The old woman confessed that her'marricd name was Chang, nee Wang, that she was from Wu-ch'iao County in neighboring Chihli Province, and she now lived at Yu-ch'iian Village in Ching-thou, along with her son, Yin, and his wife, also nee Wang. At the age of seventy-one, she survived by begging in the streets. "One day a man named Doggie Ch'ii came up to me at the riverbank and offered me a thousand cash if I could clip the lapels of ten women." She admitted to clipping the clothing of two women, including the wife of boattrooper Chou, at which point she was caught. "Doggie Ch'ii give me a bag of drugs. He told me that if I swallowed a pinch, the woman wouldn't see me. I still had a little left over, which I buried by the side of the road in a hole in the wall of a cartshed." Doggie Ch'ii was also from Wu-ch'iao, and the old woman implicated two other Wuch'iao persons and their addresses.
Off went the constables to track down the names in beggar-woman Chang's confession. Neither could be found, nor could the bag of drugs. Into court were dragged beggar-woman Chang's son, daughter-in-law, and their child, "little darkie." The son, Yin, aged fifty-one, deposed that his mother lived in the house next door belonging to Widow Han, along with another old woman named Li, her begging companion. He knew nothing of any criminal behavior by his mother. Questioned again, beggar-woman Chang now said that the addresses she had given yesterday were false, but that all the following people were part of the gang-whereupon she produced seven new names. "They worked at Po-t'ou [where she had been caught] but beat it when they heard that Your Excellency was arresting people." The bag of drugs must have been taken away "by some children."
Again, the constables could find no corroborating evidence. Beggar-woman Chang's companion, Li, also over seventy, confessed that she knew all about the lapel-clipping racket, and that she too had tried the invisibility drug. Asked who gave her the drugs, she "said whatever came into her head," according to the examining magistrate, and "her eyes had an evil look." Both women seemed dazed and confused. The magistrate ordered that remedies be administered to clear their heads, so "fire from a sacrificial censer was used to burn simulacra (hsiang-huo shao-lei)."5 Then the women were given a broth made of "boiled herbs and vermilion powder, to which were added the ashes of some yellow paper bearing a vermilion seal," a concoction that seemed to revive them. Questioned separately, beggar-woman Li said that the invisibility drugs had been given them by two monks who lived in the village temple. When the two monks were questioned, they maintained that they knew nothing but "chanting scriptures and tilling the soil." Beggar-woman Chang's testimony was successfully impeached when she pointed to a local constable in a lineup and swore he was "Doggie Ch'ii."
Although the magistrate's report lent them scant credibility, Director-general Yang had little choice but to follow up on these confessions. Like all other high provincial officials, he was under heavy pressure from the Throne. Accordingly he sent the details to Governor Funihan (to whom the culprits had already been sent), as well as to officials in all the jurisdictions where members of the gang were living, according to beggar-woman Chang's testimony. Indeed, Hungli became deeply interested in the details of this case. His rescript to Yang's memorial was dark with suspicion: Behind this case "there must be persons with deep plots and far-reaching plans. You must not view the matter as merely involving the ordinary sort of rumors."
