Cheng Yü-hsiu (1891-16 December 1959),  was the first woman lawyer in republican China and the wife of Wei Tao-ming (q.v.), studied law in Paris, practiced in Shanghai, and became president of the second special court in the French concession. In 1928 she became a member of the Legislative Yuan, and from 1931 to 1937 she was president of the school of law at the University of Shanghai.

A native of Kwangtung, Cheng Yü-hsiu was born in the Paoan district, adjacent to Hong Kong. Her grandfather owned land in the Hong Kong area, and her father served as a minor official in the Board of Revenue of the Ch'ing government. She spent her early years at Canton, where she received traditional instruction in the Chinese classics from a tutor. Then she accompanied her mother to northern China to join her father in Peking, where she began her formal education.

In a later autobiographical account prepared for Western readers, Cheng Yü-hsiu described herself as a "revolutionary by nature," who defied the established custom of foot-binding and broke the betrothal arranged by her grandmother. To lessen the disgrace brought upon her family through her second act of defiance, she was sent to Tientsin to attend the Chung-hsi Girls School, directed by two American missionary women. She remained in that school for only a few months, however, since she was not interested in its religious program or in its emphasis upon female domesticity. However, she began her study of the English language there and acquired a taste for Western-style clothing and customs.

In 1912 Li Shih-tseng (q.v.) and others launched a thrift-study movement to enable Chinese students to go abroad and study in France. A preparatory school was established in Peking, with about 30 students, including Li Shu-hua (q.v.) and others. Cheng Yü-hsiu and the other girl student in the institution performed regular chores. Many republican revolutionary leaders, including Chang Chi, Lin Sen, and Sung Chiao-jen, used the school building as a hostel when they were in Peking, and Cheng Yü-hsiu doubtless heard detailed accounts of the anti-Manchu revolutionary movement from them.

After several months spent studying French, the students in the Peking school left for Europe in December 1912, traveling by way of Siberia. It is not clear whether Cheng Yü-hsiu accompanied the group at that time. It is known that she was in Paris in the spring of 1914. There she adopted the name Soumay Tcheng; she continued to study French and enrolled at the Sorbonne. She apparently remained in Europe during the years of the First World War and must have been in touch with Wang Ching-wei, Ch'en Pi-chün, and other southern Chinese then living in France. In 1919, because of her fluency in French, she was appointed an attache to the Chinese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, handling liaison and press relations. She was also a prominent figure in a Chinese student organization in France that opposed the transfer of the former German rights in Shantung province to Japan.

The years after the First World War was marked in China by an intensification of the political and military struggles between the supporters of the Peking government in the north and the forces of the Nationalist revolution in the south. The course of events was reflected to some extent in the political attitudes of the Chinese student community in Paris, where the official Chinese diplomatic representative, Ch'en Lu (q.v.), was the envoy of the Peking government. Because of his position, Ch'en Lu encountered the animosity of some Chinese in Paris who opposed the policies of the Peking government. In March 1921 a student named Li Hao-ling shot at Ch'en Lu in the home of Cheng Yu-hsiu in Paris.

Cheng Yü-hsiu was involved in the struggle for women's rights, and she supervised a group of some 20 Chinese girls from Szechwan who came to France to study. Her autobiographical account of her early career, Souvenirs d'enfance et de revolution, was published in Paris in 1921. While a student in France after the First World War, she made the acquaintance of a younger Kiangsi student, Wei Tao-ming (q.v.), who was also reading law. Cheng Yü-hsiu received her doctorate in law from the University of Paris in 1925, with a thesis on The mouvement constitutionnel en Chine," and Wei Tao-ming gained his degree from the same institution in 1926.

After her return to China, she began her legal career. She and Wei Tao-ming established a joint law firm in the French concession of Shanghai. Because of her European legal training, Cheng Yü-hsiu soon came to occupy a prominent position in the legal and judicial community in Shanghai. When the Nationalists arrived there in 1927, they appointed H. Y. Loo (Lu Hsing-yuan) president of the Provisional (formerly Mixed) Court, which had been established so that cases in the Western concessions involving Chinese nationals could be tried by Chinese judges. Loo, a barrister from the Inner Temple who held an M.A. degree from Oxford, had previously served as president of the supreme court in the government at Canton headed by Sun Yat-sen. Later in 1927 Wang Ch'ung-hui, then minister of justice, appointed Cheng Yühsiu, whom he had known in Europe when he had served as a deputy judge of the World Court at The Hague, to succeed Loo. However, Loo refused to vacate the post. Chen Yü-hsiu, despite her claim to be the first Chinese woman appointed to a judgeship in the International Settlement at Shanghai, did not actually serve in this position. Later, she was appointed president of the second special court in the French concession.

