Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

When "Sister Ping" died recently, the newspaper stories quoted people who knew her using terms like "hero" and "modern Robin Hood." Ping's funeral, scheduled for later this month, is expected to create a sensation in Manhattan's Chinatown with thousands of people planning to come to pay their last respects.

Yet, Ping was not a martyr who died for her country, nor a civic leader who devoted her life to worthy causes. She was an infamous smuggler who died from cancer in a Texas prison where she had been serving a 35-year sentence for smuggling since 2006.

Many of the people who said kind words about her are, in the eyes of law enforcement, her victims, who had to pay huge amounts of money to the smuggling ring she ran to get to the US, after perilous months-long journeys hiding in cargo ships.

Born as Cheng Chuiping in a poor village in Fujian and barely educated, Ping taught herself business skills. She went to Hong Kong in 1974 and then the US in 1981.

That was a time when peasants in her home province felt they were being left behind as some major cities started to embrace China's economic reforms. They were desperately looking for ways to change their lives. With her connections in both the US and China, Ping started to play a major role in the rapidly rising human smuggling wave in the 1980s and early 1990s.

She became a target for law enforcement in 1993 when the Golden Venture, a ship that carried almost 300 immigrants from China, all her clients, ran aground near the New York shore and was surrounded by police on the beach. Many jumped into the ocean to try to escape and 10 people drowned. Ping fled and remained at large until she was arrested in Hong Kong in 2000.

Ping was known for her willingness to offer a hand to those in need. She took care of "snakes," as the smuggled are known, and helped them to find jobs once they arrived. And many of them are thankful because without Ping they couldn't have got to the land of their dreams.

But she was not a philanthropist. She hired the fiercest gangsters to transport her "snakes" and collect smuggling fees from them, starting at $18,000 per person and raised to more than $30,000 in later years. Those who couldn't pay were offered predatory loans by Ping. Abductions and torture could be part of the picture if the money wasn't repaid. According to court documents, she made at least $40 million out of the "snakes."  

Judging by the posthumous tributes, the uglier side of Ping's life was forgotten and forgiven by many. She became a larger-than-life legend to many.

My friend Geoffrey Sant has been studying how myths like this come into existence for his upcoming book. He told me many mythical legends like Liao Tianding, a heroic thief in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, and Song Jiang, an outlaw hero in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) featured in the classic novel Water Margin, are indeed based on real historic figures who were much less significant than their portrayals.

They were often transformed into legends in times when people couldn't freely express their frustration and anger about a grim reality.

This theory also fits well in Ping's case. She got her fame and wealth illegally. But she filled the void left by China, which was not taking care of its poor farmers well and by the US which provided few legal avenues for them to emigrate. Those who felt ignored by governments and societies suddenly had someone to look up to.

Some people are born into poorer lives than others - with little legal opportunity to climb out of the pit. This is the original inequality that needs to be dealt with. And to many people there is no other way to deal with it than by "voting with their feet."

It may be illegal for people to cross the border to another country without permission. But is it illegal for human beings to seek a better life through migration? If so, the entire history of development of human beings may have to be outlawed.

This might be the real message people who contributed to the creation of the legend of "Sister Ping" are trying to send out: The rigid immigration laws are more "illegal" than those who break them.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com