[1] The domestic media hailed her as "the swallow who announced that the spring of China's sports has arrived," and Chinese research claims, that her training was twice as arduous as her foreign competitors.
[2] A 2007 profile in China Daily compared Zheng's popularity in her day with that of Liu Xiang today.
In her subsequent career and in retirement she won official honours and recognition as an early athletic success for the PRC.
Though persecuted for "egotism" during the Cultural Revolution,[3] she eventually rose to become vice-secretary of the China State General Sports Administration.
[6] Her granddaughter Nina Schultz is a heptathlete that competed for Canada internationally and at Kansas State University in the collegiate level.