Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 07, 2003 at 21:49:04 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: The Real Missee Lee? posted by alan gardner on August 07, 2003 at 20:00:39:
Old news here, as I discovered myself when I found a copy of "I sailed with Chinese Pirates" by Aleko Lilius in a Beijing bookstall, with its description of Lai Choi-San, and announced my "discovery".
Apparently, Missee Lee is a compound of Lai Choi-San and Soong Ching-Ling, the wife of Sun Yat-Sen, later President of China, whom AR met in Shanghai.
Nice theory about the junk trade. The pirates specialised in going for the said steamships - kidnapping weathly Chinese passengers for ransom was the usual tactic - but Lai Choi-San seems to have preferred extorting heung yau from fishermen.