Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768
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Sorcery, Hostility, and Anxiety
Though such information is suggestive, it does not establish that China's economy by the 176os was already squeezing large numbers of people into a growing underclass. Yet here is more evidence that perceptions matter: around the time of the sorcery scare, judicial records contain some suggestive cases of hostility toward beggars. In one case, a beggar named Huang comes to the door of householder Huang (possibly a kinsman, but not within the "five mourning grades") and demands alms. Householder Huang tells him to come back later. The hungry beggar tries to push his way in, shouting angrily. Householder Huang beats him with a wooden cudgel, causing his death. In another case, three beggars accost a group of neighbors who are sitting around eating and drinking. When given a handout, they complain loudly that it is too little and begin to smash the crockery. The neighbors attack and beat them. Two beggars flee, one is killed. The sentences for the killers in both cases were strangulation, commuted to prison (a common sentence for man- slaughter).53 If such homicidal hostility could be shown to have grown over time, it might mean either that the underclass was becoming more intrusive in community life, or that feelings of obligation toward the destitute were becoming weaker and more ambivalent.54
Can we explain fears of sorcery by pointing to social or economic anxieties? Such explanations have been attempted, but I am not entirely comfortable with them.55 However clear the facts (sorcery fear, social tension), the connection between them is generally neither provable nor disprovable. I would love to be able to say that Chinese of the eighteenth century feared soul-loss because they felt their lives threatened by unseen ambient forces (overpopulation, perhaps, or the power of fluctuating market forces to "steal" their livelihoods). Such an assertion, however bewitching, can certainly never be proved. Yet the Prosperous Age was clearly capable of arousing some somber perceptions: if not of invisible economic threats to survival, then certainly of dangerous strangers on the move. And as the soulstealing story unfolds, we shall run into some social experiences more palpably linked to sorcery fear. Meanwhile, we must pursue somber perceptions of eighteenth-century life in the sphere of national politics.
CHAPTER 3
Threats Seen
and Unseen
The smile that the middle-aged Hungli offered his portraitist is not a warm one, nor (I think) one of satisfaction. Perhaps it is the bleak smile of recognition: that great enterprises are laid low by the pettiness of the men who serve them, that the pettiness of many will always overbalance the greatness of one, that to sow in joy is to reap in tears.
If any monarch was carefully groomed for rule, it was Hungli. As a boy, his imperial grandfather adored him, as much for his coolness and pluck as for his evident intelligence. His father, Injen (the Yungcheng emperor), secretly named him heir-apparent as soon as he himself acceded to the throne in 1723, in order to spare the regime a vicious succession struggle like the one he had recently fought and won. Injen had confronted a grim scene when he took power: a polity demoralized by factional fighting among the entourages of rival imperial princes. His response had been to secure his personal position by stripping the Manchu aristocracy of its military powers, and to bring the fractious bureaucracy to heel through rigorous discipline. To tighten security and centralize imperial control, he introduced a confidential communication system that was managed by a new high-level advisory committee, the Grand Council. To rationalize the finance of local government. and thereby reduce corruption, he replaced informal tax-surcharges with a new system of public levies. These accomplishments of Injen, stern rationalizer and masterful institution-builder, were presented to the twenty-five-year old Hungli on his succession to the throne in October 1735. Compared with how his father had got it, Hungli was handed the empire on a platter.'
Hungli (1711-1799) in middle age.
Upon his succession, Hungli named his reign-period "Ch'ien-lung." Although this is not susceptible of literal translation, an imperial edict explained that the new sovereign had received the "munificent (lung) aid of Heaven (ch'ien)" and that he would labor with "solemn dedication (ch'ien-t'i)" to further the purposes of his imperial father's "splendid legacy."`' In fact, Hungli's reign saw the gradual dissipation of that legacy. This cannot fairly be laid to lack of solemn dedication, but to problems peculiar to the age.3 Injen had faced direct challenges to his personal security, but Hungli faced subtler ones. Although he did not have to confront a contentious aristocracy, he had to wrestle daily with an official establishment that had become expert in finding quiet ways to protect and enrich itself. The age was one of surface amity between conquerors and conquered, signified by the monarch's own ostentatious sheen of Chinese culture and his patronage of arts and letters. The Manchu elite had learned to cope with Chinese elite culture, even as the Han elite had come to acquiesce in Manchu overlordship. Yet this dulling of cultural distinctions had its price, and Hungli suspected that his Manchu compatriots were now but feeble support for his imperial supremacy. This slow, quiet dissipation of Manchu hegemony was a threat impossible to ignore but hard to grasp effectively. And beneath the surface of politics sounded those great engines of historic change, commercial vitality and human fertility.
