I'm ten years old and I study at the County Academy. On the third of May, as I was going home, walking north, someone gave my queue a yank from behind. I turned right around, saw someone running away. My queue had not been cut. Later I was told that the constables' post had arrested some men and I was ordered to go there and identify them. When it happened, I was walking along and the person was behind me. I couldn't see his face. The man wearing black here, Ch'en Han ju, looks sort of like that person, but I can't identify him for sure.
Later, the suspects were brought to the county yamen, where they were tortured again with the chia-kun. Ch'en stated that he knew nothing about "stupefying people" or clipping queues: "The kid even says he can't identify me. When I was at constabulary headquarters, they tortured me with the chia-kun, so I don't dare lie to you. My legs still haven't healed. Also, the constables searched me thoroughly and didn't find anything illegal. Even if you torture me to death, I couldn't tell you anything. I beg you to spare me more torture."
In the end Magistrate Tu had to let them go. His final report stated that the three men were
persons of no fixed abode, who got together to beg. They are definitely not respectable types. However, having put them to torture, there is still no hard evidence of queue-clipping. Ku Ch'en-nan could not identify them positively. The paper charms seized at the time of the arrest, we have found, are not things for stupefying people, and nobody has made complaints against these criminals.19 Apparently these men are not guilty ofqueue-clipping. We have now released Ch'en, Chang, and Ch'iu to return to their home jurisdictions, there to be placed under the supervision of the local security authorities. We shall continue to search for the real criminals.
But the public temper was so disturbed that Magistrate Tu could not consider the case closed. On May 9 he posted proclamations that read, "We have found that there are queue-clipping criminals perpetrating illegal and harmful actions." Investigations were continuing. Though the beggars' guilt had not been proved, persons who might have suffered at their hands were urged to come forward without fear of harassment, in case the criminals had been lying.
One prisoner, it turned out, could not be released. The two county policemen who had made the original arrests (and who were held responsible for the prisoners throughout their custody by the county) reported on May 5 that criminal Chang had contracted a high fever and could not eat. Magistrate Tu ordered immediate medical care, and physicians were summoned. A jail death meant irksome paperwork, a possible investigation, and a fine to be docked from the magistrate's salary, should he be found guilty of negligence or mistreatment. Chang's condition worsened, the police reported; by May 20 he was near death. The physicians found his pulse weak, his skin hot and dry, and his tongue yellow. Herbal medicines were administered without effect, the report continued, and the patient died that night.
That a beggar died in jail surely surprised nobody. Although Ch'ing jails were probably not much worse than contemporary jails elsewhere, they tested even the stiff upper lip of a British prisoner who was confined briefly in the Board of Punishments' jail in i86o:
The discipline of the prison was in itself not very strict, and had it not been for the starvation, the pain arising from the cramped position in which the chains and ropes retained the arms and legs, with the heavy drag of the iron collar on the bones of the spine, and the creeping vermin that infested every place, together with the occasional beatings and tortures which the prisoners were from time to time taken away for a few hours to endure,-returning with bleeding legs and bodies, and so weak as to be scarce able to crawl,-there was no great hardship to be endured.20
A Chinese literatus who spent a year in the same prison (1712-13) described the treatment of his fellow inmates: "Their ordinary standards of sleeping and eating are disregarded, and should they fall ill, no doctor or medicine is provided. That is why they so often meet their death."21
The file of the late beggar Chang in Soochow was now meticulously furnished with testimony to certify the cause of death. Depositions were obtained from the police ("we by no means mistreated him"), from a fellow prisoner (the police "by no means mistreated him"), the county doctor ("an incurable illness"), and the coroner ("died of disease"). A coffin was provided at county expense, and his native county was notified in case relatives wanted to claim the body.
One criminal dead, two more released for lack of evidence: hardly a memorable piece of judicial work. Yet Magistrate Tu must have felt relieved that a troublesome matter had been disposed of. Though he was obliged to protect himself from later charges of negligence by issuing a public proclamation about queue-clipping, there was no reason to hold beggars Ch'iu and Ch'en. A silly and trivial business. Superstitious rumors among ignorant commoners. A pesty child who was probably imagining things anyway. A dead prisoner-but prisoners died all the time. A cause of future trouble? Most unlikely.
An Incident at Hsu-k'ou-chen
Monk Ching-chuang lived and worshiped at the Dharma Cloud Temple in Hu-thou Prefecture, Chekiang Province, just down the river from the scene of mason Wu's encounter with sorcery.22 In the spring of 1768, it was time to replenish temple supplies (devotional materials such as incense) in Soochow and to visit relations and friends there. Along with six companion monks, Ching-chuang hired boatman Yao to sail them to the metropolis along the eastern shore of Lake T'ai. Ching-chuang and his acolyte, Ta-lai, carried with them a string of i,ooo copper cash, and others carried cash in varying amounts. They set sail on May 4 (the day after the beggars' arrest in Soochow) and, on the afternoon of the following day, anchored at the lakeside market town of Hsu-k'ou-then.