As Magistrate Shih's superior, Governor Funihan of course also received Shih's report about beggar-woman Chang and the lapelclipping case. Because he was busy with other court cases, he had both women reinterrogated, and both now recanted. Beggar-woman Chang lamented that she had simply gone onto the grain boat to beg, when suddenly the trooper's wife began shouting that her lapel had been clipped, and she had been nabbed as a likely suspect. The new team of interrogators saw no evidence of evildoing and even suggested that the scrap of cloth might have been planted. Funihan then called the culprits up for his personal interrogation, but was told that beggar-woman Chang had just died of illness in the county jail ("a cold contracted on her journey here" ).h
However shaky the case, Funihan was stuck with the women's previous confessions and the names of their collaborators. Under imperial pressure, he could hardly let the matter rest. He assured Hungli that he had sent the names of implicated persons to the authorities in neighboring Chihli, where beggar-woman Chang said they were located. Such assiduity impressed the emperor not a bit. Why, he demanded in a court letter, had Funihan not personally compared the cloth from beggar-woman Chang's bag with that of the clipped garment? Women's clothing was particularly easy to distinguish: the darkness or lightness of the cloth and the length of the piece (Vermilion: "and the looseness or closeness of the weave") could quickly distinguish true evidence from false.' If the Lord of the Civilized World could direct his attention to such details, how could a dutiful official do less? Fuheng and Yenjisan, grand councillors on duty at the summer capital, were giving the case their closest attention. They noted shrewdly that the question of the "two monks" brought up in Yang Hsi-fu's original memorial had not been addressed by Funihan and drafted an additional court letter to be sent to Shantung.8 "Since these monks are culprits in this case who ought to be rigorously investigated," how could Funihan have let them go so easily? Governor Funihan replied that although beggar woman Chang had originally spoken of them, she had since recanted her confession. Further investigation had shown that the monks indeed had no criminal associations. As for the cloth, it clearly had been cut by sharp scissors, which beggar-woman Chang's were not; and cut along a curvy, meandering line, obviously not in a way that could be done in a hurry. Despite these "doubtful aspects," Funihan could not but forward the names of implicated persons to the summer capital.`'
We cannot tell whether torture was used on the old women, though the law forbade the torture of females. Their confusion and shock are evident in the record, and beggar-woman Chang's death in jail suggests that neither their sex nor their advanced age had earned them much solicitude from their jailers. Their testimony, impeached as it was on many counts, had nevertheless generated new leads, which were now treated as valuable in themselves. Accordingly, seven new names were dutifully entered on the investigators' docket.
Round Up the Usual Suspects
Meanwhile, officials in Chekiang, where it all had begun, were still without a plausible master-sorcerer. But after two months of vermilion abuse from the Throne, Governor Yungde had at least found an acceptable way to run the queue-clipping campaign. He reported on October 4 that numerous suspects had been rounded up and rigorously examined. Soldiers and constables had been posted at temples and pilgrimage sites to arrest suspicious characters, and county authorities had garnered a promising batch. These feats apparently sat well with the Throne, if we can judge by the fact that the abuse ceased. A brief inspection of Yungde's police work in Chekiang reveals his formula for dealing with queue-clipping and the sorts of people it brought into the case.''
Yungde emerged from the examination hall on the evening of September 3o and the next day joined his provincial treasurer and judge, along with the Shao-hsing circuit-intendant, to examine the criminal Kuang-ts'an. This "wandering monk" (vu fang) and fortuneteller claimed no fixed abode. He had been picked up for his suspicious looks and was found to be carrying some written material. He said that in March and April of the present year he had taken lodging with a monk, Te-ts'ao, at the Chueh-huang Temple. There he spotted a book of charms for curing sickness and persuaded Te-ts'ao to lend it to him. His obliging host also gave him twenty paper slips on which were printed charms for ridding houses of evil spirits and protecting crops from pests. Kuang-ts'an denied any criminal activities and apparently managed to convince his captors. "Nevertheless," the shrewd Yungde reported to the Throne, "the writings he was carrying are all absurd and uncanonical, which makes him liable to punishment." In accordance with His Majesty's edict that prisoners found innocent of queue-clipping might be released (citing Hungli's edict of September 14 back at him), Yungde was merely convicting Kuang- tsan and
Te-ts'ao (who had also been arrested) under the substatute forbidding "possessing books of prognostication which are absurd and uncanonical and failing to destroy them," for which the penalty was to be beaten one hundred strokes." Then they were to be remanded to their home county and forbidden to leave it.
Another criminal, reported Yungde, was the Taoist priest Wang Ta-ch'eng, who deposed that he was from T'ung-lu County in the west Chekiang prefecture of Yen-chou. He used to make a living as a geomancer. Because business was bad, he "assumed the habit of a Taoist priest." He copied out Taoist paper charms bearing the six ideographs meaning "Golden Seal of the Home of the Nine Elder Immortals" (chiu-lao-hsien-tu chin-yin).12 He carved wooden seals, one each for the "Techniques of the Five Thunder-Spirits" to stamp on charm-slips for the protection of houses and crops, "to cheat the country people out of their money and goods." The local Taoist headman (tao-chi) confirmed that the charms and seals were indeed such as were customarily used by Taoist priests. Although Wang stoutly protested that he had nothing to do with queue-clipping sorcery, "We have nevertheless convicted him under the substatute that forbids `Yin-Yang sorcerers speaking wildly of disasters or good fortune"3 and have sentenced him to be beaten and cangued."