Material for Hungli's biography is so overwhelming that the job may never be done." To penetrate his ghostwriters and reach the man himself, there is no escape from reading the monarch's own comments, instructions, and obiter dicta, jotted in vermilion ink upon reports as he read them and now preserved in the imperial archives.5 This can of course be done only in the context of events. If the events of the soulstealing crisis contribute to such a biography, it will be by showing (wherever possible through documentation in his own hand) how Hungli reacted to certain problems that he perceived to be particularly troublesome: chief among them, sedition and assimilation.
Perceptions of Treason
After the thirteenth century, all China's ruling dynasties originated in conquest: no palace coups, no praetorian juntas, but instead large scale military campaigning. All conquest regimes were, by their nature, military impositions upon the nation. For the Ch'ing, as for their Mongol forerunners of the thirteenth century, this imposition was complicated by the conquerors' alien culture. However cunningly the conquerors might frame the rhetoric of succession (a virtuous regime replacing a corrupt one was the conventional rhetoric of the Mandate of Heaven), there was always the danger that the symbolism of legitimate rule might be challenged by ugly ethnic feelings: the claim that these rulers were usurpers precisely because they were outsiders. It was such a possibility that kept Ch'ing rulers alert against sedition. But the terms in which the Throne confronted sedition evolved with the times.
By Hungli's time the full ornamentation of the universal empire seemed firmly in place. Here was no raw victor-vanquished relationship, but one in which sedition could plausibly be confronted in conventional terms: a legitimate and virtuous Confucian monarchy, worthily graced by Heaven's Mandate, confronting perverse and degenerate plotters. How far beneath the surface lay the old ethnic hostility, we can never determine. Yet to understand the events of 1768, when the crudely ethnic issue of headdress came back into prominence, we shall have to sample the atmosphere of the early conquest years, when the issue was very much alive. The macabre tonsure cases of the early Ch'ing suggest what dark surmises may have hidden behind the imperial smile.
Retrospective: The Conquest Years
While combat still echoed through the Yangtze Valley, the newly installed Manchu court was already preparing, in 1645, to forge chains between victors and vanquished. The young emperor, Fulin, was but nine years old and wholly dominated by his uncle, the regent Dorgon. Although Dorgon was a skillful cultivator of Han support, in this matter he was implacable: the sign of unconditional submission would be a simple, visible hallmark of Manchu culture, the shaved forehead in front and braided queue in back.,
The tonsure decree. Even before the Manchu armies had entered the Great Wall, Chinese who surrendered to them h
ad to signify submission by adopting the Manchu headdress. Accounts of the conquest generally emphasize the shaved forehead as the indispensable sign of surrender. Dorgon's determination to enforce the Manchu tonsure on everyone was evident from the day he entered Peking (June 5, 1644). During the conquest of the South, headdress became the rallying point of a desperate Chinese resistance and certainly made the Manchu takeover many times bloodier than it would otherwise have been. Nevertheless, for the first year after the conquest of Peking, Dorgon wavered about enforcing the headdress even at court. At last, however, he issued the requirement as a formal statement through the agencies of civil government.'
