When I met with the Extra History crew this summer, I could talk about one thing and one thing only:

It was time to greenlight Cheng I Sao.

The moment was perfect. I had access to resources via the Hong Kong library system. There was an exhibit on Cheung Po Tsai at the Maritime Museum. I had even been to many of the locations where the action took place—all I needed was a go order.

And they gave me one. So may I present Extra History: Cheng I Sao, one of the first EH episodes to be researched entirely on-the-ground where the events took place, using local resources.

Incredibly, it seems that work paid off—this episode did 222,000 views in the first 24 hours, and made it to #5 on YouTube’s list of Trending Videos.

Thanks for making that happen, everyone!

A linguistic note: since this episode took place on the South China coast and involved Cantonese characters, we’ve used their Cantonese names. Cheng I Sao is often known as Ching Shih in western sources.