A semi-fictionalized account of Ching Shih's piracy appeared in Jorge Luis Borges's short story "The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate" (part of "A Universal History of Infamy" (1935)), where she is described as "a lady pirate who operated in Asian waters, all the way from the Yellow Sea to the rivers of the Annam coast", and who, after surrendering to the imperial forces, is pardoned and allowed to live the rest of her life as an opium smuggler. Borges acknowledged the 1932 book "The History of Piracy", by Philip Gosse (grandson of the naturalist Philip Henry Gosse), as the source of the tale.