The origin of the tonsure decree was Dorgen's exasperation at court officials' simpering objections to the Manchu headdress by appealing to the "System of Rites and Music" (the mandated ceremonials) of the defeated Ming Dynasty. Notwithstanding that Ming institutions would undergird the reconstituted imperial government after the conquest, Dorgon would brook no sneers at Manchu customs. Such talk was "highly improper ... does our Dynasty not have a System of Rites and Music? If officials say that people should not respect our Rites and Music, but rather follow those of the Ming, what can be their true intentions?" When it came to the shaved forehead, Dorgon conceded that there might be some justifiable Confucian objection that because a man's body was inherited from his parents it ought not be violated. "But instead we hear this incessant `Rites and Music' rubbish. I have hitherto loved and pitied the [Han] officialdom, allowing them to follow their own preference [in matters of dress and tonsure]. Now, however, because of this divisive talk, I can but issue a decree to all officials and commoners, ordering that they all shave their foreheads."8
The decree sent to the Board of Rites (the board that, among other things, set the dress code for all important ceremonies) on July 8, 1645, was nevertheless couched in Confucian terms." Now that the empire had been pacified, it read, it was time to enforce the tonsure on all. Since the ruler was like a father and the subjects like his sons, and since father and sons were naturally a single entity, divergence between them was impermissible. If their way of life were not unified, they might eventually be of "different minds." Would not this (reverting to the political side of the simile) be almost as if they were "people of different kingdoms (i-kuo chih jen)"? This matter ought not require mention from the Throne, but rather should be perceived naturally by all. Now, within ten days of the decree's promulgation in Peking (or within ten days of the proclamation's reaching a province), all must conform. Disobedience would be "equivalent to a rebel's defying the Mandate [of Heaven] (ni-ming)." Officials who memorialized on behalf of those seeking "to retain the Ming institutions and not follow those of this Dynasty" would be put to death without mercy. On the matter of "clothing and caps," a less coercive and more leisurely approach would govern; but in the end conformity was expected in these matters as well.
Surely such language was meant to resonate with the conventional legal phrases that dealt with treason. The Ch'ing Code (7a-Ch'ing lu-li) handles treason in the statute "The Ten Abominations (shih-o)," the third paragraph of which is titled "conspiracy to revolt (moup'an)." The sole clarification of this broadly gauged rubric is "This refers to betraying one's own kingdom (pen-kuo) and secretly adhering to another kingdom (t'o-kuo)." The penalties for "conspiracy to revolt" are listed in the Punishments section of the Code: decapitation for the conspirators, with no distinction between leader and followers. Their wives and children are to be given as slaves to meritorious officials, their parents and grandparents to be. banished to Tur- kestan.10 It is especially striking that the tonsure decree itself does not appear as a statute or substatute in the Ch'ing Code, nor in any edition of the Collected Statutes (Ta-Ch'ing hui-tien). Perhaps the monarchs of the new regime, however implacable in enforcing it, wanted the decree to remain outside the body of formal written law: either to be enforced without reference to the Code or the Collected Statutes, or decorously hidden beneath the Code's general statutes on treason (the greater part of which had been inherited from previous dynasties and bore a thick patina of legitimacy).
The years of the Ch'ing conquest saw stirring examples of local resistance centered symbolically on the tonsure decree. Loyalty to the defunct Ming political order was less powerful a rallying cry to local communities than was the preservation of cultural self-respect implied in resisting the shaved forehead. The famous cases of local resistance in the Yangtze Valley exhibited the strong connection, in the public mind, between hairstyle and self-respect." We can appreciate the importance of this cultural sticking point to the invaders as well: it channeled the application of force toward the most obdurate centers of resistance. In this respect, the tonsure decree was it shrewd move: better to flush resistance into the open and destroy it quickly than to nourish a sullen passivity toward the new regime.
But what are we to make of the continued ferreting out of individual cases of defiance in the conquered provinces? The zeal and ruthlessness with which the conquerors persecuted local hair-growers suggests that even the slightest deviation from the tonsure decree might prove a nucleus for popular resistance. And enforcement might serve as a measure of official zeal in the service of the new order. The following cases, in which deviance of isolated individuals was discovered by accident, indicate not only the minuteness of the conquerors' attention to conformity among ordinary subjects but also their determination to bend local officials to the service of the new regime. The incidents evoke the harsh and bloody mood that attended the tonsure decree in the early Ch'ing. Can this keen Manchu sensitivity to tonsure violations have died out completely by 1768? As for the general populace, must we lean on "racial memory" to imagine that the threat of family extirpation may occasionally have been mentioned by fathers to sons when it was time to visit the barber?
