Background
Miss Cheng was born in Canton, Guangdong, China in 1894.
(written in French)
written in French
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00427YUOE/?tag=2022091-20
(Her autobiography (1944) published while her husband was ...)
Her autobiography (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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1162783729/?tag=2022091-20
government official lawyer revolutionist
Miss Cheng was born in Canton, Guangdong, China in 1894.
Cheng Yu-hsiu went to Tianjin (Tientsin) to receive modern education. Among other institutions, she attended the Sorbonne and the University of Paris, graduating from the latter with the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1926.
With an excellent knowledge of French, Miss Cheng became an attache to the Chinese Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In the meantime, in 1917, she returned to China and in many public addresses, pleaded for the Allied cause and explained the European situation to her countrymen.
Following the Conference, she toured England and America, speaking before assemblies and explaining China dissatisfaction with the treatment being accorded her at the Paris Conference. Coming back to China, Cheng Yu-hsiu induced the Chinese Government to provide funds for educating twenty Chinese girls abroad and accomplished the difficult task of persuading the parents of the girls to allow them to go.
At the head of a score of women students, she once more proceeded to Paris superintending their education and also continuing her own studies. Upon graduating with honor from the law department of the University of Paris in 1926, Miss Cheng submitted a thesis on "Le Mouvement Constitutionel en Chine".
On returning to China，Cheng Yu-hsiu looked for a legal career. In April 1927, she was appointed president of the Shanghai Native District Court. Miss Cheng was appointed a member of the Government Committee at Nanking. In October 1927, she was appointed President of the Shanghai Provisional Court in the Internationa] Settlement, but declined appointment.
Later Cheng Yu-hsiu was made a member of the National Reconstruction and of the Legislative Yuan of the Nanking Government. She was sent by the Nationalist Government to Europe to study judicial conditions. Since her return, she had been practising law in Shanghai between 1928 and 1930, and concurrently serving as an adviser to Gen. Chang Hsiao-llane in 1930.
(Her autobiography (1944) published while her husband was ...)
"The Model Chinese Family"
(written in English)
(written in French)
At a very tender age, Miss Cheng already evinced an independent spirit. At the age of ten, she defied the traditions of her day by tearing off the bindings of her feet. Then at the age of 14, Cheng Yu-hsiu did a still more daring thing by breaking her engagement to marry the son of the Governor of Canton who had been selected for her by her father.
While still on her teens, she went to Tianjin (Tientsin) to receive modern education and there Miss Cheng became interested in revolutionary activities for the overthrow of the ruling Manchu regime, joining the then secret society of Kuomintang.
During the 1911 Revolution, Cheng Yu-hsiu did an unusually daring thing by secreting bombs from Tianjin (Tientsin) to Peking (Beijing) to be used for assassination of Manchu royalties. The Revolution having succeeded, she proceeded to Paris to seek further education.
Miss Cheng advocated women having their own voices and choices in marriage, and wrote it into the Republic of China's law. She is cited as one of the influences which guided Phan Bội Châu's development of women's rights in Vietnam.
Her father was a senior official in the board of finance under the Manchu regime.
Mr. Wei was a distinguished diplomat and public servant. He was prominent as the Republic of China's Ambassador to the United States during the Second World War and foreign minister during the years in which the People's Republic of China sought to oust the ROC from the United Nations. He was also the first civilian Governor of Taiwan Province (1947–1949), replacing Governor General Chen Yi.
Cheng mentored her nephew as her own son. Paifong Robert Cheng attended the Sorbonne and majored in political science as he continued the family tradition of community service for the common good of China. He held the diplomatic post of the Chinese Ambassador to Cuba from 1946 to 1950. Cheng's son Ching Ho Cheng is an American artist whose paintings are in several museum collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian. He is considered to be the first Chinese American artist to be identified in America.
