Brilliant China-themed French comic books (cont'd)

I've already mentioned the Juge Bao series published by French publishing house Les Éditions Fei. This very same publishing house has started another series titled Shi Xiu set in the 19th century, at a time of great upheavals in Qīng China. This new series of comics tells the tumultuous and adventurous life of she-pirate Zhèng Shì (鄭氏), possibly the most famous and most successful she-pirate of all times.

Zhèng Shì is so famous that her life has been adapted many times on many media, even in the West. Jorge Luis Borges, for instance, wrote a short story about her titled La viuda Ching, pirata, which was made into a beautiful film in 2003 by Italian director Ermanno Olmi. The film is titled Singing Behind Screens in English, and I very much recommend it. It is quite slow and shows little action, but it is beautifully photographed and gives an idea of why the policy of not building villages on the coast had been enacted.