In the spring of 1927, when her law partner, Wei Tao-ming, was named secretary general of the ministry of justice, their joint law practice had to be dissolved. "But just as the legal partnership ended," Cheng Yü-hsiu later recalled, "our personal partnership began." She and Wei Tao-ming were married in August 1927.

Early in 1928, Cheng Yü-hsiu was sent to Paris by the Nanking authorities to attempt to work out a preliminary understanding with the French government with respect to the rapidly changing situation in China. Because she was expecting a baby, Wei Tao-ming accompanied her to France in the spring of the year. Their first-born son, Tchow-mei, was born in Paris in May 1928. Shortly thereafter, they left Europe to return to China by way of the United States. In November 1928 Cheng Yü-hsiu was appointed by Hu Han-min to membership in the Legislative Yuan. She was one of the first two female members, the other being Soong Meiling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek. In the years from 1 928 to 1931, Cheng Yü-hsiu worked in the Legislative Yuan while her husband served as minister of justice (1928-29) and as mayor of Nanking (1930-31). She was also one of the five members of the commission established to codify the Chinese civil code, which was promulgated by the National Government in 1931. She then returned to Shanghai to practice law, concurrently serving as president of the law school of the University of Shanghai, a post which she held until the outbreak of the Sino- Japanese war in the summer of 1937. She helped to organize civilian assistance in the war effort in the International Settlement but fled to join her husband at Nanking in the late autumn of that year.

After the retreat to Chungking, Wei Tao-ming served as secretary general of the Executive Yuan during the early war years. Cheng Yühsiu remained a member of the Legislative Yuan and also served for a time as vice minister of education. In April 1941 Wei was appointed ambassador to France. He and his wife left Chungking by air in July for Hong Kong. There they boarded President Madison, intending to go to France by way of the United States. When they arrived at San Francisco, they learned that Japanese troops had occupied parts of French Indo-China and decided to wait in the United States for clarification of the situation. During the winter of 1941-42 they were in Washington, where Wei served as a staff member of the Chinese embassy under Hu Shih (q.v.), who was then ambassador. On September 1 942 Wei was appointed ambassador to the United States, replacing Hu Shih. During Wei Tao-ming's term in Washington from 1942 to 1945, Cheng Yü-hsiu participated actively in war relief work and public affairs. She played a prominent role during the historic wartime visit of Madame Chiang Kai-shek to the United States in early 1943, lent her name to the United China Relief Fund drives, and became honorary chairman of the China Aid Council. She was initiated into the Eta alumnae chapter of Kappa Beta Pi, a legal sorority. And her autobiography, My Revolutionary Years, was published in 1943.

After the war, she and her husband returned to China, where Wei Tao-ming was named vice president of the Legislative Yuan at Nanking in 1946. In 1947 Cheng Yü-hsiu was elected to the Legislative Yuan, receiving the next highest number of votes of any Shanghai candidate. In the spring of 1947 Wei Tao-ming was transferred to Taipei as the first civilian governor of Taiwan province. He held that post until the end of 1948, when he was replaced by a military man, Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.), who was assigned responsibility to prepare for the evacuation from the mainland. Wei Tao-ming and Cheng Yü-hsiu then went to the United States. They visited Brazil, but they resided in the United States after 1949, living first in New York and later in southern California. Cheng Yü-hsiu died of cancer in Los Angeles on 16 December 1959.

During her active years in Shanghai, Cheng Yü-hsiu was known for her forceful personality and her vivacity, a quality perhaps enhanced, in gesture and volubility, by her years of residence in France. An impressive speaker and a facile writer, she was fluent in both French and English. She was known to have had excellent connections with the French and the Chinese who controlled the French concession at Shanghai. At the same time, she was perhaps the best example of a woman of independent political and personal influence in the Kuomintang during the years after 1 927. Cheng Yü-hsiu was on intimate terms with Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Meiling, and wielded notable influence over Wang Ch'ung-hui, the distinguished jurist and veteran figure of the National Government, both of whom assisted her husband's career between 1927 and 1949.