The scholar's cap. It was early March in 1647, three years after the Manchu conquerors had swept into North China and occupied Peking.''' Late winter in the far northwest was dry and bitterly cold. Chang Shang, Han bannerman and governor of Kansu Province, had just received orders from Peking to make an inspection tour. By March 4 he had reached the outskirts of Yung-ch'ang, a remote county just within the Great Wall. Along the sides of the dusty road to greet him knelt the entire body of students of the county school. Astride his horse, Chang noticed to his satisfaction that all were wearing Manchu-style winter caps. As he later reported, however, "I espied one man who seemed to have retained the hair on the front of his head. After I reached the county yamen, I summoned all the students for academic examination." As they gathered in the great hall, "I personally went over to the man in question and removed his cap. Indeed, his hair was totally unshaven."
Infuriated, Chang ordered local officials to investigate. They reported that the region had been repeatedly posted with warnings about the tonsure decree, on Chang's instructions, and that even this unfortunate culprit, Lu K'o-hsing, a military licentiate living in a rural area, had no excuse. Chang clapped Lii in jail and memorialized the Throne asking that he be executed, "to uphold the laws of the ruling dynasty." Replied the Throne (the stern Dorgon speaking, we may assume), "Let him be executed on the spot. But what about the local officials, the household head, the local headman, and the neighbors? There are established precedents for punishing them, too. Why were they not followed? Let the Board of Punishments be informed." Lu's unshaven head was hacked from his body and publicly exposed "to warn the masses." The patriarch of Lu's household, along with the local headman and the neighbors, were all punished with beatings, and the county magistrate was docked three months' wages.
A disturbance in the marketplace. Later that same year, in central China, not far from Wuchang, the capital of Hupei Province, a minor fracas occurred in the market town of Yu-chen.'3 A peasant named Kuo Shan-hsien, who had come into town to sell chickens, had got himself into a loud argument over some trivial matter. Tempers flared, and local constables were summoned. Unluckily for Kuo, his frontal hair was discovered to be nearly
an inch long, and he was placed under arrest. On his person was discovered a paper bearing the signature of a person named Yin, the same surname as that of a local bandit in that area, now deceased. Kuo was suspected of being part of Yin's gang, and was taken to the county yamen. There the paper was found to be in the hand of Kuo's own landlord, also surnamed Yin, and to be of no significance. The acting magistrate, Chang Wen-teng, evidently considered Kuo's hair to be a matter of no great significance, either, and the peasant was released. But he was then rearrested, specifically on the hair charge, by the market tax-collector, who had him taken once again to the county yamen. This time Acting Magistrate Chang had the man's head shaved, but released him as before. The tax-collector, perhaps with his own career prospects in mind, would not let the matter rest, and complained directly to the provincial authorities. His charge was as much directed at the lenient Chang, whom he accused of "protecting traitors," as against peasant Kuo, the principal culprit.
The provincial judge now had Kuo arrested once more and brought him, the tax-collector, and Acting Magistrate Chang into his court for direct confrontation. He found that indeed there had been undue leniency: landlord Yin and Kuo's local neighbors, as well as Chang and Kuo, all deserved punishment. However, he opined that there was a difference between intentionally allowing the hair to grow (like the defiant militiamen of the doomed Yangtze cities) and negligently failing to shave in timely fashion. Kuo, he recommended, should get off with a beating.
This moderate judgment was reversed by the governor-general. In a concurring opinion, the governor noted that the tonsure decree had been broadcast repeatedly. Kuo was only an ignorant rustic, but he had managed to get himself arrested not once but twice on the same charge. Why should he not be made a warning to others? Only when the matter had been found out was he forcibly shaved: surely he had repeated his crime intentionally. As for magistrate Chang, it was inexcusable that he could not control a contumacious subject, but rather, when the man was arrested, first procrastinated and then had him forcibly shaved, so that there was no evidence of the length of his hair. The Throne accepted the sterner verdict: Kuo was to be beheaded, Chang cashiered. As it turned out, the governor reported, Kuo died in prison "of illness," thereby "incurring Heaven's punishment ... so the Kingly Law did not fail in the slightest particular."