Meet the unlikely "heroine" whose lovers made her a billionaire - and who she repaid by landing them in jail

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'At the gilded gates of a colonial mansion in China's seaside city of Qingdao, giggling young couples pose for snapshots, craning their necks to peer in at the sumptuous grounds and gossip about the scandalous liaisons of the female billionaire who lived there.

'I think she's amazing,' says 24-year-old legal secretary Yan Lili, who made a trip after reading Li Wei's story on the internet.

'She has proved that women can have real power in China as well as men.'

Like many Chinese tycoons hailed as establishment role models, Li Wei has risen from a penniless background to unimaginable wealth. Indeed, she is the most unlikely of heroines for at least three reasons.

First, she is a woman in a society that has traditionally expected female subservience. Second, she made her money through liaisons with at least 15 lovers in the world of business and politics. And third, she has engaged in tax evasion and corruption to build a fortune estimated at more than £1billion. Yet while her lovers were jailed for corruption, China's Queen of Mistresses testified against them, sat out four years in detention and was then released this year, with most of her wealth intact.'