Burnaby's Mysterious Chinese Wartime Aviatrix

Book launch of
Sisters of Heaven
China’s Barnstorming Aviatrixes:
Modernity, Feminism, and Popular Imagination in Asia and the West

Burnaby Village Museum,
Discovery Room,

6501 Deer Lake Avenue

Saturday, March 8, 2008,

1:00pm-2:30pm
International Women’s Day

PROGRAM
1:00pm: Book available for sale ($25, cash only)
1:30-2:00pm: Presentation by Patti Gully, author
2:00-2:30pm: Book signing and refreshments

In Burnaby’s Ocean View Burial Park can be found the grave, unmarked since 1943, of a woman who accepted a valiant mission to rally world attention to her country’s wartime plight. Flight Lieutenant Jessie Hanying Zheng was one of three female aviatrixes who were sent by China to North America during the Second World War to raise funds for the war effort in their home country. The two others were Hilda Yan, once China’s representative at the League of Nations, and Li Xiaqing, known as film actress Li Dandan before becoming China’s “First Woman of the Air”. In a story almost forgotten by history, local author Patti Gully explores their fascinating personalities, loves, passions, and above all, their unwavering sense of patriotism and duty. In a time when virtually no Chinese woman could even drive a car, these aviatrixes used flight as a metaphor for their own freedom as well as a symbol of empowerment. These women of consequence paid a high price to realize their dream of flying, but their tenacity ensured their place in a lost era of aviation history, gender studies, and the history of China and the West.