Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (25 page)

The method of doing so, however, is different from that of prosecuting the queue-clippers themselves, which can be done by soldiers
and police. This, by contrast, requires velvet-glove treatment to avoid
alerting the targets. Careful but secret investigation will be needed.
Hungli ended his letter with his favorite "priority" phrase, "use particular vigor and attention" (mien-chih, shen-chih), an urgent note not
sounded when sorcery alone was at issue. No provincial bureaucrat
could doubt that the heat was on, or that the basis of the prosecution
had been transformed: no longer mere sorcery, but sedition.""

The Quest for Salvation

Meanwhile, in the bleak uplands of Chihli, on the road to Mongolia,
portentous visions were stirring among commoners as well. Whether
these visions grew from fear of sorcery itself, or from the antiManchu implications of queue-clipping, or from anxiety about the
apparent loss of dynastic control, we cannot know. But some hastened
to make ready for the end of the world. They belonged to a popular
Buddhist sect known as "Effortless Action" (Wu-wei chiao), also named
"Returning to the Origin" (Show _yuan), an expression associated with
millenarian beliefs about the imminent end of the world. The sect
traced its origins to the patriarch Lo Ch'ing (fl. 1509-1522). Long
proscribed by imperial order, it was now revived by a man named
Sun Chia-mou. This sect can be classed as the "sutra recitation" type: congregations practicing vegetarianism and pious living, seeking salvation through the "precious scrolls" transmitted from earlier sect
leaders.e'

In Pao-an Department (now Cho-lu County), some sixty miles
northwest of Peking, a sectarian convert had confessed that Sun Chiamou had "composed rebellious sayings" in order to revive the sect.
The provincial judge himself went immediately to Pao-an to investigate. Hungli was sufficiently alarmed to send secret orders that all
culprits be sent directly to the summer capital for interrogation,
bypassing the provincial court.'''

The law moved fast. Only a week later, the grand councillors in
Ch'eng-te were able to report on their interrogation of a band of
Pao-an sectarians. The sect-master, Ts'ui Yu-fa, claimed to have
inherited a five-character mantra ("Universal Felicity Nourishes Manifest Virtue"; p'u-fu yang hsien-te) from the Ming patriarch P'u-ming.
Each sect member adopted a dharma-name that began with one of
the five characters. Sun Chia-mou had joined the sect in 1750, taking
the dharma-name Hsien-fu ("manifest riches"). County authorities
had arrested sect-master Ts'ui in 1 753 but released him on condition
that he abjure the religion. Ts'ui secretly continued to practice it,
however, and announced that he was "receiving instructions from
the Venerable Mother of Universal Light" (p'u-kuang lao-mu) about
the "disasters and good fortune" that would befall mankind.66 He
also concocted "golden pills and honey-liquor" and sold them as
medicine. In the current year, his disciple Sun Chia-mou had written
"treasonous sayings" on placards, which he planned to have distributed among sect members. Under torture, Sun confessed that these
"sayings" were of two kinds: "things having to do with Ts'ui's cheating
people of money" (probably soliciting contributions as offerings
against calamity), and a "nine-lotus chant" (chiu-lien-tsan) transmitted
from the patriarch P'u-ming. By the seventh month, master Ts'ui
had heard of the spread of queue-clipping sorcery and "urged the
people to pray for deliverance from calamity." The violence of
dynastic change meant chaos and suffering for ordinary people. This
was the occasion to reactivate the sect and to proselytize among the
public. Authorities seized sect members distributing placards in the
walled city of Pao-an, as well as persons who had collected money on
Ts'ui's behalf or had kept copies of his sutras.

The inquisitors recommended harsh punishment, under the "High
Treason" (ta-ni) statute: Ts'ui and Sun were to be executed by slow slicing. Of their principal followers, some were to be beheaded, others
beaten and exiled. Since the people of that prefecture were obviously
"incorrigible," the severed heads of the sect leaders were to be publicly displayed to discourage future converts. As we shall see in
Chapter g, officials who had treated Ts'ui leniently fifteen years
earlier were to be found and disciplined.',

Hungli's ruthless destruction of the Pao--an sect followed naturally
from his conclusion (September 7) that the soulstealers, by intentionally raising the issue of tonsure symbolism, had committed themselves
to sedition. By that logic, the sectarian response was just what the
queue-clippers had wanted. Whatever the soulstealer's strategy, it is
in fact likely that the Pao-an sectarians were moved by the imminent
perils that queue-clipping seemed to portend. Popular fears of
dynastic change-and the natural disasters that came with it- were
readily crystallized by Ts'ui and his doctrines. The panic factor was
now fairly at work. Or so it must have seemed to the court at Ch'engte, still shaken by the spread of sorcery through the capital and
provinces.

