Naive tourist? Bumbling spy? Months after her arrest at Mar-a-Lago, Zhang Yujing remains a cipher
- Zhang, expected to appear next week in federal court on charges that carry up to six years in prison, is representing herself
- The Shanghai native with a financial services background may have been an ‘unwitting asset’ of Chinese intelligence, a former FBI agent says
This story was produced jointly by the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald, with reporting from China and the US.
When Zhang Yujing, protagonist of the “Mar-a-Lago intruder” case, listed Prison Break among her favourite TV shows on a long-inactive social media account, the prospect that she herself could one day face years behind bars in the US must have seemed unlikely, if not unthinkable.
Back in 2008, fresh out of university, she would take to the Chinese social network Renren to share pictures of exquisite desserts, the poetry of Yeats and humorous posts about the Shanghainese dialect, the vernacular of her hometown.
She was, in the words of a man she later dated in 2013, “just a normal girl”.
“Ordinary looks, ordinary family, and an ordinary education – everything was ordinary,” said Yao, who was willing only to give his surname due to the sensitive nature of the far from ordinary predicament now entangling Zhang.
In March, Zhang, 33, was arrested after gaining entry into US President Donald Trump’s private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors allege that Zhang lied her way past a Secret Service security checkpoint to enter the Palm Beach resort, first telling guards she was there to visit the pool, then saying she was there to attend a charity fundraiser – an event that had been cancelled days earlier.
