Zheng Pingru

Zheng Pingru (1918 – February 1940) was a Chinese socialite and spy who gathered intelligence on the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. She was executed after an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Ding Mocun, the security chief of the Wang Jingwei regime, a puppet government for the Japanese. Her life is believed to be the inspiration for Eileen Chang's novella Lust, Caution, which was later adapted into the eponymous 2007 film by Ang Lee.

Early life

Zheng Pingru was born in 1918 in Lanxi, Zhejiang Province, Republic of China. Her father, Zheng Yueyuan , also known as Zheng Yingbo , was a Nationalist revolutionary and a follower of Sun Yat-sen. While a student in Japan, Zheng Yueyuan married a Japanese woman, , who adopted the Chinese name Zheng Huajun . They had two sons and three daughters; Pingru was the second oldest daughter.

From her mother, Zheng Pingru learned to speak Japanese fluently. She grew up in Shanghai, where her father taught at Fudan University. She studied at the Shanghai College of Politics and Law.

Zheng admired famous actresses Hu Die and Ruan Lingyu and wanted to be an actress, she performed with a group of actors from Datong University. But her father was very traditional and conservative, and was very opposed to her ambition.

She became a well-known socialite and appeared on the cover of the popular pictorial The Young Companion (Liangyou) in 1937. At the time, she was also becoming known as a musician and actress. Chang had learned about Zheng from her ex-husband Hu Lancheng, who served as a propaganda official in the Wang Jingwei regime.

In 2007, the novella was made into a film, Lust, Caution, directed by Ang Lee.