The criminal Ts'ao Tzu-yun, reported the assiduous governor, "says he is a beggar from Jen-ho County. This past spring he traveled as far as Soochow, where he fell ill. Because his queue was full of lice, he cut it off. By late summer it had grown back." Because the queueclipping bandits have lately been "frightening the ignorant people into cutting off their queues entirely," the interrogators felt they had to persevere. But even under exhaustive questioning, beggar Ts'ao maintained that his actions had nothing to do with queue-clippers. "At present this criminal is critically ill; we have released him to local officials with instructions to watch him carefully."
The next criminal on Yungde's list, the monk T'ung-yuan, was a more complicated case, because his name was homophonous with one of the head sorcerers revealed in the Shantung confessions. Surnamed Ts'ao in his former lay existence, he lived as a wandering beggar. Not only was his manner suspicious ("looks stupid but is not stupid"); he also had suspicious writings tattooed on his body. On his forehead was the character wan, a Buddhist swastika ("he says he saw it on a Buddhist statue"). On his right arm was tattooed "Leading Me to the Western Pure Land." On the paper slips he gave out in return for alms was written, incomprehensibly, "Worshiping the Buddha in Shantung, tender-trifling." In Shantung: surely here was a culprit. But under questioning, the monk explained that these slips had been printed for him by a man named Chin in Chia-hsing, and that "Shantung" had been written wrongly for the homophonous sanlung, meaning "three winters" (southern speech lacks a retroflex, so that shan and san are indistinguishable). Similarly, the character "tender," nen, was homophonous in southern speech with "cold," leng (many Yangtze Valley dwellers cannot distinguish between an initial "1" or "n," nor do they have an "ng" ending). The monk insisted that the ideographs, correctly rendered, meant "For three winters I have worshiped the Buddha and have accounted cold but a trifle." This, he claimed, was simply to convince his donors of his will to suffer. As for his suspicious name, he claimed that the yuan character was the one from the expression meaning "to beg for alms" (hua-yuan), and was not the one meaning "origin," as was written in the confession of the Shantung queue-clipper, beggar Ts'ai, whom he had never met.
It was highly suspicious, though, that no printer named Chin could be found in Chia-hsing. The monk then said he had written the ideographs himself, but when asked to write them in court, he could not. Anyway, Yungde noted, the characters san-tung were of no great complexity, so why should the suspicious "Shantung" have resulted? Moreover, leng for "cold" was a character in common use, so why should the more complicated nen have been written? It was all too much to believe. In any event, this monk was clearly "not a good type" (fei shun-lei, a common phrase for labeling deviants). (Vermilion: "Have this man sent under close guard to Peking.")
What a cultural distance separated these ragged wanderers from their interrogators! Confronted by the everyday language of popular religion, Yungde and his silk-gowned colleagues professed to be astonished and baffled-who could guarantee that these bizarre expressions were not cryptic references to sorcery or sedition? The everyday malapropisms of the illiterates and semiliterates who were dragged into court night be a secret language, once they were objectified into real ideographs of written Chinese. Who would write nen for leng without some deeper intent?
In any event, the official system was well equipped to deal with miscellaneous deviants. The Ch'ing Code was full of rubrics under which almost any noncanonical popular writing could, if necessary, be classed as heterodox and illegal. Possessing such writings was a crime, even though not one as serious as writing them. Such a prohibition could be applied selectively to label marginal people of whom no more serious crime could be proven. In the last resort there was the catch-all statute 386, "doing what ought not be done" (pu-ying wei), which could subject the perpetrator to a severe beating.
Yungde's roundup in Chekiang apparently had got him off the hook. His detailed report was graced with no vermilion abuse. It even received the somewhat more approving rescript "noted" (chih-taoliao), a tiny but significant step up from the laconic "seen" (Ian), which Hungli inscribed even on the most boring of palace memorials. After all, Yungde had clearly exerted himself, had personally questioned a number of criminals, and had managed to pack one suspicious character off to Peking, where the Grand Council would have ways of making him talk."
