Background
Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was born on 12 December 1904 in Canton, China.
张瑞芬
Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was born on 12 December 1904 in Canton, China.
At age 17, she moved to the United States to study music at several institutions including the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and the University of Southern California. Cheung took flying lessons with the Chinese Aeronautical Association in Los Angeles in March 1932 and received her commercial flying license, the first Chinese-American woman to do so in the United States. She joined Amelia Earhart"s Ninety-Nines Club in 1933 and began to enter air shows and competitive air events, such as the Chatterton Air Race.
At that time women were not allowed to enrol in flying schools in China, and only 1% of licensed pilots in the United States. were women.
In 1935 Cheung joined the Ninety Nines club for women pilots, an association founded by Amelia Earhart. Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Katherine Cheung decided to return to China and open a flying school.
She died of cancer at age 98 in 2003.