Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, one of the most well-known stunt fliers in the 1930s was Katherine Sui Fun Cheung. She is designated by the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum as the first female Asian-American aviator. At a time when Asian and Asian-American women were expected to quietly keep house, she disregarded convention and became a pilot simply for the love of flying.

She was born in Canton, China, and immigrated to the United States in 1921 at the age of 17. (She became a citizen in 1936). Originally seeking a career in music, she earned her degree in piano performance from the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She first developed an interest in flying when her father took her to an airfield to teach her how to drive a car; she was fascinated by the planes taking off and landing. Soon after, her cousin, who was a pilot, took her for an airplane ride. Cheung found the experience exhilarating and impulsively signed up for lessons. After just over 12 hours in the sky, she flew solo, and in 1932 became part of the 1% of licensed American pilots who were female.

Cheung became a barnstorming pilot, performing spiral dives, acrobatic loops, barrel rolls and flying her open cockpit airplane upside down at county fairs all over California. She was beloved by the Chinese-American community, who, in one of many demonstrations of their affection, raised $2,000.00 to purchase her a 125-horsepower biplane so that she could compete in a seven-day air race from Los Angeles to Cleveland. She was also adored by overseas Chinese, who dubbed her “China’s Amelia Earhart” and have since enshrined her into the Beijing Air Force Aviation Museum. In 1935, Earhart invited Cheung to join her prestigious Ninety-Nines club, an international organization she founded for women pilots.

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