An Affair of the Heart
An increasingly frustrated Hungli had urged special vigilance on officials in Hunan and Hupei, where the inhabitants were "crafty and dangerous." In the past they had followed "deviant ways and perverse principles," and rebels would likely hide among them.'s Just as he suspected, a report from Hunan reached him a month later to the effect that placards had been found in Ch'i-yang County with "uncanonical expressions" predicting imminent disasters. More promising, a thirty-year-old wandering monk named Chueh-hsing and four traveling companions had been picked up on suspicion of queue-clipping. On Chueh-hsing had been found a small bag of red silk containing it lock of hair and two Ming coins. Chueh-hsing's interrogation by local officials had revealed that a monk named Maoyuan had showed him how to concoct a magic potion from human hair and old coins that could be used to beguile women. He protested that he had only shaved the hair from someone on request. Hunan's governor, Fang Shih-chiin, ordered the suspects brought under close guard to Changsha, the provincial capital.'6
Serving Hungli as governor-general of Hunan and Hupei was Dingcang, a veteran Manchu bureaucrat who had served in high provincial posts for two decades. An imperial collateral relation, son of a governor-general whom Hungli had particularly trusted, Dingcang was solidly in the upper crust of the Manchu elite." When he received copies of the interrogation reports on the shifty monk Chueh-hsing, he realized that he had better not leave such a sensitive matter entirely to his subordinate, the Hunan governor. He decided to leave immediately for Changsha and "handle it in concert" (huipan) with Governor Fang. In keeping with the gravity of a sedition case, Dingcang and Fang, along with the provincial judge and the local circuit-intendant, examined the prisoners personally in the main hall of the provincial yamen. Back in the summer capital awaiting the results, Hungli was evidently on the edge of his seat. (Vermilion: "This time, we finally have a clue.")
But to everyone's astonishment, monk Chueh-hsing recanted his original confession, insisting that it had been extorted under torture. Now he told the following story: after being thrown out of his master's temple for unruly behavior, he had wandered about southern Hunan. At the prefectural city of Heng-yang, he stayed at an inn run by one Liu San-yuan. There he made friends with innkeeper Liu's young wife, nee Ch'en, who served him food and drink. He returned to the inn often and became a close friend of the family. Innkeeper Liu's father even loaned him i,ooo cash to sustain h
im on the road. On one visit, he and wife Ch'en found themselves alone and had intimate relations. The affair went undetected, and the wanderer returned to pass the New Year's holiday with the family. Unhappily, this time he quarreled with innkeeper Liu, and his frightened lover told him he must leave and never return. Chueh-hsing begged her for a memento, but took to his heels without receiving any. Later, he sent his boy-servant back to the Liu inn for a pair of cotton shoes that his lover had been making for him. Wife Ch'en cut a lock of her own hair, sewed it with two old coins into a piece of red silk cut from her purse, and stuffed the present into one of the shoes. Chueh-hsing had carried the precious keepsakes ever after.
Properly suspicious, the interrogators brought all the principals into court and examined them. One problem was that the hair in the red silk bag had two strands of white in it-hardly to be expected from a woman in her late twenties. However, Ch'en was brought into court, and kneeling before the governor's bench was ordered to unbind her hair. Indeed, it matched exactly. Further, she maintained under insistent questioning that Chueh-hsing had used no potion on her, and that she had yielded to him out of affection.
The official judgment was that none of the suspects (including those who had posted the placards) had anything to do with the queue-cutting sorcerers. (With such compromising evidence in hand, how easy it would have been to convict to please the zealous monarch!) Monk Chueh-hsing, under a criminal substatute on liaisons between monks and married women, was to be beaten and then exiled for three years (his crime was aggravated by his having falsely implicated another monk for supposedly teaching him to make the magic potion-even though the false statements were uttered under torture). Wife Chen was sentenced to exposure in the cangue for a month but might redeem the sentence with a money payment. Innkeeper Liu was permitted to divorce or keep her, as he wished. All monk Chueh-hsing's traveling companions were released.
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Page 18
