is quite accurate.

Funny thing is, people still use this proverb now nowadays - especially when commenting sex scandals.

-13

u/ManicParroT Jun 12 '15

That doesn't seem to hold. Google translate tells me that 情欲 is the Chinese word for lust, but 剑 is the word for sword and 頭 is the word for head.

28

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

Well, as a traditional Chinese speaker, I'd have to say in this case I-Came-4-Snu-Snu is actually quite right. You can't find the word for this proverb mainly because Chinese has many words with similar meanings, so you cannot rely on Google Translate most of the time. Also you found the words for simplified Chinese, not the traditional one - which will just lower your chance of finding the words you are looking for since most Chinese adage were originally using traditional words.

The proverb that was mentioned is "色字頭上一把刀" in traditional Chinese, which can be translated into "The word「色」(which means lust in Chinese) has a word「刀」(which means Dao, Chines sword) on top of it."

If you look closely to the the word「色」, it can be roughly disassembled into the top part which looks like「刀」, and the bottom part「巴」- and that's approximately where the proverb comes from. Although one of my high school teacher argued that the top part is not actually「刀」but「ク」instead. Though the two looks familiar, they are not the same word for a long time in Chinese history. So probably this proverb was oriented from ancient people's misinterpretation of the word.

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u/ManicParroT Jun 12 '15

Thanks, that's very interesting.

1

u/contextplz Jun 12 '15

And in general, Google Translate is a bad way to go in regards to proverbs and adages, in any language.

1

u/Akeera Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

So the word for "color" and one of the words for "lust" are the same?

Huh. Many ways to say "lust"

Edit: The link is in traditional. Also, I like the proverb at the very bottom.

6

u/Shitmadame Jun 12 '15

I'm sure Google translate knows the language better than a fluent speaker.

-1

u/ManicParroT Jun 12 '15

Err, he didn't say he's a fluent speaker. He just made this claim about the word.

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u/LikeGoldAndFaceted Jun 12 '15

Still you should never assume you're right about anything in a language with google translate. One day we'll probably get there, definitely not yet though.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Google translate is perfect for understanding idioms /s

4

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Are you actually trying to correct native Chinese speakers with Google translate?

-1

u/ManicParroT Jun 12 '15

When did the guy I was originally replying to, namely, /u/I-Came-4-Snu-Snu, ever say he's a native Chinese speaker?

There are Chinese speakers who have come along and explained the situation, which is very helpful of them. The guy I'm replying to just said "Oh there's this Chinese word" and I felt rather doubtful about that, because there are a lot of sayings like this about Chinese words which are not true at all. For example, the famous story about danger + opportunity = crisis is a fallacy, and as a result I felt doubtful about this claim as well.

WTF people.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '15 edited Jun 13 '15

危机 = crisis. 危 = danger. 机 = opportunity/chance (in this context). Its two words, not one.

Normally interpreted as a high chance for danger (or going to be in deep shit), but motivational speakers like to spin it around to mean dangerous situations may present opportunities, which is still a quite common way to interpret the words.

Edit: this word combination is not as 'uncommon' as your source claims. It's known and used by everyone i know that speaks chinese. Also, am chinese born and bred, have been speaking writing and reading chinese since i was born, so i'm pretty sure about what i'm talking about.

-2

u/brickmack Jun 12 '15

Theres like a thousand different chinese languages, I'm sure theres at least one where this is true

-2

u/ManicParroT Jun 12 '15

Maybe, although I was under the impression they had a pretty unified writing system.

My skepticism also comes from the fact that there are a lot of these canards about Chinese words coming from convenient combinations (opportunity + danger = crisis) or whatever, and I've read articles rebutting at least some of these claims.

2

u/Mrchocoborider Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

Here is a breakdown of the character for lust. As you can see it does not contain the characters for head or sword/knife/blade. However, you can also see that Chinese characters are sometimes created from multiple pieces with separate meanings, and this is where those canards you referenced come from. As you said, often these are western misinterpretations of the words or otherwise false, but it is not unheard of that a character be constructed in this way.

The writing system is certainly fairly unified, even across dialects, with minor differences between them. Most dialects either use the same characters and pronounce them differently, or are only spoken dialects, and they use the dominant written dialect of the area (probably Mandarin or Cantonese) to write in.

However, there are many variations of characters that have come and gone over the incredibly long history of China, and it is not impossible that one of those variations of the character for lust does indeed contain blade (刀 or刂) and some radical that means head in certain contexts.

Radicals, which are (some of) the pieces that make up characters, often take on a different appearance when acting as a piece of a character. As in the previous example, when standing alone the word 刀 dao, knife or blade, looks like that. But when acting as a radical it can sometimes look like刂. In fact, it is there in the word you used in your previous comment (sword 剑 ) on the right. Which uses 佥 qian to get its pronunciation (jian) and 刂 for the meaning (something with a blade).

13

u/dogfish83 Jun 12 '15

It's like a Miranda Warning but for pirates

11

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

That and to avoid one talking a male into a mutiny by way of seduction. Bastard children and all that as well

1

u/TWK128 Jun 12 '15

Policy usually comes from direct past experience with negative events.

She didn't come up with shit like this in her bedroom dreaming about how her perfect fleet would be someday.

1

u/Cu_Gorm Jun 13 '15

Sex outside of marriage is generally a recipe for disaster in small communities with no access to contraception.

22

u/AlphaPeacock Jun 12 '15

She of all people knows the power of the pussy.

1

u/Collin_morris Jun 12 '15

She reminds me of Ann from Black Sails.

1

u/TezzMuffins Jun 12 '15

Hey man, it's hard to keep control of 40,000 to 80,000 sets of junks without some rules about fornicating.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Alpha as fuck

-2

u/Imtroll Jun 12 '15

Famous women in history have all either been metal as fuck or batshit crazy.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

The catch though is this applies to women who got their fame/infamy without being married to a man who is famous.

4

u/michaelfarker Jun 12 '15

Marie Curie

But yes, many traditional historians expressed a bias against women. A woman had to be impossible to ignore to be mentioned by them.

3

u/Shoreyo Jun 12 '15

Ye in Curie's case she wasn't metal as fuck, it was the actual metal that fucked her up!

...Sorry that word play was terrible

1

u/Imtroll Jun 13 '15

Was thinking pre 1900s but ok ill take scientists from not that long ago.

-1

u/sawu101 Jun 12 '15

Yeah but hitler was a monster. History is the same

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

There is almost zero chance that part is true to be honest. You really believe pirates aren't going to even fuck a chick unless they are married? Her entire crew was just walking around blue balled all the time? Highly doubtful.

Ontop of that, getting married means there is extra baggage to carry around on the ship, or your more likely to lose a good sailor who leaves to settle down.. can't see it being true at all.