WOMEN LEAD BANDITS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 936, 1 April 1930, Page 9

WOMEN LEAD BANDITS

AROUSE ADMIRATION OF REBEL ARMY CHIEFS SEA AND LAND EXPLOITS SHANGHAI, March 20. The emancipation of women in China has extended to the leadership of large pirate and bandit gangs. For several years two women about 30 years old have been the guiding influences in the operation of two large Chinese bands of criminals. One Is the chief of a pirate gang operating along the South China coast, and the other, a terrorist Amazon known as the Widow Chang, is the leader of a small bandit army in Western Honan Province. Several military leaders have sent soldiers to catch each of the women, hut without success. Both say they are invulnerable to bullets, and continue to stage raid after raid, taking what suits them and slaying all who offer resistance. BANDITRY AS REVENGE The Widow Chang is perhaps the better known of the strange pair. According to reports about her in the Chinese Press, she was once the wife of a wealthy merchant who was robbed and killed by bandits. She became partially insane, turned bandit as a means of revenge and now heads one of the largest gangs in Honan. So successful has; she been in her criminal ' enterprises that several Honan military authorities have made open attempts to recruit her, offering her a high rank if she would give up her life of banditry. A curt refusal has been her reply to all such advances. In some districts where she operates she is called Marshal Chang by the common people and. her subordinates, with whom she is exceptionally popular. Missionaries, who have sometimes been the objects of her raids, report that she plasters towns through which she passes with bright-coloured posters bearing such slogans as "Rob the rich” and “Save the poor.” With the exception of the fact that, she occasionally leads her pirates aboard large coastal steamers, the woman bandit leader in the South is largely a mystery. Once she created a sensation by taking her gang of bad men as passengers aboard the Deli Maru, a large Japanese ship, and sacking it after it was less than a day out of port. HELD AT PISTOL POINT This happened between Swatow and Hong-Kong, and the pirate chieftain, after seizing the officers and herding the crew aft, took possession of the ship. As it was loaded principally with matches and bulky foodstuffs and the passengers, who were mostly Chinese, possessed few valuables and money, she publicly gave vent to her disgust by tweaking the first mate’s nose. The piracy, she told the mate, had cost her 1,500 dollars, and she felt lucky to realise half that sum.

After her man had gone through the pockets and luggage of all the passengers on board, the woman leader mounted the bridge and, flourishing two automatic pistols, took possession. Two Sikh guards attempted to resist and she shot both of them, one dying a week later in a Hong-Kong hospital. For forty-eight hours she stood guard with her pirates and, according to reports, even took turns at the wheel, relieving the Japanese pilot, whom she kept on the job at the point of a pistol. Putting into a small bay above Hong-Kong, she took her men ashore and presumably fled into the Interior.

This is her last known adventure. Nothing has been heard from her since, hut the Canton and Hong-Kong authorities are not sure that she will not appear again before long. t