User:Mmarsy/Tcheng Yu-hsiu

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Tcheng Yu-hsiu (, 1891–1959), also known as Soumay Tcheng and Madame Wei Tao-ming, was the first female lawyer and judge in Chinese history.

Tcheng studied at the Faculty of Law of Paris, returned to Shanghai to practice law, was president of a court in the French concession, then served in the national Legislative Yuan, helping to draft the Chinese Republican era civil code. In 1919, she served on the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1931 to 1937 was president of University of Shanghai school of law.

Family and Education
Raised as a young girl in the paternal family home in Guangdong, Tcheng was first home-schooled and then was taken by her mother to enroll in a formal school in Beijing. Her revolutionary activities began at a young age. She refused to have her feet bound as she saw how the traditional practice had affected her mother who underwent the binding process as a child. She also refused to marry the man she was arranged to marry by her paternal grandmother because she thought his conservative upbringing and beliefs would be too incompatible with her own lifestyle. Her family sent her to a mission school in Tianjin, where she learned English but chose not to follow the religion. In 1912, she met the anarchist and revolutionary organizer Li Shizeng and enrolled in his preparatory school for Chinese students hoping to go to France on the Diligent Work Frugal Study program. The school was the first in China to be co-educational. She was one of the handful of women to go to France on the program.

The Revolution of 1911
Tcheng was a member of the Kuomintang, which was the Nationalist Party of China. After meeting the party's leader Sun Yat-sen, she dedicated herself to the revolutionary cause. Later she was involved in the attempted assassination of Yuan Shih-k'ai, who had taken power from Sun Yat-sen. Leading up to this event, bombs were hidden in Tcheng's suitcase on route to Beijing with the intention of using it against officials working for the Manchu. She fled to France after being notified that she was wanted for arrest by the government for her involvement with the planned attacks

World War I
By 1914, she had established herself in Paris, where historians believe she met other political figures, such as her fellow party member Wang Jingwei. It was difficult for Tcheng to adjust to her new life in France as she was not fluent in the language, but later on she considered the country to be similar in terms of politics and in spirit. She remained in France for the remainder of World War I. She pursued an education in law at the University of Paris, the Sorbonne and and enrolled a year into the war. She urged China to ally itself with the Allied Powers. China entered the war in the year 1917. Tcheng was invited to speak at a meeting held at the Sorbonne and acted as a spokesperson for her native country. The French minister of war was also present at this meeting.

Tcheng returned to China to aid in the war effort soon after, which resulted in over 100,000 Chinese men enlisting to support France in combat.

Paris Peace Conference
In 1919, due to her involvement in the 1911 Revolution and her French and English language skills, she was appointed as the first sole female Chinese delegate for the Paris Peace Conference along with chief Lu Zengxiang and six other male delegates as official attachés by the Beijing Government.

She travelled to the United States after the war in hopes of gaining allies in China's quest for sovereignty. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech gave China reason to believe that the United States would be supportive of their goals. However, at the Paris Peace Conference, it was proven otherwise. The United States was in favor of granting Shandong to Japan in fear agitating the nation. This decision was thought as a betrayal in the eyes of Chinese nationals.

Rosebush Gun Incident
The peacemakers in Paris decided to award Shandong Province to Japan after Japan took control of the peninsula from the Germans. Tcheng was very critical to this decision she join with Chinese students at home and abroad in protesting the signing of the Versaille Treaty in the belief that this agreement would encourage Japan to further reduce Chinese sovereighty. Due to the outrage mounting of pressure from Chinese students and workers, chief delegate Lu Zhengxiang alipped out of on June 27, 1919, on the eve of the signing ceremony. He was rumored to be in the Parisian suburb of St. Cloud intending to sign the agreement.

Upon discovering Lu’s location, Tcheng and her accomplices travelled to the St. Cloud residence to demand Lu refus to sign the treaty. With no answer from the chief delegate, sercretary carring a briefcase dashed from the building towards his car. Sensing something amiss, Tcheng broke off a rosebush branch roughly shaped like a gun and rubbed of with dirt. In her memoir she states:

“I stepped out of the shadows in front of him and pointed my rosebush gun right at him. He was so frightened that he inadvertently dropped the portfolio from his arm and immediately took flight.”

Tcheng and her group stood vigil over throughout the night. The next morning Lu heard them out and bend to their will. on June 28 1919, China would be the only Allied nation to not sign the Treaty of Versaille. Tcheng kept the rosebush gun as a historical memento and took it back to her family home in Shanghai, China, hiding it away in a drawer wrapped in a white cloth. The rosebush would sadly vanish when the Japanese looted her family home during World War II in 1937.

Later Years
Tcheng received her law doctorate from the Faculty of Law of Paris in 1926. Tcheng and her fellow law student and legal partner Wei Tao-ming would established a law practice in Shanghai. In the late 1920s, Tcheng and Wei married, and returned to China. She briefly became a judge in a French concession court. She advocated for women to have a choice in their marriages and to have the right to divorce. She wrote these rights into the Republic of China's Civil Code in the early 1930s. She was one of the influences who inspired Phan Bội Châu's development of women's rights in Vietnam.

Tcheng's nephew Paifong Robert Cheng attended the Sorbonne under the guidance of his aunt. He held the diplomatic post of the Chinese Ambassador to Cuba from 1946 to 1950. Cheng's son Ching Ho Cheng was ni an American contemporary artist whose works are collected by several museums across the U.S.

Her autobiography, My Revolutionary Years (1944), published while her husband was Ambassador to the United States, is first-hand accounts of modern Chinese history and has been translated into many languages.

She died of cancer in Los Angeles on December 16th, 1959.

Selected works