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 a United States citizen after attaining her licensure. Early life Zhang Ruifen was born on 12 December 1904 in Enping, Guangdong province, China to Nie Qinglan () and Zhang Shunbing (). 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 Zhang to Guangzhou while she was a child and she completed her primary education at the Guangzhou True Light Middle School. Continuing her schooling at 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). Her father, who was a produce buyer, came with Zhang to the U.S. and would take her to Dycer Airport in Los Angeles to practice driving a car. Zhang was fascinated with the planes and wanted to learn to fly. After three years of studying piano at USC, Zhang quit school and married her father's business partner, George Young, keeping her own name, but Americanizing it to Katherine Cheung. By 1931, she had two daughters, Doris and Dorothy 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 as pilots, which was not unusual, as in the U.S. 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. On 30 March 1932 she received her private pilot's license and made plans to return within a few weeks to China. She was widely reported as the first Chinese woman to earn a license in the United States, or having earned a commercial license, while other papers acknowledged that she was one of two Chinese women pilots. After attaining her license, she continued to study, often with military pilots to learn aerobatics, aircraft structures, international routing, navigation and other skills which would improve her versatility as a pilot. The skills she learned, allowed her to participate in air shows, performing barrel rolls, inverted flying, loops and other aerobatic tricks. Almost as soon as she was licensed, Cheung began performing at fairs and air shows along the California Coast. Her performances were thrilling to the Chinese American community and they took up a collection to get her a plane to use. Anna May Wong and other ethnic