By early autumn, it seemed to Hungli that the spread of queueclipping into North China was only the beginning of much more
extensive trouble for the dynasty. Once aware of the political menace
lurking behind the queue-clipping scare, he began to alert officials
in hitherto unaffected provinces so that the movement could be
contained. On September 22, he sent a court letter to the governors
of Shansi and Shensi, urging preparedness. The gangs of sorcerers,
he wrote, had spread from Kiangnan into Shantung, Honan, and
Chihli. Peking already had "many cases," and in recent days even at
the summer capital their traces had been discovered. Now that energetic measures were underway in Chihli, who could say that the
criminals would not take refuge elsewhere?'

Sorcery Moves West

Governor Mingsan of Shensi certainly knew his way around. Though
this collateral relative of the imperial house had held governor's rank
only seven years, he had served at intermediate levels of provincial
administration for seven years before that. He must have been credited with a just sense of proportion, for while serving as governor of
subtropical Kwangtung in 1762/63, he had recommended to the
Throne that local officials no longer be required to kneel in the road
wearing their heavy dragon-embroidered ceremonial gowns to welcome provincial dignitaries. In Shensi, he was well acquainted with the territory: by the time of the queue-clipping crisis, his tenure as
governor had so far lasted (with a year's interruption to serve in the
Yangtze region) for five years.2

Mingsan reported on October 3 that he had heard of the Shantung
cases when they first occurred and had already sent "secret orders"
to county officials and military garrisons to take precautions. Rural
markets were likely to "harbor traitors," so he had ordered local
officials to send agents among the crowds to keep watch. On October
18, 1 g, and 20, three men reported that their queues had been
clipped on the street by criminals unknown: two soldiers from nearby
garrisons, and one schoolboy. County officials had examined the
queue-ends, however, and found that they did not appear to have
been clipped. Governor Mingsan himself had the complainants
brought before him and found their queue-ends to be untouched.'

Further questioning revealed that the schoolboy, Kuo Hsing-li,
aged twelve, was a student at the local academy. He had stopped on
the street to watch a jugglers' troupe and made himself late for
school. Rather than brave his schoolmaster's wrath, he had run home
to his mother and claimed his queue-end had been clipped. Mingsan
was unwilling to press charges against a twelve-year-old. The soldiers,
he suspected, were either trying to find an excuse to postpone the
payment of debts, or needed an excuse for being late to duty. Though
he thought they "ought to be beaten," Mingsan was afraid that "the
little people would not understand why, and there might be some
genuine clipping-victims who would then not report the matter." The
soldiers were sent back to their units to face the music.

Two other cases, however, were cause for concern. One commoner,
Liu, feared that his queue had been clipped and had barber Ch'en
clip off it little more as prophylaxis. Though the man was obviously
"extremely stupid," his actions were "provocative and an incitement
to the public." Another troublesome case was that of a seven-yearold boy, Chao Wang-pao, who was playing in the street in front of
barber Wang's stall. Somehow he had heard of queue-clipping and
started pestering barber Wang to cut off a little of his queue too.
Barber Wang at first ignored him, then decided to humor him by
cutting off just a little. The boy then became frightened and reported
the incident to his mother. County deputies were sent to investigate,
and barber Wang was haled into court and interrogated. Though the
magistrate was satisfied that no evil was intended, the provincial judge
ordered that he be brought before him and questioned under the chia-kun. No new revelations were forthcoming. Wang's barber stall
was searched, but no "illegal articles" were discovered. Governor
Mingsan then questioned the man himself and was satisfied that the
deed had been done as a joke. Yet such a joke at such a time was
"provocative and illegal." Barber Wang, along with imagined clipping-victim Liu and barber Ch'en, were exposed in the cangue "to
show the public." In the ten days since that time, Mingsan assured
his master, no further incidents had been reported. He would
"redouble his supervision" of preventive police work and "dared not
permit the slightest laxit.y." (Vermilion: "Probably just empty words.
Do not fail to exert yourself. Be conscientious and watchful.")

Sorcery Afloat

As his barge made its stately way along the Grand Canal, the directorgeneral of Grain "Transport, Yang Hsi-fu, docked on September 7 at
it salt inspectorate in northwest Shantung. There he encountered a
case of attempted soulstealing. As the grain fleet returned empty
from the North, boat-trooper Chou had come aboard the captain's
boat bringing his wife, who complained that a corner of her clothing
had been clipped by it beggar-woman on August 2 1, whereupon she
felt suddenly dizzy and had to be revived by a physician. On the
twenty-seventh, a tattered beggar-woman again came on board and
clipped a piece of cloth from her clothes. This time the crone was
caught and was found to possess scissors and a scrap of cloth that
seemed to match the victim's clothing. Suspect and evidence
(including the victim's cotton vest) had been turned over to Magistrate
Shih of 're-thou, who undertook to dig out the truth and reported
to director-general Yang the following facts."

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."