It's the slap that's been heard around the environment: Wendi Deng Murdoch putting herself involving her husband Rupert Murdoch and a protester armed with a shaving cream pie.

Deng had already cut a formidable presence in her pink suit, looking severe, as she sat behind her media mogul husband. But it was her lunge at Murdoch's attacker that set Twitter on fire.

Suddenly it's no longer Wendi the "gold digger" -- as some called her -- who snared the aging boss of News Corp. Now she is being dubbed Crouching Wendi: Hidden Tiger.

Chinese microblogs have gone into overdrive: A person slap for Wendi, an individual knockout blow for the pride of Asian women.

"The harder she slapped, the extra we can tell how eager she was to protect her husband... she is still a woman who longs for fancy," MissQccc wrote.

Another microblogger, Yan Yu Qing Liu, wrote, "People are starting to see the 'gold digger' differently... Wendi Deng has redefined Tiger Mom."
Who is Wendi Deng?
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But still others can't get past how this young Chinese woman snared the rich, powerful media mogul.

"If Murdoch was just one particular poor old man, would Wendi Deng stay with him and have his babies...Everything around them is about money," just one microblogger wrote.

On the streets of Beijing local Chinese are giving Mrs. Murdoch the benefit with the doubt.

"I used to think Deng only loves Murdoch's money. But her move yesterday was so fast and was kind of instinct... this may actually be true really enjoy!" a person young woman said.

Another said, "I admire her courage. She did this out of her obligation and responsibility as a wife. She did it very well."

So, who is Wendi Deng?

She first made waves when she married Murdoch in 1999, shortly after he divorced his wife of much more than 30 years, Anna Torv Murdoch Mann. Since then, the couple have had two daughters together, Chloe and Grace, the youngest amongst his six children.

By Rupert Murdoch's own account in an joint interview with his wife on CCTV's "Dialogue" program just final month, they met at a cocktail party shortly after she graduated with an MBA from Yale and went to work in Hong Kong at Star Television as an intern, a satellite television service he bought in 1993.

By then, his holdings under News Corp. included the Sunday Days, The Australian, Information International, the newest York Article, the Moments of London, 20th Century Fox and Fox Broadcasting. (His acquisition for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team would coincide with their courtship.)

A native of China, she served as his interpreter during a tour in the mainland, he said. On CCTV, Rupert Murdoch recalled the days when he pursued Wendi-- a woman nearly half his age-- and his efforts to get her to marry him.

"I fell in take pleasure in with her and I asked her. She said no and it took a long time to persuade her," he said.

They married after he finalized his divorce from his second wife.

It's been a long road for Deng. She has talked about growing up in a small town in China ("very,very poor"), the daughter of a factory engineer.

Her marriage with Murdoch wasn't her first; she married the man who, with his then-wife, had sponsored her for a student visa in the United States during the late 1980s. She eventually secured a "green card" to stay permanently in the United States, but her first marriage was short-lived.

Not much is known about Deng. She sits on the board of advisers at the Yale School of Management, her alma mater. She is listed as a co-founder for Big Feet Productions and also is co-producer (with Florence Sloan, friend and wife of former MGM CEO Harry Sloan) of "Snow Flower in addition to the Secret Fan," a recent film directed by Wayne Wang ("Joy Luck Club").

But it is as Rupert Murdoch's wife that Wendi is now known.

And as the pie man found ...nothing comes among the slap-down sister and her mister.
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