Monk Ching-chuang and the boatman went ashore to buy food and stopped to rest at the Hsu-wang Temple. A fisherman, Chang Tzu-fa, entered the temple and asked whether Ching-chuang was from Hu-chou. Fearsome rumors had recently convinced local folk that monks from Hu-chou were coming to clip people's queues. Was Ching-chuang one of these? Fisherman Chang threatened to seize him and find out. Ching-chuang and the boatman fled out the door. His suspicions confirmed, Chang pursued them in full cry. The market crowd swirled around the pair and began to pummel them, seriously injuring boatman Yao.
A constable who ran to investigate seized Ching-chuang's belongings and searched them, along with the rest of the baggage on Yao's boat, but found no suspicious items (queue-clipping equipment such as scissors, or powders for stupefying victims). Still, with the crowd so ugly, he could not let the monks go. He put Ching-chuang, the boatman, and the original accuser Chang onto the boat with all the other monks to take the lot to the assistant magistrate's yamen at Mutu-chen, on the river route to Soochow.
The boat docked at Mu-tu-chen after dark. Taking monk Chingchuang with him and leaving the others on the boat, the constable went ashore and headed for the yamen, stopping on the way to report to the local constabulary barracks. Finding the assistant magistrate out, he brought his prisoner back to the barracks. By that time the crowd in the local market had learned that queue-clipping monks had been arrested, and a noisy mob had gathered at the dock. Local rowdies, led by T'ang Hua and Li San, had discovered that there were still some monks aboard the boat. The terrified suspects and their boatman were dragged ashore and brought to the constabulary. Later that night, persons unnamed boarded the boat and helped themselves to the travelers' money and clothing. Yao's boat was wrecked. Now the constables feared major trouble at Mu-tu-chen if the suspects were held there any longer. I n a second hired boat, the miserable group were taken to Soochow that very night for interrogation by the magistrate of Wu County himself.
For want of firm evidence of queue-clipping, the county magistrate determined that Ching-chuang and his companions were monks going about their lawful business. Furthermore, fisherman Chang should be held responsible for starting the whole affair. The monks, not satisfied at merely being released, went over the magistrate's head and filed charges at the office of the prefect to seek recompense for their lost money and clothing. The prefect respon
ded by ordering the Wu County magistrate to seize fisherman Chang and compel him to make restitution, even though he himself could not be shown to have stolen anything.
The Bureaucracy: Managing Sorcery
The hysteria that spread over east-central China in i 768 was cultured in a rich broth of local sorcery beliefs. Details varied from region to region, but the common ingredients were these: the human soul can, under certain conditions, be separated from the body of its owner; one who obtains another's soul can use its force for his own benefit; the stealing of a soul (soulstealing, chiao-hun) can be brought about by sorcery, either by reciting spells over some physical entity that has been detached from the victim's body, such as a man's queue-tip or a woman's lapel, or by placing the victim's written name on or under a piling that is to be driven into the ground and/or calling the victim's name while driving such a piling; the victim may be stupefied by dusting or blowing a powdered drug (mi-yao) on him, so he cannot resist being clipped; victims are very likely to be male children; victims will sicken and die.
In a patrilineal society with high infant mortality, the protection of children (particularly males) is one of life's highest priorities. Since the etiologies of most diseases were either unknown or misapprehended in Ch'ing times, sorcery could never be ruled out when a child fell sick. Sorcerers would likely be persons who customarily dealt with the supernatural (such as Buddhist monks or Taoist priests) and who might reasonably be supposed to possess means of manipulating otherworldly affairs (charms or spells, perhaps written down in mysterious books).
What did provincial bureaucrats really think of all this? Here are three possibilities. Bureaucrats may have believed that rumors that soulstealing sorcery was being practiced were pure bunk: no such activity was occurring. Or they may have supposed that though some malefactors might really be clipping queues or placing victims' names on bridge pilings, such practices were mere folk superstition, incapable of actually stealing souls. It is also possible that officials thought that sorcery not only was being practiced but in fact was, or could be, effective.
The way provincial officialdom handled the spring sorcery cases suggests that they felt awkwardly balanced between dutiful caution and agnostic scorn. When suspected soulstealers were brought before them, careful investigation had to follow. After all, a magistrate or provincial judge could not be seen to scoff at a crime so detested by the general public, particularly when sorcery in a number of analogous forms was prohibited by the penal code, as we shall see in Chapter 4. And of course there was always the outside chance that sorcery might really exist; who could certify that it did not? But the decisive factor was surely the potential for general panic. If evil men were trying to practice sorcery, they had already ignited dangerous popular fears and must be harshly punished. In the event, all the sorcery suspects were released for lack of evidence, and their accusers shown up as fools or perjurers. Judges must have risen from their courtrooms with discreet sighs of relief and retired to tea, confirmed in their scorn for the fears of the ignorant mob.
