Katherine Sui Fun Cheung

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung (; 1904–2003) was a Chinese aviator. She received one of the first private licenses issued to a Chinese woman and was the first Chinese woman to obtain an international flying license. She became an American citizen after obtaining her license.

Early life Sui Fun Cheung was born on 12 December 1904 in Enping, Guangdong province, China to Tsing Lan Nip and Sheun Ping Cheung . Her mother had been a student at the Paxian Bible School in Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and her father was a businessman who interacted with the overseas Chinese community in the United States. Her mother took her to Guangzhou when she was a child and she completed her primary education at the Guangzhou True Light Middle School. She attended the Guangzhou City Peidao Women's High School (zh-yue), graduating in 1921 when she passed the Ministry of Education's examination.

Upon her graduation, she obtained a passport and at the age of seventeen 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 (USC). and was determined to take up flying. In a letter from a friend back in China, she was informed that Chinese flying schools would not allow women to enroll, which was not unusual; in the United States at that time only 1% of licensed pilots were women.

Aviation training In 1931, Cheung enrolled in aviation classes, taking flying lessons with the Chinese Aeronautical Association in Los Angeles with flight instructor Bert Ekstein. In 2017, Cheung was honored with a new statue in her home village in Enping, China. She was also featured in a six-minute documentary segment for Chinese TV in 2019. In 2021, students from the University of California Jovrnalism program created a VR 360 video documentary about Cheung, along with launching a dedicated webpage that shares her story in detail. In 2022, the New York based Museum of Chinese in America, added a Cheung collection to their archives. The collection includes donated family scrapbooks and digital assets.