Were those fears put to rest? Not likely. Whether a judge was a believer or an agnostic, to punish the accusers, rather than the accused, made him look soft on sorcery. 'Whatever the mental state of particular bureaucrats, the official reaction to sorcery hysteria was to get the case out of the streets and into the courts. Public disorder in one's jurisdiction was an unmistakable sign of incompetence or neglect. It could break an official career even more surely than failure to fill tax quotas. Though a crowd might be mollified if a stranger were lynched, no official wanted such a blot on his copybook. Of course a suspected sorcerer could be prosecuted under the Ch'ing Code, which made certain occult practices a capital crime. But since all capital sentences had to be reviewed by the highest court in the realm and ultimately by the monarch himself, the evidence had better be good. If judicial inquiry turned up perjury or slander, the only recourse was to punish the accuser, free the defendants, and thus warn the public against irresponsible talk and lawless violence.
The costs of hindering the public's effort to protect itself against sorcery, however, might be considerable. Examples from other cultures show how deeply compromised are agnostic or unbelieving governments that prohibit antisorcery violence among their subjects. Navahos complain that not only do the white authorities forbid them to kill witches; they even "fail to punish people for the worst crime we know."28 Modern governments in East Africa have suppressed popular antisorcery measures (such as the poison ordeal) at the cost of accusations that they "have aligned themselves on the side of evil."2'' From the standpoint of the state's public image, perhaps the cleverest solution is one reported from Uganda. Under the British protectorate, a law existed to punish those who "pretend" to be sorcerers (in order to threaten rivals or project a fearsome reputation). Here the state does not admit to believing in the substance of sorcery and maintains it is contending only with the pretense of it. Yet ordinary Ugandans fail to distinguish between pretending to be a sorcerer and actually being one; consequently, suspected sorcerers can be haled before civil authorities and jailed.25 As we shall see, such agnosticism has some parallels in the antisorcery provisions of the Ch'ing Code.
Be that as it may, provincial bureaucrats must have considered that their courtrooms had worked quite smoothly in the cases of early 1768. The false charges against mason Wu and the machinations of the corrupt constable Ts'ai had been exposed. In the Hsu-k'ou-chen and Soochow incidents, those falsely accused had been released, and the public had been duly warned against rash accusations. Though lynchings of vagrant suspects would eventually come to Peking's notice when the homicide convictions were automatically reviewed by the Throne, there had as yet been no case of' actual sorcery that was worth troubling His Majesty about.
Yet fear of sorcery remained deeply embedded in the public mind. Was there no protection against this scourge? How little the public had been reassured! By June 21 the panic had broken out of the lower Yangtze provinces and had spread five hundred miles upriver to the prefectural city of Hanyang: there a large crowd at a street opera seized a suspected soulstealer, beat him to death, and burned his corpse.26
CHAPTER 2
The Prosperous Age
Sorcery panic struck China's last imperial dynasty, not during its waning days, but at the height of its celebrated "Prosperous Age" (sheng-shih, a conventional slogan that often adorned official documents as a talisman of benign rule). Sorcery's dread image was refracted through every social stratum. It overspread provinces with a total population much larger than the entire population of Europe at the time, and cost many lives and careers. Altogether, though, the damage to human life was slight compared to the great witch scares of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Why the damage was so limited is as curious a question as why the scare arose in the first place.
That a whole society could envisage the threat, that lowly and lofty could sense the same emergency, suggests a cultural network densely twined. But the vision struck peasant, bureaucrat, and emperor in different ways, according to the preoccupations that ruled their several ways of life. The case suggests both unity and diversity: a nation in which events at the highest and lowest levels affected each other intimately, but in which society's prism refracted the soulstealing idea in various hues.
The Gilded Age of Hungli
The economic triumphs of the eighteenth century were founded on domestic peace. The last major fighting within China proper had ended in 1681 when emperor Hungli's imperial grandfather crushed the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories. The coastal frontier was secured in 1683 when Ch'ing forces conquered Taiwan. Peace nourished China's greatest period of demographic and commercial expansion, but the roots of this expansion dated from before the Manchu conquest. By the seventeenth century, new crops from the Americas (maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco, crops that could be grown on dry uplands) were already sown on the nonirrigable hillsides by settlers flocking to China's internal frontiers. By the late sevent
eenth century, the aggregate depopulation of the conquest years was already made good, and the stage was set for the population explosion of modern times. In the course of the eighteenth century, the population is thought to have doubled. To serve these growing masses, there emerged a dense network of rural markets. Not urbanization, but a proliferation of dusty (or muddy) local market towns put virtually every Chinese peasant in touch with regional systems of trade. Money was everywhere: silver from Spanish America promoted the free sale of land and labor. Commercial energy and population growth were creating a society that contemporary Westerners (whose industrial revolution was still in its cradle) considered vigorous and stable.' This is the society over which spread, in the early spring of 1768, the shadow of sorcery.
An Encouraging Story
Writing about eighteenth-century society has been a buoyant experience for Chinese historians, more inspiring than relating the decline and disruption, futility and weakness, of the period after 18oo.2 Eighteenth-century Chinese, whose genius for commerce and enterprise was sustained by firm and effective government, were admired by the world. The tone of social historical writing has been bright, even celebratory. Western historians too have caught the enthusiasm as they have explored this "new and higher form of economic activity."'
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Page 3
